Friday, March 07, 2008

NY State Stats

Ok for work I was asked to look up some info about teen pregnancy stats for NY State and the County I live in. No big deal, till me being me I start snooping around a little and check other stats. First I'll say that while I'm Pro-Choice I do think this is one issue where the opposition has a very good point. I don't like their tactics and I think its an option that cannot be taken off the table entirely, but there are way to many going on and I see no reason why certain limits cannot be enacted. Unfortunately the opposition is so rabid about this issue that I don't see any compromise being possible. If we could say no third trimester abortions except in the case of harm to the mother, and maybe a few other restrictions I don't know, then I would be ok with that, IF it was left there. but It wouldn't. they'd take it as a victory and keep pushing for tighter regulations and I'm not cool with fighting this battle over and over again. But its too bad because there are too many abortions and I'm not afraid of stepping on liberal toes to say it, I'm very liberal but when a state had 254,000 live births and 117,000 abortions in a year there is something wrong. Seriously wrong. I'm not saying to ban them, not even close, I'm saying we need to start by really working on education to prevent the unwanted pregnancies that cause abortions.

Then I ran into some other disturbing info, like did you know that in NY state a black child is four times as likely NOT to make it to their first birthday as a white child? It's even worse for Latino's.

Lighter note, age of brides and grooms in NYC. Did you know 15 year olds can get married?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Have you read the book Freakonomics. He makes a very good case for legalized abortion being the reason for the huge drop in crime in the 90's. It makes a LOT of sense. What would these 117,000 unwanted childrens' lives be like? What would they bring to a society that already can't sustain them.

I don't agree with abortion as a form of birth control, but I also don't think my opinion matters much BECAUSE I HAVE A PENIS. It's a woman's body, and a woman's choice.

Kilgore Trout said...

First off I'd like to read that book, second I never said anything about wishing the 117,000 had been born. What I said was we need to prevent the vast majority of these prior to becoming pregnant. Thats how I want to see the number of abortions reduced.

I used to feel that I wasn't in a position to have a terribly strong stance on abortion because like Rob I too have an outty not an inny, I will never get pregnant I will never have to have an abortion, but its possible I could be forced to make that decision and therefore my opinion does matter, but admittedly less so than a womans. There is the simple fact that the baby is the child of the father as well so his opinion matters too, but thats not the argument I'm going to use. Instead I'm just going to give you a link to another man who felt his opinion was of little concern.

http://disgustedbeyondbelief.blogspot.com/2007/04/my-views-on-abortion.html

Kilgore Trout said...

Shit forgot to make that a link.

DBB: My views on Abortion

Hope that works