[Vision2020] Re: Wal-Mart Clinic (was Abortion Post)

[Donovan Arnold]

Dr. Gier,
  
 You are right, a women's right  to affordable bread, milk, and medicine is secondary to having to drive  two hundred miles to get an abortion. 
  
 If you wish a woman  to have easy affordable access to abortion why don't you just legislate  that Wal-Mart have an abortion department. They can even put in a drive  up window in the back of the pharmacy department. 
  
  -DJA

Ted Moffett <starbliss at gmail.com> wrote:  Nick, Melynda et. al.
   
  I  agree with Melynda's critique of your article on abortion, which echoed  with some different arguments some of the points I made in my post:
   
  Vision2020] A Woman's Right to Choose, Personal Choice & Social Harm 
   
  Just in case you might want to respond to my points, thought I am just a lowly male!
   
  Ted Moffett
  

 
  On 1/25/06, nickgier at adelphia.net <nickgier at adelphia.net> wrote:    Greetings:

Before  I discuss responses to my abortion column, I just want to catch up on a  few things.  First, I look forward to meeting some of you for  the first time at the potluck on Feb. 4. 

Second, some readers  may think that Keely and I have established a mutual admiration  society, and that is true, but I don't want any of the articulate women  posting on this list to think that I don't also admire your  contributions as well. 

With regard to the abortion column, let  me take Donovon's swipe at me first.  For the record I do not  deny a woman's right to shop at Walmart.  If she lives in  Moscow, she can just drive over to the existing store.  If  she does not have a car, I will drive her there, but I will not go in  to shop.  If she needs to get a good buy on groceris, we will  then drive over to Winco.  Constrast this with the fact that  in some states women have to drive hundreds of miles to exercise a  crucial aspect of their constitutionally protected reproductive  freedom. 

More serious critics were worried that my proposal  would lead to eugenics.  I did a lot of research about brain  development in order to avoid that criticism.  The results  are in the full article on abortion at   http://users.adelphia.net/~nickgier/abortion.htm, and I've added this paragraph to the column as it will appear in The Sandpoint Reader tomorrow.

"A  critic might say that this focus on brain power would make those with  mental deficiencies non-persons.  Even though the average IQ  for microcephalics is 10, they still have a mental life greater than  the late term fetus. Down Syndrome people have an average IQ of 50, but  their problems are due to brain metabolism not the amount of neo-cortex  they have."  While most of the mentally deficient will always  be beginning persons (=children) with a serious moral right to life,  they will not be adults with both rights and duties.  Many  with Down Syndrome can become adults, hold down jobs, and even marry. 

With  regard to the health problems of abortion, I mistakenly conflated the  horrors of no reproductive freedom with those problems with too much  reproductive freedom.  Therefore, for the Sandpoint version  I've edited the end of the column to read as follows: 

"Many  claim that abortions cause health problems for women who submit to  them.  A 2003 study done by the National Cancer Institute  found that there was no connection between abortion and the incidence  of breast cancer.  In 1989 the American Psychological  Association published a study that concluded that there was no such  thing as "post-abortion syndrome."  Nada Stotland, former  president of the Association of Women Psychiatrists, states that "the  incidence of diagnosed psychiatric illness and hospitalization is  considerably lower following abortion than following childbirth." 

Abortion  opponents do very little to support the social services and accurate  information that would make abortions safer, earlier, and rarer, as is  the case in most other industrialized countries.  For  example, in Belgium and the Netherlands there are 7 abortions per 1,000  women in 1995 as opposed to 23 per 1,000 in the U.S.  Our  legislators also do very little to improve the socio-economic  conditions that would allow single mothers to raise their babies  successfully.

The most horrendous effects on female health are  found in countries that do not allow reproductive freedom, and the Bush  administration's restrictions on family planning in foreign aid are  making this problem worse.  With a little over half the  population, Brazilian women have more abortions than American women do.  In those countries where abortion is illegal there were an average 35  abortions per 1,000 women in 1995. 

There are also examples of  irresponsible reproductive freedom.   Current and former  Communist states encouraged abortion rather than contraception and  effective sex education.  In the 1995 there were 78 abortions  per 1,000 in Cuba and 90 per 1,000 in Eastern Europe. Except for these  countries, the rate of abortion appears to be directly proportional to  the restrictions placed on sex education and reproductive freedom." 

If I have missed any points that were made on or off list, please let me know.

Nick Gier






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  _____________________________________________________
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