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Abortion, Sarah Palin, the Bushes, the McCains and Barack Obama — 8 Comments

  1. Well I’m pro-choice, and while I agree that it’s hard to draw a definitive line as far as what constitutes a “viable” child, I think I understand Obama’s position: A woman opts for abortion, she’s essentially saying “I’m not prepared to care for another life in this social climate yet.” Then saddling her with a child – and what’s more, an even MORE needy version – hampers the furthering of society.Every child born & cared for takes time, effort, money. More spent on more, means less spent on each, means society necessarily suffers. It seems kind of heartless & cruel on one hand, because at that moment you only see this little thing. But if you could stand back and calculate all the losses that this little thing will cause society to incur? That’s different. It’s hard, we’re so programmed to protect in that scenario. It’s a matter of what you’re protecting: The greater good? Or the immediate. It’s not an easy decision, no matter what way you lean, if you actually consider ALL the costs & consequences.

  2. If the woman doesn’t want the child after it is born there are all sorts of “safe haven” and adoption means at her disposal. It doesn’t mean we have to let a born human being just get “shelved” and wait for it die though, does it?doug

  3. you ignore the fact that the adoption system is broken. And it’s largely such because… THERE’S TOO MANY KIDS IN THE SYSTEM.yes those options are at their disposal, and I took it for granted that if the child is kept alive that’s where they’d be. But all this does is shift the costs of raising the child from being directly their responsibility to being society’s problem.It’s still a problem, though, and it’s still opportunity cost.

  4. But… but… but…Once a child is actually BORN, whether that is the originally desired outcome or not, we are talking about an actual, living, separate human being. At that point, surely that has to take precedence over the mother’s intentions, or anybody’s inconvenience, or the cost to society of raising another unwanted child.If you can let a newborn who is in the way just die, why not a 3 year old, or 10 year old?doug

  5. I think there’s a drastic difference between nursing a child to adult life, and a child who requires million-dollar machines to keep it alive for months at a time.To me, if something pops out and needs millions in technology to live, and THAT MANY man-hours of intensive care & labor… And will more than likely still not lead a normal life? (I’ve known a few crack-babies & premature birth peeps — all have complications & can be easily spotted as “not normal”)I maintain it’s not really worth it in the end. The costs to society outweigh all else. Yes it seems cruel, but again – all that time & money invested in this one hardly-viable fetus is time & money NOT given to children who stand to do much for us.

  6. put it this way: spend $100,000 to bring a prematurely-born fetus to “take home from the hospital status,” let’s assume.That’s a college education for… HOW MANY children? And you can’t get that $100,000 back — it’s gone. So that’s that many children that will not have that assistance to get the education we need them to have. It’s one thing to knife a baby that’s going to make it. It’s quite another to let a child die that is going to die or close to it anyways.

  7. But what about a baby who accidentally survives an abortion and doesn’t need more than ordinary premature birth care? As for that $100,000 – I don’t think the economy is a zero-sum game where money spent in one place means it is gone and that $100,000 can never be used again.$100,000 spent now on something presumably goes somewhere – to salaries, to companies that make medical equipment, etc., and then circulates back into the economy. Maybe the investment will generate enough extra economic activity so that even more than $100,000 in education can be paid for down the road.If life isn’t viable, if a person is born and can’t survive without perpetual intervention, well maybe that means you need to consider natural death. You hear about people being removed from life support all the time. And many people have living wills requesting not to be maintained on such systems.But I’m talking about the case of intentionally neglecting a human being who ends up getting actually born because of a failed abortion and letting the child die simply because the mother had wanted an abortion.doug

  8. There is something to the ‘speed’ of money, but it’s not quite solid, either. To a large extent, yeah it’s gone. Who’s spending the money? Where would that money have been spent otherwise? It still would have gone somewhere, right? Now, though, it’s gone where? It could have had more utility that would have been more productive to society’s interests is meh point. re: babies. As I said before, I’m not for baby killing. I so much as said that it’s one thing to knife a viable baby, quite another to let an unviable one expire. If it’s viable, then yeah by all means, do what’s within reason and save the child!but keep in mind that these were abortions. You don’t abort babies that have much viability outside the womb. Even hardcore democrats call that murder, and rightly so I would say.

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