Question of the Week
August 9, 2009
If you could have 99.9% reduction of abortion based upon taxation (95%) with the money generated used to fund social programs that prevent abortion (of all forms, including contraceptives), a reduction which would not work if abortion is made illegal, or laws which made abortion illegal, and a 20% reduction of abortion based upon those laws, which would you choose and why?
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Without going into too much detail because I’ve got the flu… I would answer in the affirmative citing Thomas a Kempis. Saying yes to your query is merely choosing the lesser of two evils.
David
David,
I’m sorry to hear about the flu. I hope you get better. When you do, I hope to hear more from you on this (and anyone else). I assume you mean yes to the first part of the question, but I don’t know, so will wait to hear more. Do get better!
The first, assuming it was adopted by a parlimentary democracy.
I would also add, this money will be used to make sure everyone has 1) shelter 2) food and 3) basic health care, because these are concerns which are often used to justify abortion if one is lacking.
Kurt
Yes, that is assumed. But why? :)
Option 1, provided that the contraception is not itself abortifacient.
I would prefer the first scenario. While law is important, reducing abortions that greatly would be very significant. The first scenario would produce a situation in which only the rich could afford abortions. On the other hand, through the taxing of the rich the poor would be free of certain socio-economic constraints which tend to push them into considering and having abortions.
But, to play devil’s advocate, if the tax were that effective, and so few were having abortions, how would enough tax revenue be generated to pay for the social programs necessary to sustain the drop in abortion rate? In other words, would it be only a short-term fix? Would the short-term fix to be long enough to help us evangelize hearts and minds?
Brett:
Yes, the point in the quote was that all forms of abortion, including contraceptive abortion, would be eliminated.
Josh
My own assumption is that those programs are what have eliminated the need for abortion (for example, the high tax rates would give food, shelter, health care, et. al.) which are the reasons why some say they have abortion, because of fear it can’t be had. Of course it is more than this, but it would be a part of the whole.
Taxes are frequently evaded. There’s no reason to suppose that a proposed high tax on abortion wouldn’t also be evaded. Given that the mandatory reporting laws for child abuse are commonly ignored by abortion providers, I anticipate they would do some abortions off the books if the woman couldn’t pay, do others at an inflated price and not report them for tax purposes, and report some to keep the authorities happy, thereby claiming an artificially exaggerated reduction in abortion while raking in more money than ever and not significantly reducing the number of actual abortions. They may even tell people that there is a special program to cover the tax, then do the abortion and not pay it.
Remember who we are dealing with: murderers and liars. Why in the world would we ever trust the abortion industry to keep honest books? It may sound harsh, but I think it’s realistic. You would never see the anticipated 99% reduction in abortion.
If we are going to create unrealistic hypothetical situations, I’ll pick the tax only if there is a special provision that I have my choice of cherry or pecan pie with every meal after the law is passed. :)
Men who use women like products for sex LOVE legalized abortion and benefit from it far more than their female victims do. This extremely important fact is often neglected in the “criminalization” narrative.
I’m having trouble understanding what your theoretical system is here. Are you saying there would be a tax on abortions (which seems to be what many commenters are assuming) which would be used to pay for social programs that would prevent 99.9% of abortions? Or are you theorizing a 95% income tax which would be used to fund these programs? I’m assuming you must mean the latter, since it would obviously be rather odd to assume that one could fun programs to eliminate abortion based on taxing the remaining 0.1% of abortions. But one wants to be clear.
DC as I said, the tax would not be on abortions, but universal tax in the system itself, and will fund those things necessary (like providing shelter, etc) to people so that those fears which normally are used as excuses for abortion (or justification) no longer remain.
Yeah… I think I meant the first part… but given my Nyquil induced state… I’ll say more later…
David
It sounds to me, then, like your question is formulated to attempt to make people thing about two issues:
1) Is it more important to eliminate abortions or to outlaw them?
2) Do you feel more strongly about low taxes or about eliminating abortion?
While I can see why you would consider it an interesting tweek to confront people with these questions, I’m not sure that it’s that valid a question given that it rests on the premise that 99.9% of abortions really are the result of lack of money and services — which I think any proper understanding of human motivation would show not to be the case. Certainly, people cite monetary and service related concerns at time for abortion, just as they do for many other actions. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that providing everyone with a specific lifestyle and set of services would guarantee that 99.9% of people would not want to abort. It might just cause them to list other excuses, or shift the bar of what is a minimum level of lifestyle and services.
So I’m not sure that your question is really all that more apt than if you asked, “Would you be willing to accept a ban on all music if that could assure that there would be no violent crime?” or “Would you support everyone living in same sex state dormitories if that meant that there would be no child abuse?”
You’re asking people to weigh things which aren’t actually all that closely related.
I have to agree with Darwin on the notion that you would not get that much of an abortion reduction from social programs. More of my friends are pro-choice than pro-life, and amongst the females who are pro-choice at least a third would be willing to have an abortion if they had an unwanted pregnancy, although most of them could afford a child (with a decrease in standard of living) and none of them are too poor to afford to be pregnant for 9 months. They tend to say that they don’t want to be mothers at this point in their lives and it would be less intrusive to have an abortion than to bear the child and give it up for adoption.
As far as the hypothetical goes, I want to know how long I’d get this 99.9% reduction if I were giving up criminalization. Is it permanent? Could the next congress just change tax policy and bring the abortion rate back up again?
I don’t mind the 95% tax rate in theory (regarding personal liberty versus public good), but I worry that in practice it would mean that everyone with marketable skills would go elsewhere and we’d end up
with Cuba’s economy.
I suspect that if I signed on for option one, it would be gone after a year- in which case I’d be better of with a long term option two.
DC
Perhaps your response is also a part of the purpose of the question itself… and you need to dig deeper to understand the full point…
Perhaps your response is also a part of the purpose of the question itself… and you need to dig deeper to understand the full point…
Perhaps, but if so, none of your audience as indicated by the thread above as yet encountered the “full point”, so it might be incumbent upon you, if you wish to be understood, to explicate further.
Or perhaps it is for the audience to also consider and ponder deeper, and that you have started that process. What does your new questions add to the mix? What does it say about the issue of abortion and numbers and stats?
Henry Karlson,
You’re starting to sound a bit Zen now- or like a painter arguing about the viewer ‘creating meaning’ when he experiences the art.
So, I’ll make these points explicit, and you and Darwin and anyone else can do with them what you will…
-To me it seems to be a near certainty that the majority of abortions in our country are not a matter of poverty, but of not wanting to be a mother at a given point in one’s life and of believing that when one does not wish to be a mother, then there is no duty to carry the child. Forgoing an abortion in order to give a baby up for adoption is not legally or morally required, but is merely supererogatory- and there are other forms of charity that are more appealing. This means that financial or social programs which enable those who would want to forgo an abortion to do so, would never address more than a fraction of the problem. Every life should be protected, and if those lives can be saved, then they ought to be- but it is not a solution.
-Property rights cannot take precedence over the right to life. I suspect that part of the motivation for the question may have been that political conservatives tend to be more likely to support pro-life laws and judicial appointments, but they also tend to want lower taxes. Many people are pro-life, though, who aren’t political conservatives. In my case, if it weren’t for the life issue and (the less important) antipathy I have towards identity politics and sympathy I have for the strict constructionists, then I’d probably never vote for a conservative. With the aforementioned exceptions, I’m in favor of Rawlsian political liberalism.
Henry, I’m confused, are you saying that you want to eliminate all abortions, even contraception, or that you want to advocate government funding of contraception, which the Catholic Church teaches should be illegal?
Bl. Pope John XXIII condemned contraception as the #1 sin against both the moral and the economic good of society.
And considering that the vast majority of abortions are performed by rich women in private hospitals and doctors’ offices, isn’t this a huge straw man?
Contraception does not reduce abortion. It encourages abortion, and abortion is always to be necessary if contraception is to be accepted. The Popes have said this. The Supreme Court says this. NSSM-200 says this. The Radical pro-abortion Left takes it for granted.
To answer the gist of your question: I don’t think abortion can be “eliminated” any more than I think poverty can be eliminated (Jesus, of course, says it can’t). But legalized abortion, like legalized contraception and no fault divorce and the refusal to enact criminal penalties against those who commit the Sin Against Nature (as Casti Connubii teaches should be done), all create a rift in the moral fabric of society which keeps spreading and further deteriorating.