How can we make abortion a thing of the past?

This post is, in part, a carry-on from Don't change the law, change hearts and minds.

What changes do we need to make within our modern society in order to make abortion a thing of the past?  And what can we personally do about them?

1. Change the way young women view themselves.
2. Change the way young men view young women.
3. Stop selling sex short.
4. Fully educate about sex, procreation and pregnancy.
5. Make it easier for women (and men) to raise children.
6. Understand that the perceived cost of raising a child is overstated.
7. Provide a network of support for single mothers.
8. Stop promoting the idea that having children ruins your life.
9. Improve our sense of community in order to support each other through the trials of life.
10. Raise young people to have a sense of responsibility.
11. Be more tolerant of children who are not so-called 'perfect'

OK, I appreciate these are a bit vague but I am going to deal with them all individually in separate posts.  This topic is too big for one post.

PS: I am excluding abortion following rape or incest or done because the mother's health is at risk or because the baby will die anyway.  These actually make up a very small proportion of abortions and raise all sorts of alternative moral dilemmas.

Comments

[Anna S]

Each of those points definitely merits a separate post. I'm looking forward to reading as you expand on those subjects.

[Dean]

Buffy,

This post and the one you link to show the incoherence of your position.

Either abortion involves killing a baby or it does not. Either the thing in there is a person or it isn't.

If abortion does not entail the murder of a human being then why should we be seeking to reduce the numbers of abortions? If abortion is a simple medical procedure on the same moral level as, say, cataract surgery why should we worry about making it more rare?

If abortion does indeed entail murdering a real human being, why should one class of humans, the preborn, not have their right to life protected by the law? Why should it be illegal to kill a human at any other stage of his development, but legal to kill a person in the womb.

The only way to maintain a pro-abortion postition like yours is to ignore these questions.

[techskeptic]

oh goody, dean you troll around on Buffy's blog while bashing her in yours. You are such a decent upstanding guy [extreme sarcasm].

To answer your question (since you have preventing me from posting on your blog, after making a post where you tried to represent what I said and didn't allow through my actual comments).

Here is the answers to your truly idiotic question:

http://www.guttmacher.org/media/nr/2007/10/11/index.html
Countries with legal abortion are experiencing greater declines in abortion rates

http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,2185811,00.html
Women are dying in countries where abortion is illegal

http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_IAW.html
it does not matter if the practice of abortion is illegal or not, the abortion rate is not affected

The lowest abortion rates in the world are in countries with legal and safe abortions.

So why is Buffy right? Because in your equation you totally leave out women (lemme guess...you are a man) and the rest of society, not to mention the unwanted children after they are born. You totally ignore that lack of effect banning abortion has on actually eliminating abortion. This makes total sense. Did banning alcohol get rid of alcohol? Does banning marajuana get rid of marajuana? Where is your evidence that banning abortion will get make it stop?

You can go ahead and believe that life starts at conception. You can even tell people that abortion is wrong if you like, it wont matter. What matters is your actions towards doing things that have been shown to reduce the rate of abortion.

So what can be done? ask yourself if you do any of these. I bet you don't (A challenge I gave you on your blog, and you chose to censor, you dishonest weakling).

1) adopt. There is no reason to have your own kid. There is not one single rational reason, that is not financial, to have your own kid. The effect of banning abortion is increased adotpion roles. Why aren't you out there making good on the effect of your proposed actions. Hypocritical by any chance?
2) lobby and vote to get adoption costs reduced
3) lobby and vote to remove parental rights for biological parents of adopted kids. This is the single most important reason why people adopt outside of this country, next to the small reduction in overall costs.
4) lobby and vote to get ultrasound equipment into poor neighborhoods
5) lobby and vote to make available information about each phase of pregnancy to poor neighborhoods or to mothers in general
6) lobby and vote to promote sexual education that includes all information, especially including disgusting pictures of advanced stages of sexually transmitted diseases
7) lobby and vote to make more educational opportunities available for poor young women in america so they have something to do to build confidence.
8) Lobby and vote to make more extracurricular activities available to young women to build confidence and give them something else to do besides hook up with guys.

The goal is twofold and I'm sure there are more things than this meager list (and more of which I am sure you don't do either), many of which Buffy has mentioned in a high level way. First and foremost focus on the problem, not the undesirable solution. The problem is unwanted pregnancy. If unwanted pregnancy drops, so does the abortion rate, the adoption roles, the transmisison of AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases. We have a healthier society. The second goal is to make other opportunities more available to the woman with the unwanted pregnancy. Either by making adoption seem more like a viable solution, or by making single motherhood easier (I have no idea how they do it).

Strange that I dont see any of this on your nonsense blog. Is your goal to reduce or eliminate abortion like you claim? Or is it just to sit there in your deserted area of the blogsphere pontificating your nonsensical views?

All your nonsense rhetoric does is to harden sides and make debate impossible. If you want abortion to drop, you will listen to people like Buffy. Otherwise you are just a fake with a big mouth.

(buffy, is html disabled? I cant seem to get links to work)