Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
Just weeks after Pope Benedict denounced government-endorsed contraception during a visit to Brazil, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva unveiled a program on Monday to provide inexpensive birth-control pills at 10,000 private drugstores across the country.
Silva said the plan will give poor Brazilians “the same right that the wealthy have to plan the number of children they want.”
Way to go, Silva. Brazilian has an astoundingly high abortion rate — higher than the U.S. rate — and abortion is generally illegal there. Unsurprisingly, about 4,000 Brazilian women die from illegal abortions every year, and many more are injured. Accessible birth control will certainly help. But attitudes about birth control and sex can be pretty influential. The Catholic Church isn’t doing much to help on that end.
Silva, however, deserves big kudos for this one.
Imprisoning women who get abortions as well as the people who perform them would certainly lower the abortion rate. At least a little.
Evidence, Matt?
Because from my research, there is no correlation between illegalizing abortion and lowering the abortion rate. Latin America has some of the most restrictive abortion laws in the world, and some of the highest abortion rates.
Take El Salvador, where imprisoning women and doctors is standard, and where abortion is not allowed even to save the pregnant woman’s life. They upped the penalty for abortion in 1998 — and while data is scarce, it doesn’t seem to have had much of an effect on the abortion rate. Eleven percent of maternal deaths in that country are abortion-related, though.
Perhaps you’re right in that imprisoning women and doctors will lower the abortion rate. Imprisoning men who verbally harass women, or who leer or yell at us on the street, very well might decrease the sexual assault rate. At least a little. How does that sound?
Shorter Jill: In a free society we have to balance rights and liberties against the greater social good. Lowering the abortion rate is a good thing. Putting women and doctors in jail, though, is an egregious affront to liberty and to human rights. Just because an end goal is good doesn’t mean that any step to get there is acceptable.
I meant it as a joke. I have done no research on the matter at all. If it’s illegal then it’s illegal. Trying to pull at the heartstrings of people by pointing out that women are still seeking abortions illegaly and dying because of it doesn’t factor in. It’s illegal and unsafe. Of course they’re dying. Pointing out that junkies are dying because they take unsafe drugs so it should be legalized makes no sense either. I have no sympathy for these people.
I don’t see how men looking at women or verbally harrassing them is the same as performing an abortion. In the latter, you’re putting the person in prison for performing the illegal act. Looking at people or saying things to people is not illegal. Sexual assault is illegal. Poor analogy, is all I’m saying.
There is no concrete “social good”. It’s subjective and therefore irrelevant. In a free society, laws are there to protect the rights of the people.
As for lowering the number of abortions, the only way that will happen is if the number of women who don’t believe in getting them goes up. As well as the number of people willing to perform them. The belief system that would create such changes in thought is irrelevant.
The belief that it is the right of a person to perform an abortion or the right of a woman to receive an abortion or perform it on herself is completely illogical. And even if it was a right, it clearly is not ‘good’ for the “social good” as it’s difficult to have a society when no children are born and raised and the number of those that are is far below the replacement rate. I’m sure it’s different for other people. Therefore, it should be illegal, according to the belief that it is “bad” for the “social good”. Assuming that having a next generation taht can sustain itself is part of your idea of the “social good”, of course.
Lula’s really a remarkable person, both biographically and politically. Poorest of the poor, lost his finger in a factory accident, maybe the only pure example of a good working class leader in the world today.
…I think you missed my point.
No, looking at people and saying things is not illegal here. Abortion isn’t illegal here, either. But you are (or aren’t, now I can’t tell) arguing that it might lower the abortion rate to imprison women and doctors. I’ll take sexual assault out of it — it would lower the sexual harassment rate if we jailed men who leered and made lewd comments to women. The question is whether we want to go about it that way. We can all probably agree that sexual harassment is bad, and that we would like to lower the sexual harassment rate. But is jail the right way to go?
That’s the analogy.
Matt –
Really, no. How about improving access to, and information about, contraception so that fewer women face unwanted pregnancy?
And what about wanted pregnancies which go wrong, for example endangering the health of the pregnant woman?
Telling women abortion is a Bad Thing which they sould feel guilty about does absolutely nothing to prevent the kind of situations which lead to abortion. It just makes abortion more traumatic.
And the dying ‘these people’ you have no sympathy for- are they the drug addicts or th women dying from illegal abortion?
In my book, saving lives is a damn good reason to change the law.
How does that belief lack logic in any way, if you don’t believe in the social good? Unless you don’t believe that people have rights. You admitted they did above: “In a free society, laws are there to protect the rights of the people.”
It would be more effective if you stopped rambling about analogies and actually made an argument.
Most perfect one-sentence embodiment for everything wrong with the world I’ve ever heard.
Bast
Wow, a single person makes a tough medical decision based on their own situation and the usually complicated health, moral and social issues surrounding it and as a result there will be NO MORE CHILDREN EVER, and of course, society as we know it is over. I had no idea that as a woman I had that much power. Oh, wait, I don’t, all the power I have is the ability to make tough choices based on my own life issues and for that I need a society that recognizes those choices as legitimate when they do not conflict with the needs of others. Matt, you really need to open your mind to the fact that most abortions are done for logical reasons and that most women will go on to have more children later.
Oh my god! It’s Children of Men! Last one to Bexhill-on-Sea immigration camp’s a rotten egg!
So, no children are born and raised, and of those zero children, the number that are born and raised is below the replacement rate? Let me introduce you to this earth thing we call “logic”…
Er. Yeah, it does. You’re batting 1000 today, aren’t you?
Yeah, actually, it does, if you’re coming from a harm reduction standpoint. Which I think most people here are.
To get back to the topic, the people of Brazil chose a good one. Way to go Brazil, huzzah.
[...] n to respect Mitt. -Barack Obama is an artist. -Kucinich amuses me. -Here comes Thompson. -Hooray for Brazil. -A really interesting Supreme Court [...]
This only makes sense if you assume that when abortion is available, no woman will ever choose to have and raise a child. And you only need to look at countries where abortion is readily available to see that this is not true. There are still plenty of children being born in the US, right? And if population growth was your concern, it would be more ‘logical’ to target contraception, which prevents more births than abortion. And since when was ‘as many babies as possible, at any cost’ the definition of ‘social good’? I think the reality is a little more complex than that!
Anyway, believe it or not, most women actually want to have children at some point, it’s just that we feel that should be our own decision, and continued pregnancy should not be forced on an unwilling woman. I see no ‘social good’ coming from forced pregnancy (what about the woman’s mental health? Will this set her up to be a good mother, with a good relationship with her child?) or indeed from prisons full of women who had abortions.
Go Lula. Its yet another step in the right direction in Brazil.
Everyone else has pretty adequately responded to Matt, but I wanted to add one more argument for cheap, available contraception and safe legal abortion in the developing world. Religious conservatives like to ignore the fact that when women can control their own fertility, it helps their families. Family planning protects children. No woman should have to choose between having another child and being able to feed and care for the children she already has, but many women have to make this choice. Having access to contraception and a safe means to terminate unwanted pregnancies gives women a chance to control the size of their families and to choose to have the number of children they want and can care for.
On the off chance that Matt intends to listen and is not a troll…
Spouse had an abortion. The child was wanted, but was non-viable. Waiting for it to finally die in her uterus would seriously threaten her fertility and possibly her life. Since we really wanted children, neither of those choices looked very good for us. She got pregnant again a few months after the abortion. The boy is nearly 2 now and our second is due within the month. 2 more babies to keep the population going where there might have been none.
Good going Brazil. As a result many other couples will have another chance to try for a baby when they want one.
Matt, if criminalizing abortions and putting doctors and women in jail has such a magical effect on increasing the birth rate, why did Romania’s birth rate plunge 40% when Ceausescu’s regime was literally monitoring the uterus of every Romanian woman of childbearing age?
I don’t believe it would help the birthrate, which is already getting lower each year.
It would also increase the birthrate, as an idealogy that is against abortion is of course pro life.
If anything, the article is more proof that too much involvement in the lives of people by the tax-crazy government leads to disaster. If the people don’t care, the people don’t care. There’s nothing you can do about that. Forcing them to give birth still won’t change the fact that they don’t care and have little interest in making sure ther people live on. Their birthrate plummeted because they believe in abortion. The government officials going nuts only added to the problem. If criminilizing it doesnt help the number of abortions go down, or help with the birthrate, than the only thing that would help, as I stated, is a change in beliefs of the people. Either change your behavior, or fade away.
Why was Matt the only one asked to provide evidence for his take on this?
I thought what the President of Brazil did was a good thing, so please do not start attacking me.
But I was just curious as to why Matt is the only person here being asked for “evidence”. Of the 18 posts, about half are people giving their opinion with no evidence to support what they are saying.
Only Matt is being asked to provide “evidence”.
Hmmm…weird.
Uh… family sizes go up when the society is supportive of families. In this modern age of two income families that means that the government is going to need to step up with family oriented policies.
After more than 4 decades of declining birthrate, Quebec has seen a serious increase. Why? Partially demographics and mostly serious government programs to help families have children and support them. If the “tax-crazy” government is actually supplying services that work then they may not be so crazy after all.
Actually, anti-abortion does not equal pro-life, Matt. You appear to be ignoring a lot of very good analogies given above.
Everyone else here appears to be far more articulate than me but I’ll try and see if my POV will help at all.
2 months before my mother fell pregnant with me, she had an abortion. The child she was pregnant with was non-viable and to carry to term would have risked her fertility. My mum was newly married and my parents wanted to raise a big family. Having an abortion caused both my parents a lot of heartache and the decision was very, very hard. In the end, though, I would not exist now if they had not made that decision. In fact, since my dad sadly died shortly after I was born my mum may not have had any children if she had not chosen an abortion.
On another point regarding legalising drugs, which I believe you raised as an analogy? I don’t remember which country specifically but I know at least 1 country in Europe has opened safe houses where people can inject heroin safely, without fear of arrest and with access to clean needles, aftercare and addiction help and I believe the response has been positive.
Here’s a better analogy. Prostitution. This is illegal, and yet for some bizarre reason the trade is thriving. Why? Because making something illegal doesn’t make it go away- it forces into the hands of criminals who aren’t adverse to human trafficking, selling young girls into slavery and enforced prostitution, as well as making their slaves dependent on drugs. Making something illegal simply heightens the risk of abuse to the victims, and makes said victims less likely to try to get help. It isn’t a massive stretch of the imagination to see desperate women getting back-door abortions and being raped by the people involved.
Also, we’ve got over 6 billion people on this planet. Economy and capitalism aside, do we really NEED an ever-growing population?
An ideology that tries to increase the birthrate by punishing women rather than, say, making prenatal care free and available to all and providing free childcare to women who need to work to support their families can’t call itself “pro-life.” Because the only “life” you’re “pro” is the fetus. Once that baby is born, you don’t seem to care much about it at all.
Or– and this would be the reality-based way of going about it– if fewer women become pregnant against their will, perhaps through the ready availability of contraception and decent sex education.
I coulda sworn Matt had been banned before. The email looks very familiar, as, sadly, does the value system.
If believing in abortion makes the birthrate plummet, how come I live in a state with very liberal abortion laws, in one of the bluest cities in the country, and I can’t swing a dead cat without hitting one of those Buggydoo strollers?