You know I'm somewhere in the middle on the whole abortion issue, but I just wanted to argue with your logic :)

1) Not existing is akin to suicide if you're trying to find something similar. I can say I prefer to exist over suicide. We all try and find an anchor or foundation to base our thoughts off of - are you really happy if you don't know what suffering is? Now for the issue of not knowing something and still not wanting it, well I suppose many folks don't want to smoke crack even though they haven't done it before.

2) I thought pregnancy rates had gone down in the last couple decades. I'm not sure though.

-Rudey

OK, I'll give you points on 1.

http://plannedparenthood.org/pp2/por...y-teens-us.xml

There's some stats on pregnancy - teen prengnacy is down, but it's still way higher than the rest of the "civilized" world.

They are still down for our country. Perhaps men in Japan and France shoot blanks. Who knows?

-Rudey

I just want to chime in that these are almost certainly causation/correlation errors (shit, they're probably correlation errors by themselves), while we're discussing the logic of the thing.

-RC
--didn't get abstinence-only sex ed, thank god - although i probably know more about the (lack of) effectiveness of the Sponge than I really should

You are taking an entirely different approach. I was commenting on the fact that because a child is unwanted, does not mean that it will suffer from that. Many children are unwante-but that doesn't make them unhappy in life.

Abstinence only sex ed...? I remember as far back as fifth grade talking about sex ed and condoms and stds/pregnancy. Then again in middleschool and highschool. There is always going to be teenage pregnancy. Nothing is 100% effective, but stopping the problem is much preferable to the quick fix.

Are you saying that because unwanted children can have happy lives, abortion should not be legal?

Everybody say "YEA!!"
I decided to stay out of this one!!!!

I was too. However more recently, teachers have been focusing on abstinence. I saw a report on it a couple months ago on CBS. What I got out of the clip of the lesson was "this is a condom, it isn't perfect so don't have sex till you're married."

Granted teen pregnancies are down, I'd rather my future children have SOME knowledge about protection if they decide after high school to engage in sexual activity, rather then go in with the idea that it won't work or help so don't use it at all.

ETA: because "your" and "you're" aren't the same...

You just never know...
 

About the beginning of the year, our small Iowa community was aghast when two 7th graders were caught *in the act* AT SCHOOL during school hours!!! (In the locker room).

Now it comes to light, the young female in this incident is pregnant!!! BOTH young people are in 7th grade....13 years old!

Perhaps knowing HOW to prevent pregnancy, when abstinence isn't considered, is the better answer.

This is a little off topic...

First, I don't give credit to ANYTHING on CBS. Not to be an ass, but if you had an ounce of sense, you wouldn't either.

Secondly, there would always be those that fell through the cracks, but they are not the ones by which to judge the entire system.

Your millage may vary... however no matter how creatively they could have edited that segment of a professor speaking to his students, the above statement is pretty much what came out of his mouth.

Now back your regularly scheduled debate thread.