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From: jeand@ihlpg.UUCP (AMBAR)
Newsgroups: net.abortion
Subject: Re: Are Laws what is really needed?
Message-ID: <988@ihlpg.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 30-Jul-85 15:59:03 EDT
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Posted: Tue Jul 30 15:59:03 1985
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> 	Pro-life advocates (anti-abortionists) frequently try to
> pass legislation that prohibit abortions.  
> 
> 	I think there is a strong parallel between this and the
> anti-drug laws.  Drug laws do not prevent drug use.  In fact,
> there is little evidence that they affect drug use at all.
> The use of tobbacco, a legal drug, is going down, while the use
> of cocaine, an illegal drug, is going up.   As long as people
> want to use drugs, they will keep using them.    The key to
> lowering drug use is social pressure and education.   
> 
> 	Abortion is something a woman is going to decide about
> herself.  If abortions are illegal, then it might be more
> expensive or difficult to get one, but that will not prevent
> her from having one any more than the laws against cocaine
> prevent her from buying cocaine.
 
This sounds a little like solutions to the problem of prostitution that
were being proposed in my hometown of Dayton, OH a few years back.
Since anti-prostitution laws, some said, were not controlling prostitution,
why not just set up a red-light district and make it legal in that area?
The proposal lost.

> 	If a woman is opposed to murder and she believes that
> abortion is murder, then she won't have an abortion.  It is her
> own choice.   Anti-abortionists promote legislation to prohibit
> abortion because of their inability to convince people of the
> merits of their arguments.  If there really was a compelling
> reason for people not to have abortions, say in the same way
> that aviodance of lung cancer is a compelling reason to
> stop smoking cigarettes, then women would have less abortions
> simply because it is the reasonable thing to do.  

The average person does not do something because of the merits of the
principle involved.  The average person decides how CONVENIENT it is for
him/her to perform a certain act, and THEN does/does not perform it.
Even with all the evidence that 'avoidance of lung cancer is a compelling
reason to stop smoking', we are still passing laws about smoking in
public places.  I'd think that people would not smoke simply because
it's the reasonable thing to do, but that's apparently not so.

> Don Steiny