...which would lead to more and more accidentally conceived babies which would lead to more and more abortions. brilliant.

I still like Freakonomics take on abortion.

I also liked the mention of the Christian Dental Association. Those guys must have some rocking parties.

what's the freakonomics take? i don't have time or energy or money to go buy and read that book.

freakonomics: crime rates went way down in the 90's and onward because of roe v. wade. i.e., right around the time when the unwanted and legally aborted children from the 1970's would've come of age, crime rates went down. less unwanted children = less crime.

He also included examples showing the opposite effect when Eastern Bloc countries outlawed abortion. There was, 17 years later, a corrosponding increase in crime.

I have no idea if it's valid, but I really like it as a logical argument.

sheesh. that seems fairly specious. of course, i haven't read the book so i'll reserve judgement. but it seems like it could be a potential factor in a statistic that demands hundreds of potential factors.

hardly specious. they control for as many variable as possible and also provide results testing for other factors (broken windows, economy, more cops, etc.) they also publicly provided the data they used.

Again, I like the logic behind it regardless of factual accuracy.

However, I'm fairly certain that most people don't have a position on abortion because of what's more practical for society as a whole. I doubt that people who think abortion is murder are going to turn around and think "well, it may be murder, but it will reducing the violent crime rate in 17 years, thereby reducing future murders... I suppose one murder now to save a few murders down the road is acceptable."

may or may not be specious, but definitely controversial. do to his use of certain minority-heavy areas, etc, generally minorities are under the impression that the theory is blatantly racist. i can assure you from personal experience this wound is still raw: i mentioned the freakonomics theory during an abortion panel I was on (without even endorsing it), and it caused mass upset especially among the latino students listening to me (oops.). personally, i don't think it's racist to say that more minorities have unwanted pregnancies that can be prevented via abortion (or, consequently, that minorities will have more abortions when made available); rather, i see it as acceptance of the dovetailed reality between race/ethnicity and poverty. but hey, maybe there are some intricacies in his methods that raise issues beyond that.

I'm starting to think Dan Savage is right: these people are just against sex.

A side note to that article: they noted in passing that the US has a higher birth rate and a higher rate of abortions than any country in Western Europe. Why? I'd like to just assume that lousy sex education is responsible for more births, but it's too glib.

well, the idea of them being "against sex" goes without saying. the whole movement against contraception has as much to do with the notion of sex as pleasure rather than as a means for procreation. if you have sex without (much of) a risk of pregnancy, it's only for fun. and that's a dangerous idea to these people.

also, more generally, i just want to thank you for this article. i strongly believe that contraception/abortion debate stems directly and seamlessly from the same debate about "radical feminism": i.e., women wanting to, you know, have a modicum of choice in life. and maybe some hot sex. and the turn back to contraception in this debate proves it (just like abortion ban exceptions for rape and incest - being based on the relative morality of the Woman, not the Fetus, such that if she CHOSE to have sex She Will Be Penalized).
i also believe that drug and handgun laws, housing and loan penalties for drug offenses, and mandatory minmums are direct and seamless continuations of southern racism and slavery, by maintaining a certain subjected/incarcerated population which is of course selected based on racist policing and sentencing laws even though whites per capita (and there's still more of us) are shown through virtually every study to do the exact same amount of drugs. and by absolutely no coincidence whatsoever, these seamless continuations of colonial morality are advanced by the exact same cabal of psychos, many of whom have transitioned seamlessly from overtly racist and sexist southern Democrats to subtly racist and sexist republicans. man, Fuck Christianity.

Lorelei, I would assume that was due to our large recent immigrant population. I actually don't know if we have greater immigration numbers than Western Europe (they get a lot more people from the Middle East than we do) but I suspect that ours are higher. More immigrants means more poor people which means more unwanted pregnancies which means more abortions.

Don't hold me to that, it's all assumptions based on absolutely no numbers, just my gut instincts. Oh, and probably some racism.

Flea - I'm with you on that Fuck Christianity thing... our politics may not match, but we have a common enemy.

You both hate Carrot Top?

Who hates Carrot Top?!? He's so strong.

oh, puh-leeze. picking on carrot top is so done.

boldface is so done.

Ha, sorry I was just using it to indicate names... I didn't mean to start an annoying trend.

would you rather i emphasize my points IN ALL CAPS?

Dan Savage had a great article this week (after a spate of mediocre ones). In it, he mentioned that, according to a Harvard University study utilizing data from the National Institute of Child Health and Development, nearly 50% of girls who took a "virginity pledge" had forsaken it within a year.

Fuck Christianity, perhaps, but be prepared to carry its child.