Talk:Abortion facts

Citation for "murder"

Since asking for a citation on the page is a bannable offense, I'll ask for it here. Can we have a source conclusively showing that abortion is in fact murder, the crime of unlawfully taking a human's life with prior intent? Barikada 01:35, 24 January 2008 (EST)

I'm not sure what you would define as "conclusively showing".

Also, despite the link to murder and that article defining it as unlawful killing, "murder" can also be defined as the taking of an innocent human life (as distinct from, for example, executing a criminal). By that definition, it doesn't have to be shown that abortion is illegal to classify it as murder.

In any case, in some places abortion is illegal, so that would make it murder even by the "unlawfal killing" definition.

Philip J. Rayment 04:35, 24 January 2008 (EST)

Abortion is not always a crime. --User:Joaquín Martínez, talk 09:30, 24 January 2008 (EST)

Who said murder == crime? SW^{♠·♥·♣} 09:37, 24 January 2008 (EST)

As I indicated above, our article on murder does. Philip J. Rayment 14:58, 24 January 2008 (EST)

I don't think I understand what you all were debating about, but I tried to help. Forgive me if it didn't help that much... oops, I didn't see that one of his links was to a liberal site. Sorry!-MexMax 09:48, 24 January 2008 (EST)

Wouldn't the attribution guidelines tell us to say "conservatives believe that abortion is murder", in the same way we say "evolutionists believe the earth is 4.59Gy old?". People can disagree with the line "abortion is murder", so by definition it is opinion and shouldn't be in a factual encyclopedia; nobody can disagree with "conservatives believe that abortion is murder", and it is therefore a fact, and encyclopedia-worthy. HelpJazz 11:25, 24 January 2008 (EST)

In most of the cases it is truth but not always. --User:Joaquín Martínez, talk 13:22, 24 January 2008 (EST)

Yeah, I'd be cool with that. Less so about use of the term "Evolutionist", but that's another argument for another day. Barikada 15:38, 24 January 2008 (EST)

Before concluding that abortion is in fact murder, one must define life. This is of course a common issue when discussing abortion, and I'm sure you are familiar with it. For some the answer is simple: when sexual reproduction has successfully taken place and pregnancy initiated, life is present. There is a problem with this definition, however. Does a collection of stem cells really have feelings? It certainly has no consciousness, and no nervous system, which means that it cannot think or use any sense perception. It has, in other words no experience of life, and therefore it is not alive. A teratoma is also a collection of stem cells present in a human body, but I have never heard of anyone considering a teratoma to be alive. So, administrators of conservapedia, how do you define life? If you cannot give a plausible definition I strongly suggest the removal of the definition of abortion as a cause of death. -SeanWalter 20:37 18 March 2007 (SE)

If you can prove that what's being aborted is not a human baby, then we'll remove it. Karajou 15:48, 18 March 2008 (EDT)

In a sense, that is what he just did. However, his reasoning is dependent on his assumption that life is defined by the thing having an "experience of life". What he hasn't done is explain why that should be the defining factor. Philip J. Rayment 21:50, 18 March 2008 (EDT)

Doesnt the Bible define life as starting with the first breath ? If it does then abortion is not against Gods will, because you cant kill something thats not yet alive . Markr 12:23, 11 October 2008 (EDT)

Ten arguments

I'm not sure that the recent addition of a list of ten arguments is all that encyclopaedic, and some of the reasons themselves are a bit shaky. The first part of No. 5 doesn't even make sense to me. Nos. 1 and 2, as worded, make no distinction between abortion and capital punishment, a self-defence killing, etc. They are poorly worded. For No. 3, I don't think it's fair to say that adoption achieves the same result, although similar might be okay. Philip J. Rayment 23:02, 30 March 2008 (EDT)

Problems with most of "ten reasons against abortion"

• 1-2: Both these reasons accept the statement "humanity begins at conception" as an undisputed fact. Because it is disputed, you must prove it before using it.
• 3: Just because adoption works, abortion is not necessarily bad, what if a woman simply did not want to go through childbirth?
• 4: Even if abortion does have some negative health effects, it does not mean it should be illegal. We allow alcohol despite negative health effects.
• 6: This is an opinion, not a fact.
• 7: Women already can have control over their bodies through birth control and abstinence.
• 8: Many Americans oppose the Iraq War. Does that make funding it with tax dollars immoral?

Blinkadyblink^RAGE 23:24, 30 March 2008 (EDT)

Problem with bias in cited material

The cited websites for this article have an unfair bias towards one side of this issue, i.e., the sources are written from a viewpoint that is not conducive for fair and even consideration of the overall topic of Abortion Facts. Specifically, I have a problem with the trend for these sources to adhere to a conservative, Christian viewpoint, one which has its own bias towards abortion in general. This skews the article's objectivity, and I think that this article should be re-written, or at the very least, re-cited to include sources which provide a more comprehensive, even view of abortion and any topics that deal with abortion. Reeperbahn

Plagiarism

The entire section "Ten Arguments Against Abortion" has been copied, word-for-word, from another site, [1]. While there is a reference link, there is no indication that it is the entire section that has been copied (rather than the reference being a source for information in the 10th argument). Quoted material should be indicated as such, with quotation marks and in-text attribution. There is no in-text attribution. There's no indication that the author has given permission for such a large section of her work to be quoted here. There is no title given for the reference, no author, and no date of retrieval. AND, probably because it was copied word-for-word, there are no sources for any of the ten arguments. This section needs to be removed; Conservapedia editors should not represent others' work as their own. --Hsmom 21:30, 10 October 2008 (EDT)

I agree, and I will remove it, not just because it's copied, but because the arguments are poor (if the arguments were good, perhaps they could be rewritten instead, but as it stands, it's not worth keeping, although that's not to say that some of the points could not be reinstated in our own words. Philip J. Rayment

will work on it. --User:Joaquín Martínez, talk 08:38, 11 October 2008 (EDT)

Joaquin, unfortunately just putting quotation marks around the entire section does not solve the problem. It is unethical to take an article written by someone else on another site (and a commercial one at that), and copy the entire thing into an article here. When you do this, you are taking traffic away from the original site. On a commercial site, the author (or the site owner) makes an income from their writing via the ads on the site. The income is based on the number of pageviews and other site statistics. When you copy the entire article here, you eliminate the need for the reader to click through to the original site, thus depriving the author of appropriate compensation for their work. It's stealing, and the original author is losing income because of it. Even if the site is created by a government agency, and therefore is in the public domain, when you take traffic away from their web site, they lose pageviews, which ultimately could affect their funding and in turn the existence of their job. The appropriate way to use another author's material is to quote part of it, with a reference to the rest. You might say "Author Jane Smith, in her article This and Such, argues that "whatever the quote is". <ref>Jane Smith, ''This and Such'', retrieved 01/01/08 [URL]</ref> As a basic guideline, if you are cutting and pasting something without integrating the material into the existing article, then you are probably plagiarizing. I am removing the "Ten Arguments Against Abortion" material, and I'll leave it to you to decide how you'd like to incorporate some of the information into the existing article. --Hsmom 12:19, 11 October 2008 (EDT)

So sorry, I don't agree: It is not "the entire thing" although it is an important part. Better than "depriving the author of appropriate compensation" we could be sending readers to his site. We are acting according with the copyrights as we are not claiming that part to be our original writing but the author's and giving a link to his site. --User:Joaquín Martínez, talk 19:51, 11 October 2008 (EDT)

Joaquin - I stand corrected. You did not copy the entire article. My apologies. The article, Ten Arguments For Abortion and Against Abortion, included a list of ten pro-life arguments and a list of ten pro-choice arguments. You copied only the ten pro-life arguments. Nevertheless, this constitutes fifty percent of the article - a substantial part, and as you noted an important part. I do not see how this is not copyright infringement. Joseph Gibaldi, in the Plagiarism chapter of the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, writes "...reproducing and distributing an entire copyrighted document or significant portions of it without obtaining permission to do so from the author or publisher is an infringement of copyright law and a legal offense, even if the violator acknowledges the source. This is true for documents published on the Internet or in print." "Fair use", as I understand it, does not apply when you copy a significant portion of a work. I assume that you did not intend to be unethical or to plagiarize. I'm sure that you didn't realize that avoiding copyright infringement involves more than just mentioning the original author. There are other issues with this section too; for example, you did not mention any of the references from the original article, nor did you include references for any of the facts mentioned in the "ten arguments". This section needs to be removed promptly, lest Conservapedia be taken to task by the original author for copyright infringement. Why not write your own "Ten Arguments", with properly researched and sourced facts? While it takes significantly more time and skill than cutting and pasting, it will no doubt result in a much better article - and isn't that the goal? --Hsmom 23:01, 11 October 2008 (EDT)

I don't know enough about the details here, but only unauthorized copying is not allowed. If there is strong reason to think the original writer consents to the copying -- and that may be the case in this pro-life context -- then copying is not a problem, particularly if properly sourced. Do we know if the original writer consents to this copying? Also, the heading here is "plagiarism", but it's not plagiarism if the reference is properly provided.--Aschlafly 23:40, 11 October 2008 (EDT)

I'm aware of no reason—strong or otherwise—to think that the original writer consents to the copying. And the source is not pro-life, but ostensibly neutral, giving ten reasons for and ten reasons against, so there's no reason to think that they would give consent on the basis of being "on-side", which is what you appear to be alluding to. The reference was not originally (when the heading was written) "properly" provided; there was a link to the source, but no indication that the information had been copied wholesale from that source. I'm (still) with Hsmom on this one—the copying is too much to constitute 'fair use', so, even with attribution, amounts to a copyright violation. Philip J. Rayment 03:40, 12 October 2008 (EDT)

Six arguments have been deleted making the article to have less "significant portions" borrowed. One has a new "similar" word. Now it is your turn to improved it with your better English knowledge. By the way, "significant portions" could go from 1% to 90% of the work depending the importance of the benefits that you obtain and the damage that you create. If you find my profit some where, please send it to me; now we get more pesos for one dollar! --User:Joaquín Martínez, talk 08:06, 12 October 2008 (EDT)

It is now a small enough quote that it is probably acceptable from a copyright point of view. "Significant portions" cannot go from 1% to 90% of a work; this sort of this is usually fairly-well defined, from case history if nothing else, although I don't recall what the percentages are.

I've also reverted your change to "similar"; when you are quoting (which it is now shown as), then it needs to be an exact quote, not an altered one (there are some exceptions, but even they need to be clearly shown as changes).

Nevertheless, for a few reasons, including the problem with the arguments as quoted, it would be best to eliminate this quote and rewrite them in our own words. I don't know when I will get a chance to do that, but then it doesn't have to be me doing it.

Philip J. Rayment 22:01, 12 October 2008 (EDT)

Comment

I think the important question here should not be "is this section plagiarism", but "is it ok to use someone else's words to build our encyclopedia?" In my opinion, if we are just going to copy other people's work without proper synthesis, we should just make a giant "links" page, instead of an encyclopedia. All ten of those "arguments" can be used as a springboard for a full discussion of the topic, instead of simply left there to defend themselves (which, I might add, they do a pretty poor job of anyway). HelpJazz 13:47, 12 October 2008 (EDT)

"Silly" edits

I appreciate that the grammar of my edit was suspect at best (I blame the lateness of the edit), but I think that the fact that taking of life has to be with malice for a civilised society to not condone it. As many civilised societies permit capital punishment. Sure having that fact there weakens the arguement made in the point, but not having it there will mean that many people will reject it out of hand --J00ni 04:50, 11 October 2008 (EDT)

I agree, and would reinstate your change, except that I'm going to delete the whole section as discussed in the Plagiarism section above. Philip J. Rayment 07:49, 11 October 2008 (EDT)

Merge?

Maybe this article could be merged with the abortion article? Then we could perhaps avoid the whole dilemma with the "Ten arguments" section. LiamG 07:57, 12 October 2008 (EDT)

I agree. Why do we need an abortion article and an abortion facts article? Is the plain abortion article not factual? All this article really adds is some statistics, some talking points, and a picture of a fetus reading an upside down bible. Corry 11:15, 14 October 2008 (EDT)

Second Point

Since 25-50% of all pregnancies end in miscarriage (most often Early Pregnancy Loss) while induced abortions only occur in a subset of the remaining pregnancies, shouldn't 'miscarriage' be listed as the leading cause of death in the U.S., rather than induced abortion?--Brossa 10:23, 14 October 2008 (EDT)

It might be useful to include that information. I think many people are surprised that, sadly, one in five pregnancies end in miscarriage. Including miscarriage rates will give a context/comparison. BTW - PJR - I didn't remove that second fact in my last edit. I combined it with the first, and changed the language a bit to clarify. (I put in your numerical change when I updated.) When I first read this article, I thought that the fact was referring to maternal deaths from abortion. Thus the clarification. We should probably clarify the Spain statistic as well. --Hsmom 10:38, 14 October 2008 (EDT)

Hsmom, you kept the 1.3 million, but it now reads "about nearly"! And you removed the hourly figure, which I felt was useful to show. I didn't realise that the (former) second point could be read as referring to maternal deaths, but the problem I have with the altered wording is that it sounds like whether or not abortions are counted as deaths is an arbitrary decision ("If abortions are recognized as deaths...").

Philip J. Rayment 11:03, 14 October 2008 (EDT)

Sorry - I was careless. That'll teach me not to edit when I'm in a hurry! Didn't mean to remove the hourly figure either. I agree that "if" is not quite right - any suggestions? I'll try again. --Hsmom 13:00, 14 October 2008 (EDT)

Are miscarriages 25-50% (Brossa) or 20% (Hsmom)? I can't quickly find an accurate figure on abortions per pregnancy, but it appears that it could be around the 20% figure, in which case it might be true that abortions exceed miscarriages.

Prospective studies of women trying to conceive demonstrate spontaneous pregnancy loss rates of around thirty percent before 20 weeks of pregnancy (31%, 32% , 31% ). If you define pregnancy as starting at fertilization rather than at implantation (medical societies do not, but some medical individuals and religious groups do), then these studies necessarily will underestimate the actual rate of early pregnancy loss because they depend on a positive urine or serum hCG test as a criteria for pregnancy. Fertilized eggs that do not implant will not result in an elevated hCG level. It is impossible to state with certainty what percentage of fertilized eggs do not implant; estimates range from 30-70%. These studies also do not count miscarriages which occur after 20 weeks of gestation.--Brossa 12:09, 14 October 2008 (EDT)

Wow! I stand corrected - I knew it was high but I had no idea it was that high - here's another article on the study. [2] --Hsmom 13:00, 14 October 2008 (EDT)

Abortions are recognized as deaths, they are not recognized as murders for it is legal. About and nearly, Philips is right.--Jpatt 11:31, 14 October 2008 (EDT)