I am glad to see that you are willing to reconsider your opinions in light of new evidence (new to you, at least). I won't ask that you conform to my opinions or majority opinions or anything of the like, but I am glad to see that you are willing to think for yourself.

All the same, I believe you have only started this journey. There are quite a few other points that you might want to consider.

A few to start with:

Child Abuse - did you know that social workers prefer to return abused children to their own families, because they are less likely to be abused there than in foster care? This is true. For most ordinary cases of child abuse or neglect, the best thing for the child is to have a long talk (or talks) with their parents, explaining what they have done wrong and what they need to do to correct it. You see, most parents - even abusive ones - really do love their kids, but most parents also make a lot of mistakes. Fortunately, kids are pretty resilient and can handle quite a bit of bad parenting and still turn out fairly well. If they stay with their own parents, however, they also have a deep and genuine love that is often missing from foster care. Keep in mind that there is always a shortage of foster parents, and that foster parents are also imperfect parents. More to the point, decades of experience have demonstrated that a child put into foster care is statistically more likely to be abused than a child who is returned to abusive parents who have been through counseling. Now, obviously some parents are so abusive that there is no question that their children should be taken from them, and there are some wonderful foster parents as well, but on average parents with a history of abuse are less dangerous (to their own children) than foster parents without a history of abuse. As you might expect, it can be very difficult to make such decisions, even for an experienced social worker.

Therefore, when we talk about child abuse, we should first be careful to define exactly what we are speaking about, the reasons for the abuse, and how best the problems can be resolved in the best interest of the child.

Next point: child pornography.

What punishment do you think is appropriate for someone who possesses - and prizes - an image of a naked 10yo girl in the act of running away from where an adult has burned half her body? Death penalty? A long prison term? A hefty fine?

In fact, there is such an image - a very famous one - from the Vietnam war. The girl is running away from her village which was accidentally hit with napalm by a US pilot. I say "accidentally" because the villagers were allies, not enemies. The pilot had intended to use the napalm on enemy noncombatants.

This image won awards and is still sometimes seen in public exhibitions. At the time, it was on the front page of newspapers around the world, and has been shown on US television. Many ordinary people possess and prize this image, not because they take some sick enjoyment in the pain that this girl endured, but because it is a potent reminder of the horrors of war, and the unintended consequences and "collateral damage" that accompany it. They keep - and display - this image as a warning to themselves. Oddly enough, no one claims that this woman (still living) is re-victimized every time someone views this photograph, even though there is no doubt that she was victimized at the time, and so has a much better claim than many others.

Likewise, possession of an image of child abuse does not necessarily mean that one approves of it or is intending on imitating it. That is one of the many dangers of outlawing thoughts: that the people outlawing the thoughts can't really know what others are thinking, and in judging others are often unconsciously judging themselves.

As other have stated, though, there is no great reason to believe that much child pornography is forced. The police will call ANY adult-child sexual contact "rape" and "abuse of the worst imaginable sort", and no one else is allowed to verify this. That certainly leaves room for doubt, especially considering the widespread corruption and culture of perjury among the police in the United States. A few accidental comments, such as Lanning's question of why children in child pornography so often seem to be enjoying themselves, also raises some significant doubts.