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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: The Philosopher who wrote (78758)	11/7/2003 12:08:16 PM
From: The Philosopher	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

I'm fascinated by some of the things in that report. early Christian theologians believed, as had Aristotle centuries before, that "animation", or the coming alive of the fetus, occurred forty days after conception for a boy and eighty days after conception for a girl. So much for gender equality! [Danish] law was revised in 1970 to allow any woman over the age of 38 and women with four or more living children access to legal abortion. Proving that in Denmark, abortion is apparently entirely a social, not a religious, issue -- otherwise why the four children rule? On moral grounds, how can one argue that the fifth child has less right to live than the fourth? But economically and socially it may make sense, and is certainly more liberal than China's approach to overpopulation. Levels of fertility in Sweden have increased from a total fertility rate of 1.6 children per woman in 1978 to 2.17 in 1993. The most common explanation for this “baby boom” is the creation of a 15-month paid parental leave formula which can also be converted into a long-term, part-time arrangement. Other factors which have made parenthood a more attractive proposition include a doubling of the number of day cares in places of work and the availability of leave for parents of ill children. According to the Swedish Ministry of Social Affairs, the policy "is not to do with having more children born but about facilitating their social integration." Suggesting that in at least some cases the reasons to abort have significantly to do with economic and social problems of parenthood, not with the desire not to have a baby. The first abortion to be carried out under the [Portuguese] law was performed on a 15-year-old girl who had been raped by her father. The president of the Portuguese Bishops’ Conference was quoted as saying that she “ought to have been helped to accept her pregnancy as a form of martyrdom." Atleast the Catholics are consistent. Which led me to ask myself, if Mary didn't agree in advance to be impregnated by God, and there is no evidence that she did, did God rape Mary? Was Mary an adulteress?? Bulgaria tightened its abortion laws because of declining birth rates. Once again, social policy rules over moral principle. Interesting that they went the exact opposite way of China. Interesting that in Australia, in seven of the eight states abortion is illegal, apparently totally, though it is not prosecuted. I wonder what would happen if a zealous anti-abortion prosecutor got elected or appointed in one of the states. Would be interesting, from an external point of view (not interesting to the woman and doctor involved, though, I expect). I had not been aware of the Buddhist and Hindu positions on abortion, but they are quite consistent with what I know of those faiths. Overall, I find it fascinating that there is so little agreement among political and religious groups. I can't, offhand, think of any other serious issue where the positions taken by people around the world varies so widely. Most criminal acts are pretty well agreed on by most societies -- murder, robbery, rape, assault, and the other panolpy of what are generally accepted by most societies as antisocial and criminal acts. But the range of the lack of human unity on abortion, from countries which ban it outright to countries which give free abortions on request, to every shade of option inbetween, is astonishing.

To: The Philosopher who wrote (78758)	11/7/2003 1:48:55 PM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 82486

Personally, I don't see any reason not to expect people to accept the consequences of their decisions. We've gone around on this one before. It isn't good social policy to punish people for their carelessness by making them raise children. We just finished talking about rotten parents. As long as we can't force them to give up the babies they produce to proper parents, then you'll just have to punish them some other way. Childbirth as punishment is just plain stupid.