Abortion and Population

[no one]

So that's a no, your parents didn't have any kids that lived, did they Ahriman?

[Gawdzilla Sama]

"Legalize Retroactive Birth Control!"

[Mister Agenda]

Should population being too low ever become a species threatening issue for humans, I can imagine a few ways to go about getting the birth rate up again. There are a lot of things that are more likely to kill us off than low birth rates due to circumstances under our control.

[Thumpalumpacus]

If every single Ukrainian converted to Muscovite Orthodoxy tomorrow then there would be no war since they would all agree with Putin since the Church is on his side. They would become Russians.

No, they would still have to concede independence for this war to end.

It's a land grab but religious wars are also (sometimes) about land grab. I was reading the article on Wikipedia about Religious Wars and some consider the Yugoslav wars in the early 1990s to be religious wars which were similar to the war in Ukraine since it was about Serbia trying to take lands in Croatia and Bosnia, but it also involved religion.

Those aren't really comparable, I think, in that they emphasize race as well. @The Grand Nudger is much better equipped than I to speak to this, given his personal experience there, but my understanding is that while Catholic vs Muslim played a role, so too did race to even a greater scale.

On the other hand, genetically and linguistically Ukrainians and Russians are quite similar; indeed, Putin, Peskov, and other gum-flappers have tried to argue that Ukrainians are essentially breakaway Russians and one purpose of the Russian invasion is to bring the black sheep back into the fold.

Now this shows that religious war is sometimes hard to define, but I would not say that necessarily wrong to call the war in Ukraine a religious war, especially if Putin is trying to establish Tsarist Russia. Tsar is supposedly chosen by god and his land was given to him by god.

Again, trying to put together Tsarist Russia back together geographically is not the same as claiming that God has given one the the right to invade, or that one is claiming to be God's Anointed. Putin hasn't appealed to Divine Order in reconstructing Old Russia. He's appealed to Russian nationalism.

Extrapolating from that mistaken idea that this is a religious war is mistaken, I think; your arguments here notwithstanding, professional analysis and propaganda from both sides rarely feature any religious element.

"Religious war" isn't that hard to define. It's a war fought primarily for religious reasons. This is not one of them.

[SimpleCaveman]

Hi Thumpalumpacus,

Thanks for responding. I appreciate you clarifying the point being discussed.

So if anyone wants to argue that abortion reduces net population growth, they'll need better evidence.

Yes, I would argue that abortion could contribute to reducing net population growth. It clearly and by definition reduces the number of live births. If there are not other factors, then population growth would be reduced.

However, I was not arguing that abortion reduces net population growth. I tried to summarize my point in the last line.

So, you can be for abortion if you want. But don’t argue based on population levels.

Let me try to lay it out better than I did before. My apologies if it's still not clear.

People often argue for abortion, in part, because of our population levels. “We don’t need the people. We have too many people." This has been a rally cry for many years. My point is that the population levels are not out of control. The fearmongering was that we would run out of resources and even space (I think of a Star Trek episode).

On the contrary, population decline is a real thing that many countries are experiencing now. An article a year ago in Scientific American stated that the US present fertility rate is about 1.7, below the replacement rate. Which, by definition, means that our population will decline. As people start dying, there will not be new people to replace them. As people start aging, there will not be new workers to replace them.

So while you write that you aren't arguing that point, you are most certainly, by your own admission, agreeing with it. You can't eat your cake and have it, too.

That quote seemed the best one to start from. Obviously not. I should have left abortion out of the thread title, too. I only included it because that was part of the original thread.

Pax et bonum

[SimpleCaveman]

Globally, there are about 56 million abortions vs 135 million live births per year. Abortion is unlikely to lead to human extinction.

Boru

Nothing is going to lead to extinction except for global catastrophes: Nuclear war, meteors, world war z, sun exploding, Vogon hyperspace bypass, Majin Buu’s Human Extinction Attack, and the like.

But even so, population decline could suck, too. Don’t take my word for it. Read about what’s going on in the countries where it’s happening.

(By the way, I’m still not arguing that abortion is causing human extinction. Others may be arguing that outcome, but I am not. Only that rapid population growth is not happening, and in some places it’s in decline.)

[SimpleCaveman]

I think we’re both right here. Yes, abortion reduces the birth rate. It also reduces the fertility rate, which is the number of live births per woman. That’s how the UN, demographers, and others (probably sociologists, too!) who study this define it.

bold mine: Then they are incorrect. But it's my guess and I find it more likely that you are incorrect. Please provide the link for your UN quote.

Unless you are arguing that abortions directly impacts future fertility status. If you are, that would be incorrect also.

Help me out here. What’s the problem? Do you not agree with the definition of fertility rate? Or do you not agree that abortion reduces the fertility rate?

If it’s the former, get access to a computer and the internet to search on “fertility rate definition.”

If it’s the latter, then please see my response to Thumpalumpacus. I’m not interested in the hill that abortion reduces the fertility rate. However, it seems reasonable to me that anything that reduces the number of live births while, at the same time, keeping the number of women constant would reduce the fertility rate.

So, what is incorrect and why is it incorrect?

[Rev. Rye]

I'm not really sure why some people seem to have such a hard time with the whole abortion thing. Two people fuck, the female gets pregnant, the female has a baby. This is not rocket science. People have been doing this (making babies) for many thousands of years, successfully. Why should this steady flow of babies be interrupted? I mean, if it's going to be interrupted, there had better be a damn good reason for it......

Is there a good reason it should just go on unimpeded? Because it just gets more and more impractical with every advance in society and medicine. Perhaps in, say, the 1500s, having a bunch of kids might have been a good idea for multiple reasons. If you worked on a farm, for instance, more kids could potentially mean more hands to help keep the farm going. Or it could help be a safeguard in keeping the genetic line going, especially since I remember reading that, in the time of Shakespeare, only 1 Londoner out of 10 made it to their 40th birthday.

But we don't live in those days anymore. Most of us don't live on farms that need a bunch of people to sustain it. These days, dying young is the exception rather than the rule. So any practical reason we had for having them is pretty much moot.

And these days, many people of child-bearing age barely even make enough money to sustain themselves, let alone a child.

[Ahriman]

I'm not really sure why some people seem to have such a hard time with the whole abortion thing. Two people fuck, the female gets pregnant, the female has a baby. This is not rocket science. People have been doing this (making babies) for many thousands of years, successfully. Why should this steady flow of babies be interrupted? I mean, if it's going to be interrupted, there had better be a damn good reason for it......

Is there a good reason it should just go on unimpeded? Because it just gets more and more impractical with every advance in society and medicine. Perhaps in, say, the 1500s, having a bunch of kids might have been a good idea for multiple reasons. If you worked on a farm, for instance, more kids could potentially mean more hands to help keep the farm going. Or it could help be a safeguard in keeping the genetic line going, especially since I remember reading that, in the time of Shakespeare, only 1 Londoner out of 10 made it to their 40th birthday.

But we don't live in those days anymore. Most of us don't live on farms that need a bunch of people to sustain it. These days, dying young is the exception rather than the rule. So any practical reason we had for having them is pretty much moot.

And these days, many people of child-bearing age barely even make enough money to sustain themselves, let alone a child.

 Well is society really "advancing" if it's making humans obsolete?

[SimpleCaveman]

Hello Rev. Rye,

Is there a good reason it should just go on unimpeded? Because it just gets more and more impractical with every advance in society and medicine. …

But we don't live in those days anymore. Most of us don't live on farms that need a bunch of people to sustain it. These days, dying young is the exception rather than the rule. So any practical reason we had for having them is pretty much moot.

And these days, many people of child-bearing age barely even make enough money to sustain themselves, let alone a child.

Very interesting question. I can think of a number of reasons for population growth to be good. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that unimpeded growth is good.

Here are my initial thoughts

• A declining population isn’t good, just from a practical standpoint. Without new people, lots of business start to shut down. Baby products is an obvious one, but also schools, colleges and universities. Then, we don’t have enough people in the workforce. (We already are experiencing that) We don’t have enough trade workers to keep things running, doctors, lawyers (okay, less of them is fine), teachers, admin assistants, etc. People will consolidate and make do. Maybe we’ll eventually reset at a certain level, but we could also go out with a whimper.
  
• If we want to achieve great things, then we need new people, new ideas, new energy. I want us to go to the moon, Mars and beyond. To do that we need to have people to settle those places. We also need new people to invent new things. We have problems, like people not having enough to sustain themselves. New people with new ideas can help with that.
  

A steady population could be good, it seems. Unfortunately, our current path isn’t going this way.

Can you think of any other reasons?