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And the teen pregnancy rate is higher in the EU. Coincidence? I think not.

Bullshit

See http://www.agi-usa.org/pubs/fb_teen_sex.html

I'll back it up.
http://www.coolnurse.com/teen_pregnancy_rates.htm
"The United States has the highest teen pregnancy rate in the western world, despite the fact that our teens are not more sexually active than Swedish teens, or Canadian teens, or British teens. Why? Because we don't educate about birth control in sex education classes, we don't discuss it at home, we don't give teens good access to it, and we don't advertise it in our media. Other countries do, and they are rewarded with low rates of teen pregnancy and teen abortions."

Or http://www.agi-usa.org/pubs/fb_teen_sex.html
"Teen pregnancy rates are much higher in the United States than in many other developed countries--twice as high as in England and Wales or Canada, and nine times as high as in the Netherlands or Japan."

Amsterdam is in the Netherlands.

Google "teen pregnancy rates" and you'll be inundated with evidence that the original poster is correct.

Okay, this is the most stupid thing ever. We should be preventing 12 year olds from buying these games. Not 18 year olds. Does anyone here understand how mature the average 18 year old is? More than half of 17 year olds (source) have had sex! Does anyone really think this is going to change anything? Get out of my country with your conservative bullshit, please.

That's no reason for you to do it. Anyway, this is a meta-argument on abortion. It's not about the morality of it as such, it's about public opinion about it.

That said, I stated exactly what the data on that page (representing a collection of the results of various different surveys, not a single survey, which may well explain the poor tracking - if the samples weren't normalized to each other, significant differences could be found) says: around 50% of women identify as pro-choice, and 80% of women support at least some form of legal abortion.

You cannot get that information from that page. Only the Gender category breaks the information down by sex. If you're calling 42% "around 50%"... I'm sorry, but that's not valid. You're deliberately trying to underplay the fact that according to one of those charts 57%, and the other 73%, of women favor at least some restrictions on the availability of abortion. That's a significantly different picture than the veritable even split your "around 50%" suggests.

The other surveys give some idea what the circumstances people in general (not broken out by sex) consider to be good reasons for an abortion. Significantly, look at the "Reasons" graph. 61% believe abortion should be illegal for merely economic reasons. It's not too much of a stretch that the all-too-common abortion for mere convenience or as a method of birth control would meet with even greater disapproval. It's a pity they didn't ask about those. According to the Alan Guttmacher Institute only 6% of abortions are primarily because of health problems. 1% are because the pregnancy was due to rape or incest. The rest are situations where putting the child up for adoption would be a reasonable alternative. (This is a relatively recent chart, but the data's old. Still, I got the link to this place from Planned Parenthood's website, so it's clear that AGI's data aren't seen as embarrassing to PP. And no one's saying the situation has changed much since then as far as I can tell.)

In other words, that "Reasons" chart at Public Agenda had a bias built in to the underlying survey because they failed to ask about a common reason for abortion. The only non-medical reason they asked about was economic, when it's clear that there are several other non-economic reasons. But even then, most people believe abortion should be illegal in that situation.

So where abortion can be reasonably termed a choice -- where there's no medical reason for it, so it's genuinely elective surgery -- most people want it to be illegal. Since the "Gender" chart failed to turn up any kind of significant gender gap here, we can't assume that most of that 61% are men. It's more reasonable to assume that men and women are split evenly here as they are in other abortion-related matters and that about 61% of women feel elective abortions should be illegal.

So now your "around 50%" has dropped to just under 40%.

Again, the point here isn't that abortion is wrong, or even that most women think that most abortions should be illegal. (I believe that to be a reasonable inference from what we're seeing here, but that exact information just isn't there so it could also be an erroneous inference.) The point is that the data doesn't support your contention of "around 50%" of women self-identifying as pro-choice.

News report from early this year claiming 10 straight years of falling rates, and analysis of statistics from 1950 to 2000.

No wonder America has double the teenage pregnancy rates in comparison to other industrialized nations: idiot puritanical repressed parents who think sex and nudity will warp little johnny for life.

This is correlation without causation, pure and simple.

And FWIW, teen pregnancy rates in America have dropped for ten straight years. low. Link : http://www.agi-usa.org/media/nr/2004/02/19/

But far be it from me to interfere with your bashing of "puritanical" parents. (The nerve of those folks -- teaching their kids something you don't agree with -- their values!)

The fetus is dead.

The fetus is alive, but continued pregnancy would place the woman's life in severe danger.

The fetus is alive, but continued pregnancy would grievously damage the woman's health and/or disable her.

The fetus is so malformed that it can never gain consciousness and will die shortly after birth. Many which fall into this category have developed hydrocephalus.

In addition, some physicians violate their state Medical Association's regulations and perform elective D&X procedures - primarily on women who are suicidally depressed.

If you read the article you'll see that in cases of fetuses with hydrocephalus "It is not unusual for the fetal head to be as large as 50 centimeters (nearly 20 inches) in diameter and may contain...close to two gallons of cerebrospinal fluid." The passage of the fetus through the vagina would be extremely traumatic unless D&X is done, no?

make those arguments..out of desperation to have...murder ended

How desparate would you feel, knowing that the fetus you are carrying suffers from hydrocephalus, has no chance of survival after birth, and you will need to push an object 20 inches in diameter through your vagina because the procedure that would have removed it safely was outlawed by morality-driven religious zealots in Congress?

I hope that I have opened your eyes a little, especially regarding the issue of partial birth abortion. The women who are forced to remove a dead or unviable fetus via late-term D&X are usually EXTREMELY traumatized by the process; they wanted a child and things went horribly wrong towards the end of the pregnancy. Political grandstanding, complete with graphic depictions, rubs a lot of salt into those wounds.

I also found this link (refreshingly free of banner ads depicting a partial birth aborion) Late Term Abortions: Legal Considerations which is worth a read.

I think of myself as a pretty tolerant person, and you seem quite rational. Unfortunately not everyone is capable of recognizing that, "freedom of choice" aside, there are legitimate medical reasons when abortion is warranted to protect the woman. Consider this statement by the National Council of Catholic Bishops, "We have received inquiries whether the National Conference of Catholic Bishops would lend support to a ban on partial-birth abortion that would include an exception for the health of the mother. We want to state again that such an exception is too broad. We look for the elimination of abortion, beginning with the banning of partial birth abortion, without reservation or exception."

better drivers, yes. and more of us are having their kids before they have drivers' licenses.

Just when are we gonna wake up and smell the &bullet?

(Damn, they did it again!).

Blatent Editorial: As an area where North Americans are so completely blasé about censorship that we've stopped recognizing it as such, sex and sex education censorship is our elephant in the living room. Teachers are supposed to be preparing our kids for life in the real world. According to The Alan Guttmacher Institute, 80% of teens have sex and 90% of those who do so without protection become pregnant within a year. Add to this the fact that Pregnancy can have a massive effect on both mother and child.

What we end up with is teachers who are hog-tied when it comes to teaching kids about something that is going to have a massive effect on the rest of their fucking lives (please excuse the pun).
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My suggestion is that you NOT censor access to the net. Despite all the blab in big media (who have a vested interest in limiting public acceptance of the net), people don't access the net porn by accident -- in the same way that kids don't 'accidently' show all their friends the Playboy that they found under their dad's bed.

For people who don't like porn, show them how to use the 'back' button.

For structural design, make sure that all child-accessible sites are in open view. If you want to allow questionable content, create 'unobtrusive' booths with their backs to the walls and separators between stations so that one person's content can't be accidently viewed by other users.

As far as being sued because somebody accessed a porn site on the internet, Libraries have been (sucessfully) sued for putting filters on their stations. I don't think that you could be seriously sued for giving (paying?) customers the same kinds of rights that libraries are being forced to allow the public. In fact, I'd guess that you're more likely to be sucessfully sued for NOT allowing open access to the net. (IANAL)

Just when are we gonna wake up and smell the &bullet?

(Damn, they did it again!).

Blatent Editorial: As an area where North Americans are so completely blasé about censorship that we've stopped recognizing it as such, sex and sex education censorship is our elephant in the living room. Teachers are supposed to be preparing our kids for life in the real world. According to The Alan Guttmacher Institute, 80% of teens have sex and 90% of those who do so without protection become pregnant within a year. Add to this the fact that Pregnancy can have a massive effect on both mother and child.

What we end up with is teachers who are hog-tied when it comes to teaching kids about something that is going to have a massive effect on the rest of their fucking lives (please excuse the pun).
----------------
My suggestion is that you NOT censor access to the net. Despite all the blab in big media (who have a vested interest in limiting public acceptance of the net), people don't access the net porn by accident -- in the same way that kids don't 'accidently' show all their friends the Playboy that they found under their dad's bed.

For people who don't like porn, show them how to use the 'back' button.

For structural design, make sure that all child-accessible sites are in open view. If you want to allow questionable content, create 'unobtrusive' booths with their backs to the walls and separators between stations so that one person's content can't be accidently viewed by other users.

As far as being sued because somebody accessed a porn site on the internet, Libraries have been (sucessfully) sued for putting filters on their stations. I don't think that you could be seriously sued for giving (paying?) customers the same kinds of rights that libraries are being forced to allow the public. In fact, I'd guess that you're more likely to be sucessfully sued for NOT allowing open access to the net. (IANAL)

Just when are we gonna wake up and smell the &bullet?

(Damn, they did it again!).

Blatent Editorial: As an area where North Americans are so completely blasé about censorship that we've stopped recognizing it as such, sex and sex education censorship is our elephant in the living room. Teachers are supposed to be preparing our kids for life in the real world. According to The Alan Guttmacher Institute, 80% of teens have sex and 90% of those who do so without protection become pregnant within a year. Add to this the fact that Pregnancy can have a massive effect on both mother and child.

What we end up with is teachers who are hog-tied when it comes to teaching kids about something that is going to have a massive effect on the rest of their fucking lives (please excuse the pun).
----------------
My suggestion is that you NOT censor access to the net. Despite all the blab in big media (who have a vested interest in limiting public acceptance of the net), people don't access the net porn by accident -- in the same way that kids don't 'accidently' show all their friends the Playboy that they found under their dad's bed.

For people who don't like porn, show them how to use the 'back' button.

For structural design, make sure that all child-accessible sites are in open view. If you want to allow questionable content, create 'unobtrusive' booths with their backs to the walls and separators between stations so that one person's content can't be accidently viewed by other users.

As far as being sued because somebody accessed a porn site on the internet, Libraries have been (sucessfully) sued for putting filters on their stations. I don't think that you could be seriously sued for giving (paying?) customers the same kinds of rights that libraries are being forced to allow the public. In fact, I'd guess that you're more likely to be sucessfully sued for NOT allowing open access to the net. (IANAL)

Just when are we gonna wake up and smell the &bullet?

(Damn, they did it again!).

Blatent Editorial: As an area where North Americans are so completely blasé about censorship that we've stopped recognizing it as such, sex and sex education censorship is our elephant in the living room. Teachers are supposed to be preparing our kids for life in the real world. According to The Alan Guttmacher Institute, 80% of teens have sex and 90% of those who do so without protection become pregnant within a year. Add to this the fact that Pregnancy can have a massive effect on both mother and child.

What we end up with is teachers who are hog-tied when it comes to teaching kids about something that is going to have a massive effect on the rest of their fucking lives (please excuse the pun).
----------------
My suggestion is that you NOT censor access to the net. Despite all the blab in big media (who have a vested interest in limiting public acceptance of the net), people don't access the net porn by accident -- in the same way that kids don't 'accidently' show all their friends the Playboy that they found under their dad's bed.

For people who don't like porn, show them how to use the 'back' button.

For structural design, make sure that all child-accessible sites are in open view. If you want to allow questionable content, create 'unobtrusive' booths with their backs to the walls and separators between stations so that one person's content can't be accidently viewed by other users.

As far as being sued because somebody accessed a porn site on the internet, Libraries have been (sucessfully) sued for putting filters on their stations. I don't think that you could be seriously sued for giving (paying?) customers the same kinds of rights that libraries are being forced to allow the public. In fact, I'd guess that you're more likely to be sucessfully sued for NOT allowing open access to the net. (IANAL)