As far as whether to legalize abortion or not to legalize it goes, I feel that it should be legal. Although I am against abortion, I am sane enough to believe that we should keep God out of politics. I feel that abortion should be allowed in cases of sexual abuse, but not when a woman is 8 months into her pregnancy.

Once again, very well written article. I enjoyed reading it and hope that others enjoyed it as well.

I don’t understand why people are so astonished or annoyed by the study. Isn’t this common knowledge in the US? If you prohibit abortion women will try to have it nevertheless. That’s exactly what history teaches us.

During the Nazi time, abortion was prohibit by death penalty but even under these conditions, abortions were practiced . Women asked her boyfriend to push her down the stairs or to beat her stomach, they went to charlatans or “backyard doctors”. Women helping pregant women doing illegal abortions were called “Engelmacherinnen” – angel makers – because of the high death rates. They typically used rusty dress hangers or poke around with a quill. Today, some medical exhibitions exist where such “instruments” are collected and presented. It’s horrifying.

I think one of the problems in the whole debate is the non-drawed distiction between, what Max Weber called, “Gesinnungsethik” und “Verantwortungsethik”. “Gesinnungsethik” refers to an ethic which is defined by radical, religious foundational principles while in another sense it pertains to a person’s faithfulness to such principles from the perspective of intention. A good translation is “absolute ethic” or “ethic of conviction”. At the other hand, “Verantwortungsethik” is an ethic which takes the (political) consequences into account, so “ethic of responsibility” seems a good translation to me.

Arguing that abortion is murder and therefore it should be prohibited or that it is a women’s right to choose is another level of argumentation as the weightings of the pro’s and con’s for different politcal ways and means reaching a political goal like the reduction of teen pregancy rates or abortion rates. I’m not very familiar with the actual debate in the US but it’s my impresson in general that political disputes are often framed in terms of an ethic of conviction. That’s an appropriate political (and very emotional) mean for mobilization supporters in social movements but it’s very problematic if you are politically responsible, have to bargain and to find political compromises that are stabile and supported by a majority. “morality” or “values”, that’s my impression, are catchphrases mostly occupied by politicians of the political right.

So if liberals have a political disadvantage in the voters’ perception of their “morality” why aren’t there more discussions in terms of an ethic of repsonsibility? Or do they also exist? As a politician, don’t waste taxes for anti-sex-educational “abstinence only” programs. They don’t work, that’s the uniform result of more than 30 years of social scientific work. Respect the decades of experiences and successes in other countries, esp. the statistics in sex-positive European countries like the Netherlands where the pregancy and abortion rates are drastically lower than in the US. If you really want to protect unborn children as most as possible, implement the most promising political means. Politicians denying the facts are irresponsible. And that’s immoral.