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Datu Dong (talk | contribs)
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→‎Killling babies: abortion = murder
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::::: What he's proposing isn't biased, it's straight fact. Does the baby live after an abortion ? No. Since something can't be both dead and alive (unless it's Schroedinger's Cat) it means the baby was killed. Yes, I realize it's a loaded term and I would oppose it for that reason. <span style="border:1px solid blue;padding:0.50x;">[[User:KoshVorlon|<font style="color:blue;background:white">&nbsp;'''K'''osh'''V'''orlon]].<font style="color:white;background:blue;">&nbsp;'''W'''e '''a'''re '''a'''ll '''K'''osh &nbsp;</font></span> 16:41, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
::::: What he's proposing isn't biased, it's straight fact. Does the baby live after an abortion ? No. Since something can't be both dead and alive (unless it's Schroedinger's Cat) it means the baby was killed. Yes, I realize it's a loaded term and I would oppose it for that reason. <span style="border:1px solid blue;padding:0.50x;">[[User:KoshVorlon|<font style="color:blue;background:white">&nbsp;'''K'''osh'''V'''orlon]].<font style="color:white;background:blue;">&nbsp;'''W'''e '''a'''re '''a'''ll '''K'''osh &nbsp;</font></span> 16:41, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

:::::: "Killing" is far more neutral than "murder". The notion "killing" can be applied on a broader set of situations than "murder". You can get killed in a car accident. But nobody says, you are murderd by a car accident. The use of "murder" is far more restricted and far more loaded and must fulfill some criteria. Abortion complies with all criteria of a murder which would even then justify a lead sentence saying "'''Abortion''' is the '''murder''' of an innocent, unborn child." Actually, my proposal is far less loaded. --[[User:Datu Dong|Datu Dong]] ([[User talk:Datu Dong|talk]]) 17:34, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

Revision as of 17:34, 18 October 2013

Former good articleAbortion was one of the Natural sciences good articles, but it has been removed from the list. There are suggestions below for improving the article to meet the good article criteria. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.
Article milestones
DateProcessResult
December 26, 2006Good article nomineeListed
January 14, 2008Good article reassessmentDelisted
Current status: Delisted good article

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Topical subpages

New resource

NYT reports on a new study about women denied abortions. Do you think this would best fit in this top-level article, or is there a sub-article where it might belong? –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 15:21, 12 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Abortion and mental health, I imagine, but also this one. I'm also surprised that The New York Times is reporting on this when the research has not been peer-reviewed yet. Dr. Foster seems like an eminently qualified researcher, but I would still hesitate to give this too much weight for now. NW (Talk) 16:03, 13 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
KillerChihuahua (talk · contribs) posted a news item about this study at Talk:Abortion and mental health back in November of last year ([1]), so it's been mentioned here and there. I tend to agree with NW; while this project is interesting, it hasn't yet generated any publications in the scholarly literature, at least not that I can identify, so I'd lean toward waiting to mention it. It may be notable on the basis of the coverage in the Times and elsewhere even without scholarly publications, but it seems too fine-grained of a topic to include in this top-level article on abortion. It might fit better at abortion in the United States, abortion debate, or abortion and mental health. MastCell Talk 17:01, 13 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
OK, we may as well wait. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 19:22, 13 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Roscelese, MastCell: I just happened to run into PMID 23122688. That's from November 2012 (so it fits with around when KC originally posted), and in it, they say "We have recently presented preliminary results on the consequences of receiving an abortion compared to having an unwanted birth at the 2012 American Public Health Association meeting, and the publications of our findings are forthcoming." NW (Talk) 15:06, 3 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Request to add section

Could a controversy section be added? - Billybob2002 (talk) 18:15, 22 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Redundant to abortion debate section etc. in the article. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 18:26, 22 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Total abortion rate

Henshaw, Stanley K.; Singh, Susheela; Haas, Taylor (January 1999). "The Incidence of Abortion Worldwide". Family Planning Perspectives. 25.

This source which includes statistics on the total abortion rate is from 1999. First of all, is it too old to include, period? Some of the statistics for individual countries are verifiably different now. Next, the table is meant to be about countries where abortion is legal, but a) in at least one of the countries on the list, happening to be the first I looked up, the procedure is legal only in cases of risk to life, which presumably affects the statistics, and b) statistics on illegal abortions are also relevant. Given this, is it a good idea to include a low, a high and/or an average for countries? –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 19:08, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

There are a number of more recent publications, but not as many as I thought there would be. PMID 22264435 is cited in the article already, while PMID 21757423 is not. A couple of the authors look like they are doing an updated version[2], but I don't see that the data has been peer-reviewed and published yet. NW (Talk) 20:24, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I took out the line about total abortion rate that your edit and reversion had left in, just because it seemed strange to have it hanging out by itself, since it doesn't seem to be a commonly-used statistic. I'd be more comfortable with the inclusion of such statistic if there were more recent sources using it; otherwise it seems strange to bring forward an outdated metric, as it were. Triacylglyceride (talk) 21:49, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I had just merged it in from Total abortion rate, so I'm not sure how the removal of the material affects that situation now? I do think it might be worth a brief mention even without country specifics, since the measurement does appear to be used in various papers (sometimes however without the use of the term TAR/total abortion rate or TIAR/total induced abortion rate). –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 22:15, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, that makes sense, thanks (also explains the Google results I got for "total abortion rate." Maybe use something like, "one way abortion rate is sometimes presented is..."? Triacylglyceride (talk) 01:54, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
That sounds like a good idea. I'll add a mention back phrased in the way you suggested. We can keep chatting about more specifics/sources. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 02:09, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Products of conception

I created the article. Pro-lifers seem to take issue with the term -- as a comment to that effect was added. I didn't see this term as part of the abortion debate -- but I suppose it undeniably is. I re-worked the article a bit -- to try an explain things from the medicine side of things, though I didn't go dig-out references. The article could probably use some more eyes. Nephron  T|C 03:12, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'll take a look. MastCell Talk 18:33, 3 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Killling babies

I propose, the leade sentence be changed to "Abortion is the killing of an innocent, unborn child.". --Datu Dong (talk) 03:47, 17 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Obviously not, since that would be extremely biased, although I do still think (in spite of the change we made recently in this regard) that the introduction still underplays the moral controversies surrounding abortion, and concentrates too much on the medical viewpoint. The statements about safe and unsafe abortions are in themselves biased, since anti-abortionists would presumably dispute that a procedure that "kills a baby" can be called "safe", and that paragraph reads a bit like a detailed argument in favor of legalized abortion. I'm not anti-abortion myself, but I'm still a bit embarrassed by Wikipedia's apparent one-sidedness on the issue. W. P. Uzer (talk) 08:09, 17 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I think the notion here is that technically induced abortion is in fact a medical or veterinary procedure and that, as with other such procedures--even controversial ones--we lead with a plain description of the procedure itself. In the first paragraph we already have to mention that abortion can mean miscarriage--naturally occurring--or a medical or surgical procedure in humans or other animals, after all. It isn't until we reach induced abortions in humans that the issue of its legality/morality becomes relevant. An article on induced abortions in humans would be a different matter, as it could link 'abortion' to this article. But, there's never been much support for splitting the article despite all the ground it must cover (note section 7 of this article, which gets short shrift). JJL (talk) 15:00, 17 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Since we have a separate article on Miscarriage, it surely makes sense for this article to concentrate on induced abortions, particularly since that is the primary meaning of the word in practical usage? I'm not sure that the description of the procedure is particularly "plain", either - it seems somewhat propagandic (perhaps unintentionally), hiding the fact that the embryo/fetus dies behind the jargon phrase "prior to viability". Then the second paragraph reads (as I said above) largely like an argument in favor of legalized abortion, while the widespread point of view that there's something ethically dubious about all this is relegated to a half-sentence at the end of the introductory section. W. P. Uzer (talk) 07:46, 18 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
It can be difficult for a person who believes that "personhood" occurs at the moment of conception to accept that not everyone holds that belief. Thus, for those that believe that personhood begins when the fetus can survive on its own, at birth, or some later date, the question of death of a "person" does not apply. If you were to look back through the numerous pages of discussion you would find that this has been discussed at great length without agreement--which is as it should be since society at large has not come to an agreement either. I'm going to paste this section from the abortion debate article here:
Establishing the point in time when a zygote/embryo/fetus becomes a "person" is open to debate since the definition of personhood is not universally agreed upon. Traditionally, the concept of personhood has entailed the concept of soul, a metaphysical concept referring to a non-corporeal or extra-corporeal dimension of human being. However, in the "modern" world, the concepts of subjectivity and intersubjectivity, personhood, mind, and self have come to encompass a number of aspects of human being previously considered the domain of the "soul."[1][2] Thus, while the historical question has been: when does the soul enter the body, in modern terms, the question could be put instead: at what point does the developing individual develop personhood or selfhood.[3]
Related issues attached to the question of the beginning of human personhood, include the legal status, bodily integrity and subjectivity of mothers[4] and the philosophical concept of "natality," or "the distinctively human capacity to initiate a new beginning" which a new human life embodies.[5] Gandydancer (talk) 12:53, 18 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
That a death occurs is contentious. (In particular, I would disagree.) It's been discussed here ad infinitum and the definition used--a consensus version of what appears in medical texts--has won out after a long and assisted discussion. The article does strongly concentrate on induced abortions, but the lede is more complete. Short of an article split, which has never gained any real traction, this seems like an acceptable compromise to me. We can't ignore miscarriage and induced animal abortions and still be encyclopedic. JJL (talk) 16:04, 18 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
What he's proposing isn't biased, it's straight fact. Does the baby live after an abortion ? No. Since something can't be both dead and alive (unless it's Schroedinger's Cat) it means the baby was killed. Yes, I realize it's a loaded term and I would oppose it for that reason.  KoshVorlon. We are all Kosh   16:41, 18 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
"Killing" is far more neutral than "murder". The notion "killing" can be applied on a broader set of situations than "murder". You can get killed in a car accident. But nobody says, you are murderd by a car accident. The use of "murder" is far more restricted and far more loaded and must fulfill some criteria. Abortion complies with all criteria of a murder which would even then justify a lead sentence saying "Abortion is the murder of an innocent, unborn child." Actually, my proposal is far less loaded. --Datu Dong (talk) 17:34, 18 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  1. ^ Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of Modern Identity, Harvard University Press, 1992.
  2. ^ Michel Foucault, The Hermeneutics of the Subject, New York: Picador, 2005.
  3. ^ The question could also be put historically. The concept of "personhood" is of fairly recent vintage, and cannot be found in the 1828 edition of 1828 edition of Webster's American Dictionary of the English Language, nor even as late as 1913. A search in dictionaries and encyclopedia for the term "personhood" generally redirects to "person". The American Heritage Dictionary at Yahoo has: "The state or condition of being a person, especially having those qualities that confer distinct individuality."
  4. ^ Susan Bordo, "Are Mothers Persons?", Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture and the Body, Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 2003, 71-97.
  5. ^ Nikolas Kompridis, "The Idea of a New Beginning: A romantic source of normativity and freedom," Philosophical Romanticism, New York: Routledge, 2006, 48-49.
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