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I don’t want to hijack RebYidd23’s thread, but his statement touched upon something that vexes me. Regarding the two major political parties in the U.S., one is considered pro-“life” and anti-“entitlement” benefits, and the other pro-“choice” and pro-“safety net”. Yet the biggest reason that women with healthy but unexpected pregnancies seek abortions is economic fears. One of the services provided by private crisis pregnancy centers run by religious groups is to walk women through the red tape to apply for Medicaid, EBT, WIC, etc. so that they feel like they can support a baby. It seems to me that supporting generous paid family leave, paid sick leave, and health care is very pro-life. So why are debates regarding these benefits never framed as such? I would gladly watch my tax dollars go towards reducing abortions.
I think most conservatives will tell you that they’re not against helping those in need per se, they just feel that people take advantage of the existing safety nets as a lifestyle choice.
Avram,
” if Democrats really see themselves as pro-woman, they should spend at least as much breath advocating for universal access to and improvements of prenatal care in the U.S. …”
They do. It’s called the Affordable Care Act, which Trump and Congressional Republicans are trying to Repeal.
ALSO social benefit and educational programs such as WIC and SNAP (formerly known as Food Stamps).
Even if one does not approve of pregnancy termination performed under the auspices of Planned Parenthood, they also provide prenatal care and pregnancy education.Conservatives/Republicans do not advocate eliminating entitlement benefits/safety net programs. The only debate is over what is the appropriate level of benefits.
Is whoever proposes the highest amount correct? Absurd.
I doubt you could draw any direct correlation between more government benefits and a reduction in abortions.
Either way the essential issue is just what is abortion? Things like the term “pro-choice” are semantics, when discussing abortion, especially elective abortions due to no risk of the mothers health i.e. they just don’t want the kid (which apparently make up at least 90% of abortions in the US) we are talking straight up MURDER.
I understand the terror that may be gripping an young unprepared mother to be who has no means whatsoever to support her upcoming child but does that give her license to kill it? Think of it this way – does a mother of a 1 year old with no means of supporting that child have justification to kill it? The difference between the 1 year old and the fetus is a slight age difference and the fact she hasn’t gotten to know the child yet. That’s why abortion groups are so adamantly against legislation mandating mothers need to see an ultrasound before having an abortion. It forces them to realize the thing in their womb they are having a doctor rip to shreds limb from limb is not just a lump of tissue but an actual living human being.
So when you phrase the question as should we have more social welfare spending because otherwise people might be tempted to murder their children you see the conversation in a slightly different light.
I would be in favor of more social spending if it would prevent parents from murdering their children. Wouldn’t you?
> Yet the biggest reason that women with healthy but unexpected pregnancies seek
> abortions is economic fears
At the risk of sounding naive (though, I’ve come to realize that I often am), it’s seems unfortunate to me that there isn’t some organized effort to match qualified candidates for adoption with those planning abortion for purely economic reasons.After all, as it is the adoption process is often itself a fairly expensive proposition (legal and administrative fees, travel – often to foreign countries – for interviews and evaluations, medical expenses, etc.) Were only the money involved more efficiently managed and distributed, the birthing mother could be financially supported, the child provided a caring upbringing and an abortion avoided.
I don’t know whether the number of people seeking to adopt approaches the number of abortions in a given time period, but intuitively it seems like it should have a some constructive effect.
Perhaps the idea is rather barbaric in treating Human life like a commodity, but things as they are could be similarly characterized.
Technically not murder if it’s legal.
DaasYochid – if you could show direct proof that more social welfare would prevent abortions maybe you would have an argument but as I mentioned that is probably impossible or practically impossible to prove.
But what I’m really trying to get at is we shouldn’t be approaching the subject from the vantage point of “maybe if we give out more money abortion rates will go down”. We should be approaching it from the point of “Abortion is murder and therefore should not be allowed because murder is wrong and evil”
The main problem is that people think it’s ok to murder an innocent human being in an extremely barbaric way. Just because they don’t have enough money does not make that ok. If somebody is on rough times does that justify going around killing people? So then how would it justify killing a child?
If people can’t wrap their heads around this concept then it will take a lot more than just government assistance to improve things.
“Technically not murder if it’s legal.”
Was the German government liquidation of German Jewry not murder?
DaasYochid – if you could show direct proof that more social welfare would prevent abortions maybe you would have an argument but as I mentioned that is probably impossible or practically impossible to prove.
I didn’t address that part of your argument.
We should be approaching it from the point of “Abortion is murder and therefore should not be allowed because murder is wrong and evil”
The main problem is that people think it’s ok to murder an innocent human being in an extremely barbaric way. Just because they don’t have enough money does not make that ok. If somebody is on rough times does that justify going around killing people? So then how would it justify killing a child?
Okay, abortion is evil. I didn’t disagree with you about that either. If increased social spending would prevent that evil (I stress if because I know you don’t think it’s true), wouldn’t you be in favor?
Yes, in a hypothetical world where you could prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that increased government assistance results in fewer or no abortions I would be in favor of that.
In general I am in favor of less government assistance and the taxpayers keeping more of their salary for themselves. However in the hypothetical situation we would be discussing, I would have to imagine the sanctity of human live takes precedent.
Thank you. I’m not sure why your proof threshold is so high – what it were shown to have a 90% likelihood?
My proof threshold is high because anytime you are speaking about taking peoples’ money away from them, you better have a pretty high threshold of justification for that. Hashem gave us free will so that we can decide what to do with the money He blesses us with, and if hopefully to be charitable with it then which charitable causes it should go to. I have so many pet causes and people in need I wish I just had an unlimited supply of money I could give to because I really care about them and I think a load of cash could really help them out.
For the government or anyone else to tell me I should have less resources to give those those people and causes I care about solely because they think they know how to dole it out better than I do is absurd.
I have no problem with government assistance from the aspect of giving to those in need, even if some or many of the recipients may not actually deserve it. My problem with it is that the money has to come from somewhere, and the place it comes from is taxpayers who don’t have very much say in how the money taken out of their wallets gets spent.
RebYidd23 – seriously??
Killing millions of Jews in gas chambers was perfectly legal according to German law at the time of WW2 so do you want to tell me they weren’t murdered?
Murder is murder, I don’t care what some deranged secular legal system has to say about it. And guess what – neither does GOD.
Apparently the process of how they go about actually performing the abortion on the child is not appropriate to post here on YWN which should tell you something in and of itself. If you are interested in the truth and have the stomach for it, I guess you can do some google searching to find out what horrific things they actually do to these poor little souls.
Um, the definition of murder is illegal killing. Doesn’t mean it’s morally different based on laws, but the definition still stands.
So genocide could be legal and thus not murderous?
rebyidd- murder is murder whether its legal or not
Give your own money to Crib Efrat then.
Mushkie, murder is by definition unlawful.
Unfortunately, there’s still a stigma attached to birth mothers who give up their children. People notice when a woman is very pregnant one week, not pregnant the next, and there’s no baby around. People don’t notice when a woman who’s not obviously pregnant has an abortion. That may be one reason that birth mothers sometimes back out of adoption plans and decide to raise their children themselves.
What we really have to do is fix the system that deals with unwanted kids. Right now unwanted kids are treated like garbage even though there are plenty of people who would adopt them and treat them well but can’t because of all the red tape.
Why would someone go through the entire pregnancy and pain of childbirth for a child they didn’t want anyway?
Avram, there are definitely a lot of social conservatives who agree with you and would be more than willing to increase social spending in some ways if that would decrease abortions. A lot of Catholic groups have argued for that, for example, as has a group called Feminists for Life. The Republicans in power may be socially conservative (some are, some aren’t), but other things (like cutting taxes and increasing military spending) are important to them as well, so when they contradict each other, and they don’t want to alienate the “fiscal conservative” part of the party, you’re not going to see extra spending to help with social conservative issues. For example, if the government made sure all poor young men had access to decent jobs, the marriage rate would go way up. But no Republicans want to pay for that…
People who wouldn’t want an abortion on moral grounds get one anyway because adoption is too complicated. And it’s kind of unfair that two people who don’t suffer from infertility can just have a baby but people who want to adopt a baby can’t do so easily.
RY23, adoption agencies try to make adoption easy for birth mothers. Adoption is more difficult for prospective adoptive parents simply because it’s in society’s interest for them to be suitable parents. I’ve never been a birth mother, but I am an adoptive parent.
Adoption is increasingly difficult for birth parents as abortion is promoted by anti-life organizations.
I’m not an abortion advocate but please don’t equate a fetus with a person. I may be wrong but doesn’t halacha treat the fetus differently in that if it dies less than 30 days after birth, there is no Shiva?
Even a “not the most” suitable adoptive parents are many times better if the alternative is abortion.
The fact that social conservatives seem to have no interest in even exploring the use of safety net programs to prevent abortions is frustrating to me, hence the OP.
If you are talking about government efforts towards better education that leads to better family planning decisions, that is something I would be interested in hearing more about (though going through public school as a child I know that the drug and alcohol prevention education they gave us was a total waste of time and money). As far as throwing money at people after the fact just because they are not making responsible life choices is a double edged sword because many will just hear the message “I can do whatever I want because the government will always be there to support me”. That type of thinking is first of all morally wrong and second of all not even true – in the event of some crisis where government money dries up, those living on the dole will be the first ones to have quite a rude awakening.
Perhaps my mashal of somebody going around killing people is a bit “apples to oranges”. Let’s say like this – pretend we lived in a world where it was legal to kill somebody you owed money to if you couldn’t afford to pay them back (that’s probably a more apt comparison to killing a baby you can’t afford to support). Would the best course of action be to focus on changing the law so that type of thing would no longer be legal as well as focusing on teaching people how to better manage their finances, or would you prefer to focus on spending more taxpayer dollars on giving free grants to the people who can’t pay their debts so that they will be less tempted to kill their creditors?
“For example, if the government made sure all poor young men had access to decent jobs, the marriage rate would go way up.”
First of all do you have any evidence of that or is that just your conjecture?
Secondly, how exactly is the government supposed to make sure poor young men or group of people have access to decent jobs? By holding a gun to employers’ heads and forcing them to hire these people? Is that legal or just? Neither the government nor anyone else has the right to tell some business owner who has poured his blood sweat and tears into building a successful business who they should be hiring.Should the government give financial incentives to business hiring poor young men? Doesn’t that then create an unfair disadvantage to other groups? (like poor young women)
Should the government take more tax money to pay for education for poor young men? Because I gotta tell you that I got a double bachelors and it’s done very little for me by way of finding employment. I have multiple friends with MBA’s who cant find decent jobs. I have a relative with a masters degree who couldn’t land a flight attendant job. So unless all these poor young men are going to be getting something highly practical like a computer engineering or something, access to education doesn’t magically equal better job opportunities in today’s job market.
The best to get jobs for poor young men, and everyone for that matter, is to cut back on government instead of expand it, cut back on overbearing regulations and government interference and one of the highest corporate tax rates in the entire WORLD so that there is more profit margin and therefore more money available to pay salaries and the free market will most often take care of itself.
LS -“I’m not an abortion advocate but please don’t equate a fetus with a person. I may be wrong but doesn’t halacha treat the fetus differently in that if it dies less than 30 days after birth, there is no Shiva?”
FYI – That’s your mistake. The Gemorra specifically states by Goyim killing of fetuses is murder!
By Jews it’s a Machlokes Achronim.Lesschumras – I haven’t gone over the sugiya in a while but from what I recall when a goy does an abortion it’s considered murder but when a Jew does it, it’s not so cut and dry.
Looking at it from a non-halachik vantage point think of it this way: there is a small human being inside that womb, often with a brain and heartbeat, working ears that can hear what is going on outside and is starting to develop certain language recognition functions. It has started developing an emotional bond to it’s mother’s heartbeat. Again, I can’t post on YWN the actual things they do in the process of terminating this life, but take that little life form I’ve just described and then imagine it being killed in an extremely painful and gruesome way.
Yehudayona>
“Unfortunately, there’s still a stigma attached to birth mothers who give up their children. People notice when a woman is very pregnant one week, not pregnant the next, and there’s no baby around.”This is why in the time before Roe v. Wade legalized abortion on demand in t he US there were homes for unwed mothers where single pregnant females spent most of their pregnancy, gave birth and the adoptive parents picked up the baby.
Neighbors and friends would be told that the young woman was traveling or visiting relatives for an extended period.RebYidd23……………..
There is a shortage of white healthy infants available for adoption in the USA.
There are plenty of non-white children available.
Many are:
Older (typically removed from their parents by the courts because of abuse, neglect, parents sent to prison)
Medically unwell (example>crack babies)
Special needs (Mental retardation, autism, wheelchair bound, etc.)Huge problem for adoptive parents in the USA….in each state there is a time period during which a mother who gives up her child can claim it back, In CT it is 6 months. I have seen this happen a number of times and advise my clients to do a foreign adoption which is truly final when the baby leaves the other country for America.
Also no birth parent showing up years later trying to interfere in the child’s life or shakedown the adoptive parents to stay away.Halachicly, the biological parents are always the child’s parents and continue to have parental rights.
Joe – “Halachicly, the biological parents are always the child’s parents and continue to have parental rights”
That’s why most Frum people who adopt look for white Goyishe people either here or in another country!
Health: How’s bringing up goyishe children preferable to bringing up yiddishe kinder?
Health, if they adopt non-Jewish children, those children can decide not to accept conversion when they come of age. It happens.
Our posek told us to adopt a Jewish child.
With a Jewish child you have possible issues of momzairus. In the U.S the Jewish birth parents halachic rights are unenforceable and would be an argument against adoption if they were
Heather, Joseph, Catholics and Jews are against abortions but for different reasons that lead to different positions. Catholic believe the fetus gets a soul at conception but cannot go to heaven if not baptized.. If I’m not mistaken, however, a Jewish baby has to live 30 dates to be considered an “official” baby. So, take the case where a woman is having a difficult pregnancy. According to every medical opinion, either the mother or the fetus can survive, but not both. The Catholics would choose the fetus over the mother in all cases as the mother was already baptized, while the fetus had not been. For Jews, however, poseks have ruled that because the fetus is not official, it can be aborted to save the mother’s life
Halacha gives clear priority to the mother’s life over an unborn fetus. Birth is considered once the head comes out of the womb. Once the baby’s head is out, the mother’s life no longer takes precedence if only one can be saved.
Birth is the ideal way to end a pregnancy.
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