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Lizzy Gore Sep 13, 2008
Posted by Xf4x7852_icon

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    Lizzy Gore started this discussion on Sep 13, 2008

    If you feel passionately about this, please consider doing any one of the following things:

    1) Researching (not speculating) about which demographics are switching to McCain because of Sarah Palin.

    2) Researching (not speculating) these voters’ stated reasons for liking her or McCain, or disliking Obama

    3) Continuing to find and verify facts that will undercut these voters’ reasons for supporting Palin

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    Ken Pelletier replied on Sep 13, 2008

    Here’s a fact that sometimes comes as a surprise, possibly because it defies some people’s expectations about Sarah Palin’s positions on policy that affects women.

    Fact Sarah Palin wants to criminalize abortion, even in cases where the conception was the result of a rape.

    It’s also worth putting that fact into context:

    • The lowest figure by any credible source puts the number of pregnancies resulting from rape at 20,000 per year in the US alone. (range from 20,000 to 32,000).

    So this issue isn’t an abstract, philosophical/moral debate: it affects tens of thousands of American women each year.

    Some sources:

    • UCSF Center for Reproductive Health Research & Policy, University of California (Stewart), San Francisco, California, USA
    • Department of Economics and Public Affairs and Office of Population Research, Princeton University (Trussell), Princeton, New Jersey, USA
    • US Bureau of Statistics
    • Steven Pinker, Prof. Psychology, Harvard University, ‘The Blank Slate’

    It’s possible to find numbers as low as 500 per year on anti-abortion websites, but none that I can find have any evidence to back them, and virtually all of the credible sources I’ve found align on the statistics.