Newsgroups: soc.men
Subject: Re: You want to win.
From: econrad@cs.wright.edu (Eric van Fossen Conrad)
Date: Wed, 15 Apr 1992 03:39:25 GMT
Organization: Wright State University

In article <43582@as0c.sei.cmu.edu> firth@sei.cmu.edu (Robert Firth) writes:
>In article <1992Apr14.025246.17377@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> hpzg0650@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Hale P Zengingonul) writes:
Hale:
>>  I can't believe there are women around who are against abortion.

I can, for the same reason that there are people who vote for
everything from Nazis to Populists to Republicans to Democrats
to Socialists to Communists in presidential elections.  (Not to
mention those who don't vote for all sorts of reasons.)  You can
call it statistical variation.  People are different and any large
population will contain lots of variation including some with
doubtful survival value.

Robert:
>Given that, worldwide, the biggest single use of abortion is to kill
>unwanted female foetuses before they become unwanted girl babies,
>and given that a recent UNESCO report estimated that, in the past
>decade, more than one hundred million surplus females had been
>disposed of by abortion and infanticide, I have no problem in
>believing that some women are against abortion.

Your grouping of abortion with infanticide makes me suspicious of
your citation.  While the technology certainly exists to make a
fairly early determination of the sex of the fetus, I question
the extent of its use worldwide.  I know from friends who have
had babies in the past few years that it is quite common for
parents in the U.S. (and I would presume also Canada and
Western Europe as well) to know the sex of the fetus but I would
guess that most "First World" abortions are performed before
such tests are performed.  Since I am not a parent and am not familiar
with the technology, I'll allow that I might be completely wrong
about this.
 
Outside of the U.S., Canada, and Western Europe and a few other
scattered wealthy countries, I suspect that only the wealthiest
families know the sex of the child in advance of birth.  But
hell, if anyone told me that every college student would be able
to afford a pocket calculator (and with trig functions, logs, and
even buttons to abuse statistics with!) within ten years of the time I
graduated from high school, I would have laughed at them.  So maybe
the technology is cheap and readily available all over the world.

So suppose that the situation is just as you say.  I doubt
that it would have much effect one way or another on the
distribution by sex of proponents and opponents of abortion or
even infanticide.  If the decision to abort or to kill a child
is made for economic reasons, then the mother has at least as much
if not more to lose as others in the family unit by not aborting.
Keeping unhealthy or unproductive children alive means less to eat for
her.

Robert:
>The interesting question, surely, is this: how long until women
>who are for abortion have eliminated themselves from the gene pool?

I trust that you are being facetious.  Just in case you really
are serious, just why do you think that a person's attitudes towards
abortion might be genetic?  But if it is genetic, then your question
isn't as interesting as this one:  how long until women who are
against abortion have eliminated themselves from the gene pool?

--eric
-- 
-- Eric Conrad
This space for rent.
Xref: sparky soc.men:8287 soc.women:8841