For the same reason why people turn a blind eye to oil, coal, guns, alcohol and cigarettes yet have a problem with cannabis, abortions, nuclear power, gun control and until recently electric cars.
PR/marketing trumps all because people aren't sufficiently educated in science and statistics to understand what represents risk vs what is feasible, etc.
Because they can't interpret the data themselves they defer to media and public figures and unfortunately in our world those people aren't incentivised to present things honestly - even in the rare cases they are educated enough to do so.
Sorry to pick up on your specific examples, but I don't know why you are classifying alcohol deaths as under-estimated and abortions as over-estimated(?).
For the record, the National Center for Drug Abuse Statistics reports there are about 95,000 alcohol-related deaths in the United States annually[0], while the CDC reports over 600,000 abortions per year.[1]
It's true that someone who reads PR/marketing material is more likely to die from being hit by a drunk driver than by being aborted, but I don't think that's the point you're trying to make.
Abortions aren't deaths. Even if they were I wasn't looking to draw comparisons, these were just examples of things people don't have informed opinions on.
Abortions aren't deaths any more than pulling out constitutes murder.
It's just a bunch of cells like any other until it becomes able to sustain life independently at which point abortion is essentially illegal everywhere in the world except in seriously extreme circumstances.
Attempting to define it otherwise takes some fairly substantial mental gymnastics. If I have to amputate my arm did I "kill" my arm? Or did I remove a piece of myself that was malfunctioning? Sure it was a bunch of cells and those cells are "dead" I guess. Is a baby part of the mother or is it special because some of the DNA was donated externally? If it's special is it a parasite? What distinguishes it from viral infections that introduce foreign RNA?
So no. I don't think I'm uninformed. It's fairly clear cut at this point but apparently most of the world thinks we should declare it ambiguous because it goes against cultural indoctrination of a significant portion of the population.
Exactly the sort of pandering that has led us to the edge (or potentially past) of no return on climate change.
> until it becomes able to sustain life independently
You mean get a job and earn a living, or just forage in the woods for berries?
> at which point abortion is essentially illegal everywhere in the world except in seriously extreme circumstances.
Assuming you mean "at fetal viability" (the RvW standard), I think you may be surprised to learn that 6 states plus DC allow abortions at any stage of development and for any reason.[0]
> If I have to amputate my arm did I "kill" my arm?
Does your arm have distinct DNA from the rest of your body? Was your arm going to naturally develop into a healthy individual with their own rights and desires?
> Is a baby part of the mother or is it special because some of the DNA was donated externally?
Thank you for correctly using the term "baby". I ask your question back to you in the context of a hypothetical law allowing the abortion of newborns. Would your answer change if this hypothetical law only applied to newborns with life expectancies less than 5 years?
> What distinguishes it from viral infections that introduce foreign RNA?
The baby has human DNA (and RNA). That seems relevant if we are asking whether the baby should have human rights or not.
> I don't think I'm uninformed.
It seems like you've thought about your position a lot, which is great, but I'm not sure if you've fully considered enough of the possible counter-points to it. Thank you for sharing your position with me, though.
In France for example, people who are anti-abortion, anti-cannabis, anti-EV, etc (most often those are Conservative people) are also anti-wind-turbines and pro-nuclear.
The point is that most people don't have informed opinions based on fact but rather just regurgitate whatever is fed to them in whatever media they consume.
Us sitting here having an educated debate on the merits of nuclear vs hydro aren't the problem, we lie in the relatively informed group. We have concerns about nuclear (and other technologies no doubt) but those come from a place of reason, not of group-think.
Side note:
Nuclear and it's relation with Green's parties around the world is also special as it was the platform on which those parties were created. So otherwise rational people, i.e environmentalists are irrationally against nuclear power because of long-standing historical reasons that probably don't hold anymore but can't change the very basis of their platform - or at least are unwilling to.
No amount of facts changes that as it has nothing to do with facts and everything to do with politics.
PR/marketing trumps all because people aren't sufficiently educated in science and statistics to understand what represents risk vs what is feasible, etc.
Because they can't interpret the data themselves they defer to media and public figures and unfortunately in our world those people aren't incentivised to present things honestly - even in the rare cases they are educated enough to do so.