Abortions: China vs the North America

surferdudesurferdude Posts: 2,057
edited January 2007 in A Moving Train
This ties into the Gender Imbalance in China thread.

In North America when a woman is told she is carrying a down's baby there is a 75-90% abortion rate, depending on the research you refer to.

How does this differ from the abortions taking place in China when told the sex of a child is female? Is this any less damning of North American culture than China's practice is?
“One good thing about music,
when it hits you, you feel to pain.
So brutalize me with music.”
~ Bob Marley
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Comments

  • surferdude wrote:
    This ties into the Gender Imbalance in China thread.

    In North America when a woman is told she is carrying a down's baby there is a 75-90% abortion rate, depending on the research you refer to.

    How does this differ from the abortions taking place in China when told the sex of a child is female? Is this any less damning of North American culture than China's practice is?

    Amen, surferdude. You are right to point out the lack of difference between China and the U.S. in regards to abortion.

    27% of pregnancies end in abortion in China, whereas 24% of pregnancies end in abortion in the U.S. The only difference is, China forces their women to abort their babies while the U.S. promotes "choice." The greatest misconception that America has ever allowed was that abortion is a good choice for a woman. In China, they're FORCING their women to have as many abortions as American women voluntarily have.

    And the liberals will tell you that they would like abortions to remain few and far between, but the procedure they want to remain legal brings out an abortion rate similar to a country where abortion is forced upon women.

    Truly saddening for any supporter of abortion.
    All I know is that to see, and not to speak, would be the great betrayal.
    -Enoch Powell
  • taratara Posts: 293
    Amen, surferdude. You are right to point out the lack of difference between China and the U.S. in regards to abortion.

    27% of pregnancies end in abortion in China, whereas 24% of pregnancies end in abortion in the U.S. The only difference is, China forces their women to abort their babies while the U.S. promotes "choice." The greatest misconception that America has ever allowed was that abortion is a good choice for a woman. In China, they're FORCING their women to have as many abortions as American women voluntarily have.

    And the liberals will tell you that they would like abortions to remain few and far between, but the procedure they want to remain legal brings out an abortion rate similar to a country where abortion is forced upon women.

    Truly saddening for any supporter of abortion.

    not sure if i completly understand what you're saying here, but are you pro-life?
    i'm not sure about the the abortion laws in the u.s, but isn't it still illegal in several states? so how exactly is the u.s promoting choice? in canada, where it is legal to have an abortion, it is still not taught in medical schools. if a medical student wants to learn how to perform an abortion they have to volunteer at a clinic that does abortions. so i'd have to disagree with you when you say that there is a promotion of choice.

    why do the same number of women in the u.s and china have abortions? i'm guessing that there are all kinds of cultural reasons. women in their early twenties in the u.s mostly don't want to have kids but are sexually active, whereas in china these women would already be married and ready to have kids, so the women in china in that demographic would be less likely to be having an abortion due to an unwanted pregnancy, and so the stats probably even out, fewer young chinese women are having abortions, but more older chinese women are, since they've already had a child.

    i'm just wondering how you can be pro-choice. when a pregnancy is unwanted, the child will suffer. or the woman will go to some hack to get an abortion done, which can result in massive trauma and even death. so please, i'd like to hear your reasons for being pro-choice.
    No problem can be solved from the same consciousness that created it.
    Albert Einstein
  • AhnimusAhnimus Posts: 10,560
    There is no argument in support of banning the right to choose abortion.
    I necessarily have the passion for writing this, and you have the passion for condemning me; both of us are equally fools, equally the toys of destiny. Your nature is to do harm, mine is to love truth, and to make it public in spite of you. - Voltaire
  • angelicaangelica Posts: 6,038
    tara wrote:
    so i'd have to disagree with you when you say that there is a promotion of choice.
    I think he's referring to the fact that we call it "pro choice". It's a bit of a give-away that it's about "pro"moting "choice".
    "The opposite of a fact is falsehood, but the opposite of one profound truth may very well be another profound truth." ~ Niels Bohr

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  • AhnimusAhnimus Posts: 10,560
    "Individual conscience in matters of moral decision-making is at the core of the Catholic tradition.The
    public policy views of Catholics reflect this tradition. Catholics believe in legal abortion.They also
    believe in contraception, sexuality education, government support for family planning programs in
    developing countries and the separation of church and state."
    http://www.cath4choice.org/
    I necessarily have the passion for writing this, and you have the passion for condemning me; both of us are equally fools, equally the toys of destiny. Your nature is to do harm, mine is to love truth, and to make it public in spite of you. - Voltaire
  • chopitdownchopitdown Posts: 2,222
    Ahnimus wrote:
    There is no argument in support of banning the right to choose abortion.

    then why is it still an issue?
    make sure the fortune that you seek...is the fortune that you need
  • surferdude wrote:
    This ties into the Gender Imbalance in China thread.

    In North America when a woman is told she is carrying a down's baby there is a 75-90% abortion rate, depending on the research you refer to.

    How does this differ from the abortions taking place in China when told the sex of a child is female? Is this any less damning of North American culture than China's practice is?

    This question relies on the assumption that abortion is damning. The point you're getting at is correct...if you think one is damning, then the other is damning...but I don't think either is.

    And I think it's a little misleading to describe the situation in China as "abortion". I think the reason many people single out China is because many baby girls (and boys) are killed after they're born.
  • tara wrote:
    not sure if i completly understand what you're saying here, but are you pro-life?
    i'm not sure about the the abortion laws in the u.s, but isn't it still illegal in several states? so how exactly is the u.s promoting choice? in canada, where it is legal to have an abortion, it is still not taught in medical schools. if a medical student wants to learn how to perform an abortion they have to volunteer at a clinic that does abortions. so i'd have to disagree with you when you say that there is a promotion of choice.

    why do the same number of women in the u.s and china have abortions? i'm guessing that there are all kinds of cultural reasons. women in their early twenties in the u.s mostly don't want to have kids but are sexually active, whereas in china these women would already be married and ready to have kids, so the women in china in that demographic would be less likely to be having an abortion due to an unwanted pregnancy, and so the stats probably even out, fewer young chinese women are having abortions, but more older chinese women are, since they've already had a child.

    i'm just wondering how you can be pro-choice. when a pregnancy is unwanted, the child will suffer. or the woman will go to some hack to get an abortion done, which can result in massive trauma and even death. so please, i'd like to hear your reasons for being pro-choice.

    I'm not pro-choice.

    I was pointing how barbaric and cruel our society is for aborting babies at the same rate as China does. China is a human rights nightmare and yet they abort just as many babies as we do. That speaks volumes about how barbaric and cruel China AND the U.S. are.
    All I know is that to see, and not to speak, would be the great betrayal.
    -Enoch Powell
  • AhnimusAhnimus Posts: 10,560
    chopitdown wrote:
    then why is it still an issue?

    Because stupidity is infinite.
    I necessarily have the passion for writing this, and you have the passion for condemning me; both of us are equally fools, equally the toys of destiny. Your nature is to do harm, mine is to love truth, and to make it public in spite of you. - Voltaire
  • AhnimusAhnimus Posts: 10,560
    Oh, btw, there is no real debate. Abortion is legal, has been and probably always will be in the US and Canada.

    All you pro-lifers can keep whining all you want. It won't make a difference, there are less and less of you every day.
    I necessarily have the passion for writing this, and you have the passion for condemning me; both of us are equally fools, equally the toys of destiny. Your nature is to do harm, mine is to love truth, and to make it public in spite of you. - Voltaire
  • Ahnimus wrote:
    Oh, btw, there is no real debate. Abortion is legal, has been and probably always will be in the US and Canada.

    All you pro-lifers can keep whining all you want. It won't make a difference, there are less and less of you every day.

    Roe v. Wade will be overturned in our lifetime.

    :)
    All I know is that to see, and not to speak, would be the great betrayal.
    -Enoch Powell
  • chopitdownchopitdown Posts: 2,222
    Ahnimus wrote:
    Because stupidity is infinite.

    that would mean it could extend to you, you know.
    make sure the fortune that you seek...is the fortune that you need
  • chopitdownchopitdown Posts: 2,222
    Ahnimus wrote:
    Oh, btw, there is no real debate. Abortion is legal, has been and probably always will be in the US and Canada.

    All you pro-lifers can keep whining all you want. It won't make a difference, there are less and less of you every day.
    it's not as clear cut as you'd like to think it is.

    Jeffrey Rosen — Legal Affairs Editor, The New Republic

    “In short, 30 years later, it seems increasingly clear that this pro-choice magazine was correct in 1973 when it criticized Roe on constitutional grounds. Its overturning would be the best thing that could happen to the federal judiciary, the pro-choice movement, and the moderate majority of the American people.
    ….

    “Thirty years after Roe, the finest constitutional minds in the country still have not been able to produce a constitutional justification for striking down restrictions on early-term abortions that is substantially more convincing than Justice Harry Blackmun’s famously artless opinion itself. As a result, the pro-choice majority asks nominees to swear allegiance to the decision without being able to identify an intelligible principle to support it.”

    “Worst Choice” The New Republic February 24, 2003

    Kermit Roosevelt — University of Pennsylvania Law School

    t is time to admit in public that, as an example of the practice of constitutional opinion writing, Roe is a serious disappointment. You will be hard-pressed to find a constitutional law professor, even among those who support the idea of constitutional protection for the right to choose, who will embrace the opinion itself rather than the result.

    “This is not surprising. As constitutional argument, Roe is barely coherent. The court pulled its fundamental right to choose more or less from the constitutional ether. It supported that right via a lengthy, but purposeless, cross-cultural historical review of abortion restrictions and a tidy but irrelevant refutation of the straw-man argument that a fetus is a constitutional ‘person’ entited to the protection of the 14th Amendment.
    ….

    “By declaring an inviolable fundamental right to abortion, Roe short-circuited the democratic deliberation that is the most reliable method of deciding questions of competing values.”

    “Shaky Basis for a Constitutional ‘Right’,” Washington Post, January 22, 2003.
    make sure the fortune that you seek...is the fortune that you need
  • taratara Posts: 293
    I'm not pro-choice.

    I was pointing how barbaric and cruel our society is for aborting babies at the same rate as China does. China is a human rights nightmare and yet they abort just as many babies as we do. That speaks volumes about how barbaric and cruel China AND the U.S. are.

    thanks for not jumping on me for mis-interpreting your views. i don't think that americans are barbaric for having a high abortion rate, i think that it just means taht sex ed needs to be manditory in schools, since a lot of those pregnancies are most likely due to old wives tails taht kids believe (can't get pregnant the first time, etc). also, saying that americans are cruel and barbaric for having a high abortion rate implies judgement. the key difference between the u.s and china is that americans are doing it voluntarily and are not forced. lets see if i can draw an analogy, lets say that some people choose to pray five times a day, i on the other hand pray randomly and not often, forcing me to pray would be a terrible violation of my human rights and i'd be upset, now saying that americans are barbaric because they have the same abortion rate as china where it is forced would be like me saying that people who choose to pray five times a day are obviously messed up because they've CHOSEN to do something that in my life is barbaric, it makes no sense, you would be judging the action (praying), and not the circumstance (voluntary vs. forced)
    No problem can be solved from the same consciousness that created it.
    Albert Einstein
  • AhnimusAhnimus Posts: 10,560
    From a scientific point of view, a "Fetus" is a living breathing baby inside the whom, but doesn't have the capacity of consciousness.

    But in most part we aren't talking about aborting a "FETUS" that is what the fucking pro-lifers say to distort the facts. The majority of surgical abortions happen within the frist few weeks of pregnancy. We are talking about, in many cases, a multi-celled blastocyst, nowhere fucking close to a fetus.

    Don't allow the activist bullshit to distort your view of reality, wake up and read the facts.
    I necessarily have the passion for writing this, and you have the passion for condemning me; both of us are equally fools, equally the toys of destiny. Your nature is to do harm, mine is to love truth, and to make it public in spite of you. - Voltaire
  • AhnimusAhnimus Posts: 10,560
    I necessarily have the passion for writing this, and you have the passion for condemning me; both of us are equally fools, equally the toys of destiny. Your nature is to do harm, mine is to love truth, and to make it public in spite of you. - Voltaire
  • surferdudesurferdude Posts: 2,057
    Saturnal wrote:
    This question relies on the assumption that abortion is damning. The point you're getting at is correct...if you think one is damning, then the other is damning...but I don't think either is.

    And I think it's a little misleading to describe the situation in China as "abortion". I think the reason many people single out China is because many baby girls (and boys) are killed after they're born.
    I think some staunch feminists on this board find the practice in China revolting while being strongly pro-choice. I would like to see how they reconcile that point of view with the practices of North Americans.

    Any killing after birth is definitely murder in my books. The article was unclear if this was happening in China or was the reason behind the gender imbalance.
    “One good thing about music,
    when it hits you, you feel to pain.
    So brutalize me with music.”
    ~ Bob Marley
  • AhnimusAhnimus Posts: 10,560
    Killing after birth is murder, not abortion ^^^^
    I necessarily have the passion for writing this, and you have the passion for condemning me; both of us are equally fools, equally the toys of destiny. Your nature is to do harm, mine is to love truth, and to make it public in spite of you. - Voltaire
  • hippiemomhippiemom Posts: 3,326
    surferdude wrote:
    I think some staunch feminists on this board find the practice in China revolting while being strongly pro-choice. I would like to see how they reconcile that point of view with the practices of North Americans.
    Two main reasons come to me off the top of my head. The first is that we don't like to see women pressured by government when making intimate, personal decisions. Whether it's anit-choicers here trying to prevent women from having abortions that they very much want, or anti-choicers in China mandating abortions for people who don't want them, both are equally heinous.

    The second problem doesn't really have to do with abortion per se, but with a culture that severely devalues women. One of the results of that devaluation is that female fetuses are more likely to be aborted than males, but that is a symptom of the larger problem, not the problem itself. I have no quarrel with any woman who decides to abort for any reason, it is not my place to say which reasons are valid and which are not. I realize that women in China face pressure from a number of fronts to bear sons, that there can be extreme social and financial penalties for bearing daughters, and that frequently the decision is made for them by others.
    "Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity." ~ MLK, 1963
  • surferdudesurferdude Posts: 2,057
    hippiemom wrote:
    Two main reasons come to me off the top of my head. The first is that we don't like to see women pressured by government when making intimate, personal decisions. Whether it's anit-choicers here trying to prevent women from having abortions that they very much want, or anti-choicers in China mandating abortions for people who don't want them, both are equally heinous.
    Until a pro-lifer actually breaks a law you should be happy that they feel free to exercise their democratic rights.
    In China the high abortion rate of female babies is not government driven.
    hippiemom wrote:
    The second problem doesn't really have to do with abortion per se, but with a culture that severely devalues women. One of the results of that devaluation is that female fetuses are more likely to be aborted than males, but that is a symptom of the larger problem, not the problem itself. I have no quarrel with any woman who decides to abort for any reason, it is not my place to say which reasons are valid and which are not. I realize that women in China face pressure from a number of fronts to bear sons, that there can be extreme social and financial penalties for bearing daughters, and that frequently the decision is made for them by others.
    But you are seemingly content with a North American culture that devalues people with disabilities and/or downs. This is why I will always be for Human Rights and not feminism. I recognize the notion that all people are equal, not just all people without disabilities.
    “One good thing about music,
    when it hits you, you feel to pain.
    So brutalize me with music.”
    ~ Bob Marley
  • hippiemomhippiemom Posts: 3,326
    surferdude wrote:
    Until a pro-lifer actually breaks a law you should be happy that they feel free to exercise their democratic rights.
    I was thinking of pro-lifers in government trying to change the laws. I'm fine with people exercising their rights, right up to the point where their rights are interfering with mine.
    surferdude wrote:
    In China the high abortion rate of female babies is not government driven.
    China does not force abortions, but their one-child policy remains in effect in urban areas, with economic disincentives to those who violate it, which obviously is going to result in more abortions.
    But you are seemingly content with a North American culture that devalues people with disabilities and/or downs. This is why I will always be for Human Rights and not feminism. I recognize the notion that all people are equal, not just all people without disabilities.
    I really don't know where you get the idea that I'm ok with a culture that devalues any particular type of person, whether they be disabled, female, or whatever else. This is not a criticism we bleeding heart liberal types hear very often! ;)
    "Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity." ~ MLK, 1963
  • surferdudesurferdude Posts: 2,057
    hippiemom wrote:
    I really don't know where you get the idea that I'm ok with a culture that devalues any particular type of person, whether they be disabled, female, or whatever else. This is not a criticism we bleeding heart liberal types hear very often! ;)
    But more people on this board (possibly not you) seem to take offence at what's happening in China but not in their own backyard. Even though it's happening at a much higher rate at home.
    “One good thing about music,
    when it hits you, you feel to pain.
    So brutalize me with music.”
    ~ Bob Marley
  • hippiemomhippiemom Posts: 3,326
    surferdude wrote:
    But more people on this board (possibly not you) seem to take offence at what's happening in China but not in their own backyard. Even though it's happening at a much higher rate at home.
    That's quite possibly true. I think it's human nature to tend to accept the familiar. Most of us on this board have lived in the west all our lives so we've absorbed the culture and to us it appears "normal." It's good for us to question our assumptions about everything, especially things that seem quite "natural" to us, and there are many people who rarely do that.

    Edit: Incidentally, in defense of feminism, I want to point out that there have been feminists at the forefront of every movement to secure rights for the "have-nots" in our society. Feminists have been very much involved in the movements for civil-rights, patient's rights, gay rights, rights for the disabled, and I'm sure I'm forgetting quite a few others. We're not just all about the ladies :)
    "Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity." ~ MLK, 1963
  • surferdudesurferdude Posts: 2,057
    hippiemom wrote:
    Edit: Incidentally, in defense of feminism, I want to point out that there have been feminists at the forefront of every movement to secure rights for the "have-nots" in our society. Feminists have been very much involved in the movements for civil-rights, patient's rights, gay rights, rights for the disabled, and I'm sure I'm forgetting quite a few others. We're not just all about the ladies :)
    The best definitely aren't. Sam efor the good men. I'm sure you fall into the best category.
    “One good thing about music,
    when it hits you, you feel to pain.
    So brutalize me with music.”
    ~ Bob Marley
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