Why should taxpayers fund either ?

Self responsibility

Again, not backed up by the data. Even those claiming abortion is a "racist institution" don't make such ludicrous claims.

Post the data which shows 51% or more of the "black community" (there is no such thing, btw) wants to end human life. If the data supports it, so be it. But the data won't show it, so I expect no such posting of data from you.

How so? Because you are confusing a high rate of a subset with the results in the subset. Black women account for a larger proportion than the population, yes. But they also account for the larger portion of unplanned pregnancies, and for your assertion to be true more than half of all pregnancies among black women would have to be aborted. That is factually not the case.

I thought that drinking, drugs, etc while pregnant was already illegal under child endangerment laws, but I could be wrong. This to me represents the ultimate in hypocrisy. It's only "a woman's body" for abortion purposes.

ridiculous! Sexual intercourse is part of being human. Not to be denied as anti-human!

It is actually unclear as to which would be cheaper.

Various forms of birth control have been shown to have ongoing medical issues that crop up over time. Given that such a large portion of those who would be getting free birth control would also be on medicaid and other taxpayer paid medical services the cost of these knock-on effects (depression, weight gain, hormonal imbalance, all the way up to mental diseases such as the dementia categories) may well eclipse the relative cheapness of an abortion.

Even given free access we don't have supportable reasons to conclude that it would significantly lower the incidence of abortion among the economically disadvantaged. There are cultural and religious issues surrounding effective use of various forms of birth control. The data shows it isn't the availability of it, rather it is the consistency of use that is a strong driver of it's efficacy. Making it free would not address the religious, cultural, and habitual aspects - the strongest indicators.

As a result we could well end up paying for both if we were to agree the government should provide them.

you lost a point for that conscious. it is Conservative day in the Gulch

Well said. +1

If there is no question, then post the data from you simply must have it to make a rational claim as such, no? Oh and do account for population growth.

And just so you know, in 2011 the number of abortions hit the lowest point since 1973. So clearly your argument here is also invalid. You can even go to strongly anti-abortion sites and learn this fact.

Define "catastrophic".

And you clearly missed the demographic data. Look into the income level and married vs. single, non-cohabitating data and you'll see the assertion it is racial is unfounded. You would also learn that the abortion rate among blacks has indeed followed the overall trend that whites and non-black minorities have all experienced in the last three decades.

Aggregated or demographic (which is btw also aggregate data) is irrelevant to the fact that abortions levels are the lowest they've been in three decades of decline. The fact is your assertion that they are rising is utterly false.

Many women are unaware that they are pregnant at 6 weeks. Birth control (standard) is working up to 4 weeks. Why do you get to choose for me? I am not a slave to ANY human being.

Wow! "Logic", "explains", and "evidence" are foreign concepts to this compilation of beliefs. Let me recommend, to others, spending some time in the dirt and rocks studying the fossil record.

The lack of critical thinking that gives rise to a book like this is why some people want to legislate what women Should do with their bodies.

I never said anything about conception, and I certainly am in favor of all forms of birth control, even so far as the morning after pill. What I don't favor is pulling a developing infant limb from limb from her/his mother's womb. I believe Rand favored abortion up to 3 months' gestation. I would set the bar at first heartbeat, which I believe is 6 weeks.

Which is not relevant to theft.

Well, to be more specific, a hypothesis becomes a robust theory when it predicts an outcome, and that outcome comes to pass. But when predictions fail, the theory must change or die.

Well, the theory of evolution predicts transitional forms that we have never found. The Missing Links stay missing. And it also predicts constant improvement in life, and that also has failed.

Again you are ignoring the basic facts and substituting sophistry. When a given research isn't allowed you don't get to claim it can't be valuable because it hasn't been done.

Let's go to the driving analogy. What you are saying is that we should never allow new drivers licenses to be issued to people because they haven't proven new drivers can drive safely. Your argument is thus that we should not allow new drivers who have never been allowed to legally drive because they can't show they can drive.

It doesn't matter the subject, the basic structure of your argument is fatally flawed. In your case you are saying we shouldn't allow the research because it hasn't produced results because we don't allow it. So, how can the results be legally obtained if to do the research is illegal?

I don't know if there are benefits to the given research or not - and frankly neither do you. You can't know it. Basically your argument could be boiled down to "we shouldn't allow it because we don't allow it now" in it's best form.

If you are unwilling to admit the fact that you're insisting that illegal research be done to show it's usefulness (or lack thereof) before allowing it then you are not capable of having a rational and reasonable discussion on the subject. Which is fine, it just means that our conversation on this subject or in any where you behave in this fashion will cease or not happen in the future. No harm, no foul.

My initial reaction is, Bravo! Let us use the otherwise wasted parts from dead bodies to help save other lives! Totipotent stem cells from an embryo or a fetus are terrifically powerful tools for research and therapy. They have been successfully used to counter macular degeneration and Parkinsons, among other disorders.

If your reaction to this video (which is possibly fake - see jdg's link to Reason article) is a reaction against abortion per se, then that is a separate discussion. The main thing is that these 'things' (human or otherwise) are already dead and it is good that their body parts can be used for improving the lives of people who are not-dead.

Legal harvest of fetal stem cells from aborted fetuses follows guidelines that are developed by the individual countries, but there is a general consensus on the following precepts (ED Biomed, 2002):

"There is a ‘strong’ consensus about some of the central conditions for good clinical practice regarding EFTT. These concern the following conditions:
1) the decision to abort should not be influenced by
the subsequent EFTT;
2) commercialisation is not acceptable;
3) tissue may only be obtained from dead embryos or fetuses;
4) informed consent should be obtained;
5) the decision to terminate the pregnancy must be
made before consent for donating EFTT is
solicited;
6) approval of experimental study by a qualified ethics committee

Interestingly, those parameters, arrived at by various ethics councils (Sweden and Canada are the ones I recall), were very similar, though the councils acted independently.

The existence an EKG does not prove that something is human - chickens have known EKG patterns, but that will not prevent me from having chicken for lunch.

The future of stem cell research probably does not lie in cells harvested from aborted fetuses, but in reconditioning your own endogenous stem cells to make different lines and tissues as needed. This is difficult, and it is more difficult for some tissues than for others (liver cells were a real problem). Using these fetal cells can bridge the gap between our current knowledge and the ability to clone our own body parts.

The last comment that I want to make is that this is an individual choice. On the 'murder of an adult human' we have a large social consensus - and we have laws against that. There is not a large consensus on whether abortion is right or wrong, which means that there should not be a law against it - it should be up to the individual.

Jan

Let me recommend a book that logically explains what the fossil record really is, how it took its present form, how long that took, and how long ago that happened. "In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood," by Walter T. Brown, Jr., PhD. The great fossil strata are hydrologically sorted layers of silt from the most violent event this earth has ever known. In which a subcrustal ocean, probably two miles deep and fifty miles below ground, broke containment and spilled out. It eroded away its edges for 400 miles in each direction and left a seam that persists as the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. The event is named for the most immediate consequence on earth: a great flood, greater than any we shall ever see again. Only eight people survived--because they had 120 years' advance warning and could build a ship to carry them, and enough land-animal and avian specimens to re-seed the earth after the waters drained into what became the Pacific Basin.

And in addition, four percent of the earth's mass escaped the earth--to persist as the meteroids, asteroids, comets, and trans-Neptunian objects of today, and the subglacial oceans of Europa, Ganymede, and Enceladus.

You sound like a liberal with that statement. If the incentives for perverse behavior were removed, we'd have less perverse behavior. What's needed is the elimination of the welfare state. At that point, you'll see much more appropriate behavior, and the slaughter will be greatly diminished, as well as the born children being "treated like garbage and bankrupting our country."

whoa. wait just a minute. from the moment of conception precludes any birth control as a killer. you cannot have it both ways. to tell an adult female that if she wants to have sex, she will be a slave against her will is outrageous. Having sex is not a contract to create life.

It is an irrelevant question w/o a definition of the terms. If it is so important, define it. Many people have or use different meanings to the generic term "life", so simply trusting that everyone agrees with you on what the term means is arrogance at worst and ignorance at best. So I ask again, what exactly do you mean by "life"? Without that, the question can not be answered at all with consistency.

I know some retarded people (sorry folks, I'm not sure what the PC way to say that is these days). All of them are a lot closer to normal intelligence than a dog, so I think there is still a clear line to be drawn and they are above it.

Exactly, blarman!

Arguing about the morality here as opposed to the clear illegality of it is not terribly useful. Regardless of your position on abortion, the activities described here are clearly against the law. Prosecute the criminal activities. The rest is largely ideology.