Anti-Choice is Fundamentally Wrong

I admire Deathroe.com for being more consistent, than anti-choicers who make abortion-ban exceptions, with the doctrine that "all human life is sacred" (this means that regardless of circumstances, people should do everything possible to make an organism with human DNA stay alive, except killing another organism with human DNA).  Deathroe.com argues that abortion should never be allowed, even if the mother will probably die giving birth.  But would Deathroe.com's supporters force a woman go into labor even if it would kill her, depriving her husband of a wife and her children of mother?  Hopefully not.  Their argument is fundamentally flawed by being based on assumptions about supernatural reward and punishment from a supernatural authority figure, on which I will elaborate later in this essay.

Anti-Choice Ideology: Religious Totalitarianism

Extreme anti-choicers want to all bans abortion, euthanasia, fetal stem cell research, and contraception that prevent uterine implantation of a fertilized egg; while opposing all wars, death sentences, and suicides.  (To be more consistent with their doctrine, they should also support banning life-shorteners, or slow suicide, like cigarette smoking and pollution.)  They make such public policy decisions because they assume that a supernatural being exists, presume that this being desires that only he is to allowed to kill organisms with human DNA, and they expect everyone to do whatever they presume this deity desires.  They make other assumptions about their deity too.  According to them, God as a plan?and reates?every life for a urpose,?nbsp;meaning that their deity pre-destines fertilized human eggs to do particular things in his grand plan for all of humanity, which makes them worry that abortion and other things they oppose are thwarting God plans (ex. of rhetoric they use: hat if Jesus were aborted??.  They assume that God gives a soul/consciousness to fertilized human eggs, which makes them imagine embryos protesting to being aborted.  On the other hand, they assume that God gave people free will, which contradicts the notion of predestination.  They also believe that fetuses are innocent, while assuming that no one is innocent because of riginal sin.?nbsp; The religious assumptions of Christian anti-choicers are based their own interpretation of their religious text, the bible, and/or on what they hear other Christian anti-choicers say.  What does the bible actually say about abortion? This website says that the bible does not condemn abortion, and is actually anti-women and anti-babies: http://ffrf.org/nontracts/abortion.php. According to another site: he Biblical God is NOT pro-life, he advocates child murder, infanticide, child abuse and abortion?(http://www.evilbible.com/god's%20not%20pro-life.htm).
 

Anti-Choice Propoganda: Make People Emotional, Then Mislead Them

Since their assumptions are not based on sufficient evidence, they use misinformation, blood, gore, and death to scare people into following the anti-choice doctrine.  Although they say that they are against a "culture of death," the "pro-life" websites actually focus on death.  They talk about murder, genocide, the Holocaust, and women who've died.  They often use the same gory pictures of supposedly aborted fetuses.  The point is to make people emotional enough that they have difficulty sorting out factual information from misinformation.

Anti-choicers deliberately mislead people about the harms of abortion.  They insist that abortion causes breast cancer, contrary to what researchers have found: "having an abortion or miscarriage does not increase a woman subsequent risk of developing breast cancer" (http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Risk/abortion-miscarriage).  As a medical/surgical procedure, abortion carries risks like many other procedures.  However, going into labor/having a C-section carries more risks than an early-term abortion, a fact that "pro-life" websites ignore or brush off.  Furthermore, they deny or ignore that a ban on abortions would lead to more illegal/unregulated abortions, which have greater health risks.

The extremists also stereotype women who get abortions as immoral, uncaring about children, or ignorant about abortion.  The fact is that women don't get abortions on a whim or out of some hatred of children.  Most women who have aborted either already had children or planned on having children in the future.  They care about children, but abort an unintended pregnancy because they are unprepared to be what they think a good mother should be.  Whether or not a woman aborts depends pon circumstances surrounding specific pregnancies rather than characteristics of the mother?(http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=623164&dopt=Abstract).  While some women who got abortions in the past may have been ignorant about the effects of abotion, this is not as likely today.  Laws and regulations require that patients be informed about alternatives and medical risks, and some states, if not all, require counseling before an abortion can be performed on a patient.  Also, there is plenty of information about abortion on the Internet, and the vast majority of people in America have some access to the Internet by now.  Unfortunately, many are mislead by "pro-life" websites.
 

What Anti-Choicers Won Tell You about Abortion Effects

Anti-choicers also lie that abortion is traumatizing and more distressing to a woman than keeping her child or giving the child up for adoption.  Studies have found that females who gave up a child for adoption were usually more psychologically distressed than females who chose to have abort.  One study found that teen "aborters were found to have the most developed future time perspective, lowest demand for external approval, and lowest dependency needs" (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=7145498&dopt=Abstract).  Furthermore, a female stress and other negative psychological states tend to decrease after an abortion that she chose without feeling coerced.  The majority of aborters (over 80%) do not regret their decision.  Teens who kept their children, on the hand, "were found to have the least developed conceptualization of the future, highest level of anxiety and rumination, most external locus of control, and had internalized the most traditional notion of female sex roles" (ibid). 
 
Distressed teen mothers who feel little internal locus of control (low self-efficacy) and have plans little for the future of their children are probably more likely to be poor mothers (ability-wise and financially), which may be part of the reason why abortion has been correlated with better societal health.  Increased abortion rates have been correlated with decreased crime rates and increased educational attainment, labor market achievement (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legalized_abortion_and_crime_effect, http://www.wws.princeton.edu/chw/lectures/lecture_pdfs/popeleches_abortionban.pdf). 
Legalization of abortion has also been "associated with a steady decrease in the homicides of toddlers" (http://repositories.cdlib.org/uclastat/papers/2002010112/) and a decrease in infant mortality rates: he increase in the legal abortion rate is the single most important factor [compared to edicaid, subsidized family planning services for low-income women, maternal and infant care projects,?and chooling and poverty in reductions in both white and nonwhite neonatal mortality rates?(http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=7030800&dopt=Abstract).  One study found that ohorts born after abortion was legalized experienced a significant reduction in a number of adverse outcomes. Our estimates imply that the marginal child who was not born due to legalization would have been 70% more likely to live in a single parent family, 40% more likely to live in poverty, 50% more likely to receive welfare, and 35% more likely to die as an infant?(http://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/6034.html).  Contrary to anti-choice propaganda, abortion is relieving to many females with unwanted pregnancy, and legalization of abortion has had some good consequences for societal well-being.

General Universal Moral Guideline: Minimize Suffering & Maximize  Happiness

Anti-choice extremists ignore whatever facts don't fit their ideology.  They're so blinded by dogmas that they disregard intellectual honesty.  One of their dogmas is that after death, followers of God will be spared the punishment of "hell," or infinite suffering.  Instead, they will be rewarded with "heaven," or infinite happiness.  While it's nice that they're trying to minimize suffering and maximize well-being by saving people from doing things ("sins") that will make them go to hell, the anti-choicers' actions are misguided.  It's unfair for the anti-choicers to make others suffer in life just because they have dogmas about supernatural reward and punishment. According to Deathroe.com's anti-all-abortions-no-matter-what stance, it's better if a woman dies from birthing complications than if a fetus dies from abortion. Some "pro-lifers" disobey the doctrine by allowing abortion in the case of rape, incest, or threat to mother's health/life. These people, as well as the pro-choice majority in world, think that abortion is allowable in cases where forcing a mother to give birth would cause her fetus, her and society more overall suffering in life (not after death).
 

Some Factors to Consider in Order to Figure Out the Morality of an Abortion or of Abortion Bans

You could argue that once pregnant, abortion should be avoided because bearing the child is a less harmful alternative.  However, giving birth is physically more risky to the mother (the mother health and life has more suffering/well-being consequences for her community) than an early-term abortion and, depending on her circumstances, there could be other harmful consequences for her and society if she remains pregnant and gives birth.  So, bearing the child is not always the less harmful alternative.

Some who are personally against abortion have the good sense not to blindly impose their view on others through law.  Anti-choicers, however, often translate their personal dogmas into public policy decisions without thinking through public policy effects.  A ban on abortion does not simply mean keeping pregnant women from aborting.  It means forcing pregnant women to continue nurturing fetuses in their bodies and to go through labor or get C-sections.  It means that the government will have to keep track of women, like they do in China, to see whether or not they are pregnant and to make sure that they don't get illegal abortions.  In other words, it means that women would lose privacy rights and the right to control their own bodies.  In deciding whether or not to ban abortion, one should consider the harms of forcing people to do things against their own will, as well as other costs/harms, like imprisonment and/or execution of people, resources spent on implementation (including policing, court expenses, prison/execution), problems from over-population, an abortion black market, neglected children, etc.

Alternatives to Government Coercion for Decreasing Abortion Rates

Reduce the percentage of pregnancies ending in abortion
Promote adoption. 
Is it viable to transfer an embryo to another uterus?
Reducing unemployment might reduce abortion rates, since a rise in unemployment consistently increases abortion rates (Blank, George & London. "State Abortion Rates." 1996). 

Prevent unintended pregnancy
Some women resort to abortion as a form of birth control because they failed to or improperly used methods of contraception (actions taken to decrease the chances of getting pregnant, including abstaining from intercourse, using barriers, using progestin pills/patches/rings/injections, & etc.) or because the objects used in contraception malfunctioned (ex: condom breakage despite proper usage).  "In several Eastern European countries (with very limited access to alternative forms of birth control) legalization of abortion was associated with 25 percent decline in birthrates [Frejka, 1983].  A smaller impact of abortion legalization on birthrates was observed in the United States, in the 5-10 percent range, perhaps reflecting better availability of contraception in the United States [Sklar and Berkov, 1974; Bauman et al. 1977; Levine et al. 1995]" (Kane and Steiger. "Teen Motherhood and Abortion Access." 1996. p. 475).

How to prevent unintended pregnancy:
1.  Educate
People are more likely to become pregnant when they don understand how pregnancy occurs, how to prevent it, or what the real costs and benefits of pregnancy are (like girls who mistakenly think that pregnancy will make their partners love them more).  To decrease pregnancy-out-ignorance, we should educate children before they become sexually active about sexual relationships (helpful vs. harmful relationships), human reproductive biology, contraception (proper usage and pros & cons of different methods), and pregnancy (personal & societal costs & benefits and what to do if pregnant). 
2.  Allow access to contraception, so that people will be less likely to use abortion for birth control.

Why Pro-Morality Requires Pro-Choice

The point of morality is for people to cooperate with each other so that everyone can live more happily than each would on his/her own.  Pro-choicers recognize that morality sometimes requires people to sacrifice their lives for others.  Otherwise, we would not have police, firemen, and soldiers risking their lives to help others.  Anti-choicers, on the other hand, think that each individual life is acred.?nbsp; Their stance is very individual life is the end and can be the means of others.? According to such a stance, it doesn matter how one life might help others, and one life is more important than numerous lives.  This is not morality, since it discourages cooperation by making people think that their individual lives are of utmost importance.  To pro-choicers, humanity (the lives of all of humans, present and future) is more important than just one life.   If anti-choicers agree that the survival and freedom of people are enough to justify killing terrorists and risk getting killed, then they agree with what John Stuart Mill said: ar is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.?nbsp; Abortion is ugly, but sometimes it prevents worse things from happening.  It easy to argue that all abortions should be banned, period.  However, it is moral to recognize that government coercion may increase societal suffering.   Decreasing women control over their reproduction, by banning birth control, also decreases societal well-being, while men get to have babies whenever and with whomever they want.

Why Pro-Liberty Requires Pro-Choice

Like most things in life, morality is not one-decision-fits-all-cases.  If it were, we might as well be programmed like robots to automatically do the same things.  Some people won allow others to have the liberty of exercising their own judgment, preferring instead that everyone submit to a totalitarianism based on dogmas about a supernatural dictator.  The point of liberty, or ree will,?is to help maximize well-being.  Well-being requires freedom from coercion, since coercion increases anxiety and learned helplessness, while freedom increases happiness and self-control (with the exception that an overwhelming number of equally good choices can decrease happiness).  The right choice is pro-choice: opposed to government coercion of individuals' reproduction and supportive of better ways to decrease the number of abortions.

Usage of Terms

Anti-choicers often call pro-choicers "anti-life" or "pro-abortion," but these terms are inaccurate, since the goal of pro-choicers is netiher to make people die nor to make them have abortions.  Anti-choicers argue that some pro-choicers are pro-abortion so that they can make money from the "abortion industry," but this like saying that doctors are pro-injuries so that they can make money from the hospital industry.  Pro-choicers and doctors would prefer that abortion and injuries were avoided in the first place, so that they can focus on other issues instead.  Pro-choicers are pro-liberty, esp. with regards to birth control.  The pro-choicers who understand that liberty is necessary for morality can be called "pro-morality." 
The term "anti-choice" is appropriate, since anti-choicers do not allow people to use contraceptives, and their ultimate agenda is a totalitarian society based on their interpretation of their edition of the bible.  Not all people who advocate banning abortion are anti-choice, but abortion bans would deprive women of liberty; so these people are still, in a sense, anti-women's-liberty. "Pro-life" might be appropriate for those who oppose one organism w/ human DNA killing another organism w/ human DNA (which means opposing abortion, war, death penalty, etc.) and oppose an organism choosing to kill itself. As I have already explained in my essay, morality is not about individual organisms staying alive regardless of suffering; it's about minimizing suffering and maximizing well-being of as many individual organisms as possible.  Thus, "pro-life" is anti-morality.  Any way I cut it, people who advocate abortion bans are anti-liberty, anti-morality, and/or anti-choice.

Notes

Feel free to post questions, comments, or suggestions.  I will be adding to this essay as I come upon more evidence and points to address.  To better understand liberty and morality, read John Stuart Mill On Liberty and Utilitarianism at http://www.utilitarian.net/jsmill/.  See also an article on "an atheist's view of morality" at http://www.ebonmusings.org/atheism/carrot&stick.html.