Black babies
- Thread starter naturalmwa
- Start date
It's the type of behavior that's important.
The law attempts to force behavior changes that don't let people beat their children with baseball bats or fists.
The law does not attempt to force people to not feed their children McDonalds 5 days a week.
It's the same thing with abortion. We want the behavior change where children are not being killed in the womb and I believe that the government should force this behavior change just like they don't allow people to beat their children with baseball bats as a punishment.
I don't believe the government should try to regulate what pregnant women eat to some extent just like I don't believe they should regulate what people feed their children.
LOL, well, yours is certainly less discriminatory than mine, since mine requires the father show some financial stability prior to having the surgery. There's got to be some combination whereby we can have good mothers who can afford to raise their kids having children.
Why do you draw that line? I'm not sure it even exists in reality today. If children were dying of malnutrition, we would address their parents. Here we are contemplating addressing the mother for killing her baby with malnutrition while it's in the womb. We now hold the mother responsible if the baby is born with alcohol or drug related problems in several states including Iowa and Indiana. Should we? If you think a fetus has rights, it follow you must protect its rights to the nutrition it requires to be born. I struggle to think of how you draw your line. It seems to me this should be a cause that brings traditional adversaries together.
Well that brings me to my favorite suggestion. It has 2 parts.
1. Remove sperm and ova from people to safe storage at an early age, then sterilize them. Late in life, or after they have died, assess the "worth" of their genes. By then we'll know if they have genetic diseases or deficiencies.
2. People can apply to have children based on whatever criteria the culture thinks makes sense at the time. If they qualify, they get to choose the sperm and ovum from the evaluated germ cells in storage. In vitro fertilization follows and then implantation of the viable embryo which the approved mother carries to term.
Notice the multiple benefits:
1. No abortions without a legit medical basis because every pregnancy is wanted.
2. A very low rate of unfit parents because they have been vetted.
3. High quality gene pool since the worst genetic deficiencies have been weeded out and the prospective parents will add their own preferences which will presumably be for good genes in almost all cases.
4. A lowered birth rate (at least at first) which will be beneficial in a variety of ways.
5. Dramatic reduction in welfare and healthcare costs because of better prepared parents and better genes.
...and so on.
The obvious drawback is that you give up the right to have your own baby (made from the actual genetic material of those who raise it).
It's fun to imagine how that could go wrong - grist for dystopian Gattatca-esque sci-fi - but hard to imagine it going more wrong than how we are doing things now.
wow. You've stolen the "more discriminatory" tag from me in stunning fashion. Well-done.
Well . . . I'm discriminating against bad genes, bad parents, and overpopulation. But I'm not discriminating on the basis of race, color or creed.
It's not malnutrition that either one is suffering from so much as it's poor quality of food that destroys their health and the health of their child.
If you refused to feed your child or didn't feed them enough so that they could survive then we'd prosecute you for Malnutrition.
If you fed them McDonald's 5 days a week and they where 200 pounds at age 10 then you are not prosecuted for destroying their health.
I'd opt for more counseling/education as opposed to punishment.
Not really...I learn more towards the conservative side for many issues. But what are the benefits of punishment when your kid is obese? Let's say the kid is removed from the family...there's already a shortage of foster families (and especially really good foster families). Then do the parents go to jail? The jails are overcrowded as it is. There would be additional paperwork, overhead, employees required...and this part of the government becomes even more bloated. And you're still not targeting the actual core of the problem.
Whereas with counseling/education, the entire family can learn about healthful and affordable meals ("It's so expensive to eat healthy!1!1!"....well, not necessarily), better cooking techniques, meal planning, shopping sales (seriously, a lot of people are clueless when it comes to planning and shopping for food). And then hopefully progress can be made towards reducing food deserts (very common in less affluent areas...who will take the bus 90 minutes to go to a "nice/expensive" grocery store for $50 worth of ingredients that covers maybe 2 days of meals?). Making healthful food more accessible AND educating people on a healthful lifestyle would benefit everybody.
I was kidding. The view you expressed is, however, the dominant liberal view. So you might be more of a liberal than you think.
I tend toward conservative fiscal/liberal social views. But then I see the things my very liberal friends post on Facebook and I'm like "whoa, no, let's not do that."
I think you would prosecute if the kid died from McDonalds. These babies aren't in poor health, they are dead. So your arguments aren't addressing the situation. If you feel a parent has the right to bring up a child in a way that kills the child you have no business objecting to abortion.
Well . . . counseling and education rather than punishment and retribution are definitely liberal preferences.
Fair enough but consider this even though the death rate is much higher then for white babies the death rate is still very low.
I'm guessing the rate of death for 10 year olds who've lived on fast food their whole life is low too. . . But it still happens and people are still not prosecuted.
The reasons are mainly that it's hard to be definitive that this and this alone caused their death and there is a lack of intent.
Show me where someone in this country was prosecuted and convicted for feeding their child the wrong kinds of food leading to either death or serious injury and then I will be perfectly ok with applying that precedent to newborns. But while we have the precedent when it comes to abortion, (if you dismember a child outside of the womb you are going to prison.) we just don't have the precedent to punish parents for their children receiving too much unhealthy food.
I grant the death rate is low in absolute terms, but it nearly the same as the abortion rate making that problem fairly minor too by this logic.
Pretty sure that the abortion rate is way more then 13.3 out of every 1000 pregnancies. If you can show me information to the contrary I would be happy to see it.
13.2 per 1000 women. . . not per pregnancy. Not every woman is pregnant every year.
If you assume that 50% of pregnancies end in miscarriage (which is kind of high) then based on the 210 per live birth you are looking at 105 per 1000 pregnancies.
So 10.5% of all of America's children are being straight up killed by their mothers and a hitman with a medical degree. That's a lot.
Oh I see my error now. Thanks for making that clear. I thought it was 17/1000 births on abortion too, not on women in general. That is a misleading stat, apologies for not seeing that sooner.
Thanks for admitting that. I don't know why they would put that stat out there. The number per live births is more informative as I imagine my stat of per pregnancy probably doesn't exist because it's impossible to know about every pregnancy, especially ones that may miscarry early.
I suspect you're too generous. They probably pick that number because it makes abortion appear rare.
I don't tend to view the CDC as a political organization so I may be giving them the benefit of the doubt here but you are likely right.
