I haven’t read the entire thread very carefully, but one obvious-to-me argument that I haven’t seen raised is:
People will get abortions whether they are legal or not. If they are illegal, they will be much more dangerous; that means more deaths from “back-alley” abortions. More people will be criminals and that means higher law enforcement costs, jail costs, and/or crime rates, which makes your (city, state, not so much in the case of a nation) less desirable and hurts economic activity.
I believe similar arguments have been made on Less Wrong about the “war on drugs.” Prostitution and gambling come to mind as other key examples.
I can imagine a time in the future when technology allows us to live in a world where abortions are unnecessary, since birth control of various types (plan B is a huge step in this direction) and simple laboratory fetus nurturing environments will displace it, but that time is certainly not here right now.
People demonstrably commit murder and theft, abuse children, perform all kinds of atrocities, even if those acts are illegal… but I don’t know anyone who considers that a legitimate reason to legalize those acts.
That makes me suspect that people who present the “people will do X whether it’s illegal or not, so we should legalize X” argument for any particular X use it merely merely a soldier for the correct side, not as a compelling argument.
If you don’t expect people to do something, there is no reason to make it “illegal.” But “illegal” can mean many different things. It is illegal to jaywalk, but that will only rarely get you a ticket, if that. It is illegal to murder people, and if you murder someone you may well be executed. It is not (I believe) illegal to commit adultery, but it is grounds for divorce. It is not illegal to lie, but it is frowned upon.
There is some scale of “how much punishment is appropriate for this act.” Acts like lying are very hard to prosecute. Acts like jaywalking aren’t very problematic. There is some amount of punishment which is ideal, and some amount of enforcement which is ideal.
When people say “people will do X whether it’s illegal or not” the argument I perceive them to be making (and intended to make) is that increasing the penalties or prosecution for the crime in question will, at the margin, have a worse effect on crimes and welfare than leaving the laws constant. In part because everyone who is persecuting someone for having an abortion or smoking a joint is not trying to catch someone who has kidnapped children or committed murder, and adding more resources (at the margin) to those endeavors will be more worthwhile.
That’s a fine use of the principle of charity, and I endorse it on those grounds.
And I certainly agree that in many cases criminalizing (or more harshly prosecuting already-criminal) activity has a worse effect than legalizing it, and that this is absolutely an important argument to make where relevant.
I agree. This argument is only convincing for victimless “crimes”, and even then, to simply point out that a given “crime” is victimless is better still.
People will get abortions whether they are legal or not. If they are illegal, they will be much more dangerous; that means more deaths from “back-alley” abortions. More people will be criminals and that means higher law enforcement costs, jail costs, and/or crime rates, which makes your (city, state, not so much in the case of a nation) less desirable and hurts economic activity.
As of a few years ago, when we covered this in one of my classes, the average age of an abortion providing doctor in the United States was over sixty, because any doctor in training is allowed to opt out of learning the procedure, performing it is emotionally taxing and a threat to one’s livelihood, and most of those motivated to perform it are those who were adults before Roe v. Wade and remember what it was like before it was legal.
I can imagine a time in the future when technology allows us to live in a world where abortions are unnecessary, since birth control of various types (plan B is a huge step in this direction) and simple laboratory fetus nurturing environments will displace it, but that time is certainly not here right now.
In the past, I’ve argued that this is where we need to go; conception and therefore pregnancy should be entirely voluntary. It was pointed out to me recently that there is a relatively new form of birth control, Implanon: it has a failure rate of only 0.05% (making it the most reliable form of birth control), and each implantation takes only minutes and lasts for three years. There are also IUDs, which have a slightly higher failure rate (~0.7%) and are slightly more invasive to implant, but last longer than Implanon and generally cost less.
Knowing this, it becomes extremely apparent that for any person who wants to prevent abortions, the instrumentally rational action is to promote implantation with one of these highly reliable, long-lasting forms of birth control for as many women as possible. (It would be great if we could be more egalitarian about it, but male hormonal birth control pills were only invented last year and aren’t commercially available yet.) I might take the “pro-life” movement seriously if I see any sign of such actions, but I haven’t yet.
I suspect that that is true, although I would not be surprised if it wasn’t “far” lower; I would expect more than 5 but less than 100 abortions stopped per complication from a dangerous abortion. I don’t have any figures to back that up though. I’d be interested to see if anyone has done any work on the subject.
I haven’t read the entire thread very carefully, but one obvious-to-me argument that I haven’t seen raised is:
People will get abortions whether they are legal or not. If they are illegal, they will be much more dangerous; that means more deaths from “back-alley” abortions. More people will be criminals and that means higher law enforcement costs, jail costs, and/or crime rates, which makes your (city, state, not so much in the case of a nation) less desirable and hurts economic activity.
I believe similar arguments have been made on Less Wrong about the “war on drugs.” Prostitution and gambling come to mind as other key examples.
I can imagine a time in the future when technology allows us to live in a world where abortions are unnecessary, since birth control of various types (plan B is a huge step in this direction) and simple laboratory fetus nurturing environments will displace it, but that time is certainly not here right now.
People demonstrably commit murder and theft, abuse children, perform all kinds of atrocities, even if those acts are illegal… but I don’t know anyone who considers that a legitimate reason to legalize those acts.
That makes me suspect that people who present the “people will do X whether it’s illegal or not, so we should legalize X” argument for any particular X use it merely merely a soldier for the correct side, not as a compelling argument.
If you don’t expect people to do something, there is no reason to make it “illegal.” But “illegal” can mean many different things. It is illegal to jaywalk, but that will only rarely get you a ticket, if that. It is illegal to murder people, and if you murder someone you may well be executed. It is not (I believe) illegal to commit adultery, but it is grounds for divorce. It is not illegal to lie, but it is frowned upon.
There is some scale of “how much punishment is appropriate for this act.” Acts like lying are very hard to prosecute. Acts like jaywalking aren’t very problematic. There is some amount of punishment which is ideal, and some amount of enforcement which is ideal.
When people say “people will do X whether it’s illegal or not” the argument I perceive them to be making (and intended to make) is that increasing the penalties or prosecution for the crime in question will, at the margin, have a worse effect on crimes and welfare than leaving the laws constant. In part because everyone who is persecuting someone for having an abortion or smoking a joint is not trying to catch someone who has kidnapped children or committed murder, and adding more resources (at the margin) to those endeavors will be more worthwhile.
That’s a fine use of the principle of charity, and I endorse it on those grounds.
And I certainly agree that in many cases criminalizing (or more harshly prosecuting already-criminal) activity has a worse effect than legalizing it, and that this is absolutely an important argument to make where relevant.
I agree. This argument is only convincing for victimless “crimes”, and even then, to simply point out that a given “crime” is victimless is better still.
As of a few years ago, when we covered this in one of my classes, the average age of an abortion providing doctor in the United States was over sixty, because any doctor in training is allowed to opt out of learning the procedure, performing it is emotionally taxing and a threat to one’s livelihood, and most of those motivated to perform it are those who were adults before Roe v. Wade and remember what it was like before it was legal.
Do you have any references for that claim? I’d be very interested in seeing the concrete statistics (and how exactly they were arrived at).
In the past, I’ve argued that this is where we need to go; conception and therefore pregnancy should be entirely voluntary. It was pointed out to me recently that there is a relatively new form of birth control, Implanon: it has a failure rate of only 0.05% (making it the most reliable form of birth control), and each implantation takes only minutes and lasts for three years. There are also IUDs, which have a slightly higher failure rate (~0.7%) and are slightly more invasive to implant, but last longer than Implanon and generally cost less.
Knowing this, it becomes extremely apparent that for any person who wants to prevent abortions, the instrumentally rational action is to promote implantation with one of these highly reliable, long-lasting forms of birth control for as many women as possible. (It would be great if we could be more egalitarian about it, but male hormonal birth control pills were only invented last year and aren’t commercially available yet.) I might take the “pro-life” movement seriously if I see any sign of such actions, but I haven’t yet.
The number of deaths that would be caused by dangerous abortions is far lower than the number of abortions that would be prevented.
I suspect that that is true, although I would not be surprised if it wasn’t “far” lower; I would expect more than 5 but less than 100 abortions stopped per complication from a dangerous abortion. I don’t have any figures to back that up though. I’d be interested to see if anyone has done any work on the subject.
And gun ownership.