(no subject)

[dreamer_easy]

So. Infant mortality. I'm sure I sound naive and sanctimonious and middle-class and White in my surprise and anger. Not being directly, personally affected by it, you read all these statistics about the results of racism, about mortgages and glass ceilings and whatever, and it all seems so abstract; and then one figure smacks you between the eyes like a shovel. Piles of dead babies tend to have that effect. That's what racism is, what sexism is, what war is, what it always has been. The most vulnerable human beings, like miner's canaries, tumbled into mass graves, dead of greed.

*takes a deep breath*

Meanwhile in Australia:

Forced to live in hunger: a study of Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory (infant mortality: 16.7) finds they can't afford to eat healthily - or sometimes at all. Researchers suggest short-term help (eg fruit and vegetable hampers) but also long-term change. Lemme see if I can find the full report online.

Comments

[jblum.livejournal.com]

The sequitur you're missing is that Kate, rather than taking up an adversarial position to yours, is sticking to the central topic: both people who oppose abortion on principle, and people who oppose rigid enforcement of black-and-white morality in a very grey area on principle, want to fix this problem.

It's bringing abortion into a discussion of how to minimize the distinctly different problem of actual infant mortality which is the dodgy link.

(Oh, and one sensible dividing line between the two is that until a baby is born, it is not yet a living being on its own. The fetus may manage to make that transition to independent life, or it may not -- the miscarriage rate is even higher than even the worst infant mortality rate. But until you've got a bellybutton, you're still part of another being; that's a distinctly different state. You individually may place more weight on other factors, but you can't really deny that's a biggie.)

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

It'd be interesting to learn whether the same problems that cause high infant mortality are also responsible for the loss of wanted pregnancies.

[thegameiam.livejournal.com]

The most vulnerable human beings, like miner's canaries, tumbled into mass graves, dead of greed.

You're right - that isn't adversarial at all. That is clearly a statement which is going to help work toward minimizing a real and unpleasant problem. And it has absolutely nothing to do with abortion at all, even though that turn of phrase would be very much at home in pretty much any Pro-Life organization's pamphlet.

(You can make that argument, but it is a qualitatively different position than US law - US law does use the concept of viability, and it was the centerpiece of Roe v. Wade. My comparison stands.)