Though, what made it tempting was that it did have some redeeming features: a free washer and dryer left by the previous tenant (the ad said) and a second bedroom for the price of one, along with a huge storage room. I wonder, in a basement apartment, can you really tell the extra bedroom from the huge storage room? Or are they the same room mentioned twice? I guess if you store a person there, and if they're alive, it's a bedroom, if they're dead, it's a storage room.
I won't know, because despite those tempting amenities, I'm not curious enough to look. By no means am I financially in great health, but moving into a basement apartment would feel something like making a crater. My mental health is important.
After days work, today I was just tired, and a little sick. My short story went over pretty well last night. I went to bed early, meaning, of course, that I'm up now in the late night.
So, waiting for sleep to hit again, I was guided by Twitter links to the Abolition Society of Oklahoma site. To see their latest: "Abortion-on-Demand Encourages Child Abuse."
I know I haven't answered Rhology or Vox Veritas' posts about my points, something I had to put aside. I'm trying to get that done. Unfortunately, if I post to the ASOs, I usually shoot from the hip, and I'm not disciplined about it, like right now. I answered them on impulse. I'm trying to answer them in a more thoughtful way.
Here they quote C. Everett Koop, MD's and Francis A. Schaeffer's 1983 book, Whatever Happened to the Human Race:
"Since 1970 it is conservatively estimated in the United States that there are probably over ten million fewer children who would now be be between the ages of one and seven. Since these ten million were 'unwanted' and supposedly would have been prime targets for child abuse, it would seem reasonable to look for a sharp drop in child abuse in this same period." He goes on to say, "In 1972 there were 60,000 child-abuse incidents which were brought to official attention in the United States. Just four years later, in 1976, the number that received official attention passed the half-million mark." This shows indisputably that the "every child a wanted child" pro-choice logic is patently false.
And here I quote my answer:
"'In 1972 there were 60,000 child-abuse incidents which were brought to official attention in the United States. Just four years later, in 1976, the number that received official attention passed the half-million mark.' This shows indisputably that the 'every child a wanted child' pro-choice logic is patently false."
I'm not only going to dispute it, I'm going to refute it. Take a look at the number of child abuse laws on the books before and after. Take a look at the press coverage of child abuse just beginning to come out in 1972, at the same time as Roe.
Yes, the "implausible" happened. The culture did change that much, and you are ignorant of it.
Not only legally, but about how the whole culture saw child abuse. You simply have no idea. It was so different, I bet many states had no child abuse laws in the 1970s.
This I know. I lived during the '60s & '70s. I happen to know there was no attention paid to child abuse at that time. People were told to mind their own business about family matters and it wasn't reported. Just like domestic abuse.
A case had to be really outrageous to be reported, and then usually as assault, not child abuse. There were no medical reporting law or ethical guidelines. A cover story by the abusing adult was believed.
The legal-cultural attitudes began to change in the mid-70s.
The same is true of two other social issues: drunk driving and sexual harassment. Before the '70s, if you killed somebody driving drunk, the fact that you were drunk was your excuse. The change in culture about child abuse has been that radical.
Roe was not the only big change. I was there. I saw it. It was the much maligned, post-Watergate "liberal activist" press that brought public attention to all those problems and changed the culture and laws. I saw exact stories in the press that began them. A major one about domestic abuse was broke by Linda Elerbee on "Weekend."
If you're going to compare child abuse statistics at the time to now, why not, for a control, compare drunk driving statistics then and now? Why not sexual harassment statistics? I challenge you to even find the term "sexual harassment" before 1976, or later. Look for any press story before 1978 that had that term in it.
I forgot to say, the same is completely true for domestic abuse. I somehow lost that in the edit. It simply was not in the public or legal mind at the time. Never.
Roe paralleled many changes in the culture that you would never argue weren't improvements. You would not recognize this culture if you saw it in the 1970s, and you'd generally think the attitudes now are an improvement.
End Quote.
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