Why don't pro-choice politicans ever bring up OVER POPULATION?

Soon there are going to be people filling every inch of this planet, which means more people to feed, more people to medicate, more people to house.

Why is over population never brought up as a good reason to allow abortion?

I just don't get it, nature says that a sperm fertilizes an egg, nature is cruel, it doesn't care if the sperm is from an abusive father and the egg is from his 11 year old daughter. Why on Earth does every ejaculation deserve a name?

Why of why would RWers rather have starving children covering the face of the Earth? Why on Earth do they think that someone twisted enough to rape his own child deserves to populate the world with his own grandchildren?

They make no sense to me! I don't understand why they WANT all of these children everywhere.

It also makes no sense to me that our pro-choice politicans never bring up over population, as an argument.

the replacement birthrate is less than 2.1 in the United States, which means than if not for immigration the United States would age and decline in its population structure.

Not that would be a bad thing mind you, political and economic difficulties aside.

and considering that the US uses more resources than any other country on the Planet, we affect the rest of the world.

that plays into it.

The anti-choicers are equally willing to apply the abortion ban to "developing" countries with birth rates outpacing their food supply.

Furthermore, since the level of resource consumption in the USA is higher than the global average, we need to weight our birth rates accordingly.

Rove V Wade were overturned? Or in other words why isn't it an issue today?

God always provides.

Seriously, that's what they'll say.

I've realized that if they force people who were raped to have a kid, they might put it in a foster home. The kid will then bounce around and have a better chance of getting into crime. If the crime is big enough, then they can have the person executed.
They want to be the one to pull the switch.

Never mind that it's a flawed premise, but it is the premise, whispered in our ears from birth til death by Mother Culture to sectarians and atheists alike.

If you think pro-choice gets a backlash now, just try going up against "be fruitful and multiply" and see how far you get.

Many pro-choice people are actually anti-abortion. As a politician you get the most bang for the buck being pro-choice and leaving abortion as an action out of it.

I'd much rather we focus on the issues of a woman's privacy and right to self-determination.

Discussing it in terms of population control sounds too much like "culling the herd," to my ear.

:(

Our primary focus needs to GET BACK TO AND REMAIN on the idea that the decision to end pregnancy is a personal, private medical decision every woman has the right to make free from interference from the government. It's about equality, sentience, civil liberties and human rights. There are a thousand reasons I can think of for pro-choice politicians NOT to use the "if women don't have abortions, we'll be swamped with overpopulation" bullshit "argument," but the primary one would be that the focus of the discussion needs to stay on ANTI-CHOICE ATTITUDES ARE EVIL AND ADVOCATE UNCONSTITUTIONALITIES. Taking it to the "how does a woman's choice--or lack thereof--impact society as a whole" place is ineffectual, offensive and wrong, because it validates the idea that "society" has anyplace near an individual's right to make decisions affecting her own health and autonomy.

Also, it's just an asshole thing to say. It perversely emphasizes the fucked-up notion that women alone are responsible for overpopulation. Both sexes are responsible. The best way to prevent unintended pregnancy and children that women, their partners and the planet cannot support is for BOTH men and women to choose not to create so many pregnancies and/or have so many goddamn children. Fellas? Stop expecting women to do all the work. Ladies? Stop putting up with being demanded to deal with the expense, health risks, and brutality of being the only one in your relationships taking responsibility for birth control. The smart ones get vasectomies.

problem in the next hundred years, shouldn't someone bring it up.

I would rather a clump of cells be destroyed than a 3 year old in Africa, or the USA.

They're always talking about how it's more humane just to be outright killed, quick and easy, rather than suffer because of a lack of resources.

(Note: They only use these talking points when talking about the deer population.)

Personally, I think keeping the focus on the right of a woman to control her own body rather than having it controlled by the state is more compelling argument for choice and making birth control more widely available to men and women is a more compelling solution to the population problem.

To the extent that abortion is a form of birth control, I suppose you can make that argument. But I think making birth control that prevents most unplanned pregnancies from occurring more widely available is a solution that probably seems preferrable to most people. If the fundies weren't trying to control everyone's sexuality and preventing men and women all over the world from learning about and having access to birth control, there would probably be both fewer abortions and fewer starving children. I think the safe, legal and rare (becuase of birth control and education) argument is a better one. At least it is more persuasive to me.

causes many (most?) otherwise sane people to go completely apeshit. It's got absolutely nothing to do with logic or the otherwise obvious reality that the earth is finite.

Religion or 'god's law' is often invoked, but I think that those are just a cover for some deeper thing. Maybe it's just a psychological manifestation of the fact that we are the product of 4 billion years of natural selection where reproduction is the only measure of success.

an abortion.

in the larger sense of the world. Saying "The world is overpopulated" implies "Stop having babies," which is against a mother's choice to have a baby. Also, it borders on the "pro-abortion" standpoint that we don't want people to have kids.

Governments that talk about regulating how many children people may have freak people out. It's another liberty taken away from them.

I am not able to say this very eloquently. Does anyone who knows what I'm talking about have the ability to say it in a less abrasive manner?

:hide:

Especially because it's so hard to keep your head in a "discussion" like this, filled with so much ignorance.

You're totally right about something else, too, that pro-choice pols using the overpopulation "argument" equates every pregnancy with "a potential child" and is just one more way to validate the sick, misogynist nature of anti-choice rhetoric. The pregnancy=child characterization tells everyone who is pregnant or might become pregnant how to regard her fetus. It's sick and wrong to play into their perverted hands like that.

But I don't hear too many people calling for war or epidemics to help reduce population.

In a (slightly) more civil vein, the population-reduction argument for abortion is just a few steps down the road from using euthanasia for the same purposes. After all, just because medical technology now makes it possible to live into the mid 90s, doesn't mean the people who have been greedily hanging on to life should be using up resources that other people could use. Etc., etc.

Seriously, we have argued for 30 years that abortion is between a woman and her doctor. Talking about abortion's "practical benefits" to society at best muddies our core argument, and at worst, makes it seem like a sham.

Final point: US abortion laws are not going to solve the population problem in the Third World, which is where the birthrates are high. In Europe, Japan, the US, and other post-industrial societies, population growth is either slow or approaching zero.

Peace.

EDIT: fixed a typo

I think that life starts at birth.


On the other hand, if the pope allowed the use of birth control, then that would definitely help with over popualtion and people won't need abortions.

purposes when birth control is available for birth control?

I personally don't like abortion, particularly late term abortion, and think it should never be used for birth control, only when medically necessary or in cases of rape or incest.

That said, as a male it is a choice I will never have to make, so I am 100% pro-choice, and would never impose my squeamishness on any woman who does have to face that choice, and if she decides on an abortion because she was taken by surprise, or careless or unlucky, that's her business, not mine.

But 90% of abortions could be avoided with the availability and use of long proved birth control methods. I think BC should be made available to every woman who is capable of becoming pregnant.

I suspect no pro-choice advocates promote it for population control because it then smacks of coercion, as in China, which kind of undermines the 'choice' part of pro-choice, donchya think?

and there will be a miraculous "rapture" of the "church," followed by a period of "tribulation" of the remaining "unsaved," and then a new heaven and a new earth so the present earth JUST DOES NOT MATTER. Can it get any plainer (or sillier?) According to the fundamentalists, who after all are the only ones who matter any more, if you don't believe every word of their crap, you're being deliberately ignorant, because what they believe is written in the Holy Bible, plain as the nose on your face. They will NEVER change their minds; you can't persuade them with logic or appeal to their sense of fair play and the rights of American citizens...you are WRONG, they are RIGHT, and that's that. End of discussion.

...most are white. The few who are not, they figure will be easy to pick off* later.

They fear the growing population of "coloured" races in their own areas. Abortion is and has been mainly used by the white populations of the western nations. Cost and access (both professional and back alley) being key factor in that demographic.
:rant:

*or packed off as cannon fodder as suggested above.