"... and it’s also pretty different than having certain inalienable rights, including life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Also, now that abortion is unavailable under almost all circumstances in Texas and other states, it’s an economic justice issue in that those with the financial capacity to take time off, travel in search of care and pay for it out of pocket are not affected the way those who cannot do so are. And those who can afford to get an abortion under these circumstances are also those who can afford to defend themselves against possible criminal charges...."
Writes Rebecca Solnit in "Abortion is a bread-and-butter economic issue. We need to treat it that way" (The Guardian).
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103 comments:
In most cases -- not all, of course -- pregnancy and hence abortion can be avoided with just a bit of planning ahead. But I guess that's too much to hope for.
I agree. We should shame rich people who use their privilege to get around the laws that are democratically adopted. It undermines democracy.
Government is simply the name for the things we do together.
Seems like the Democrats haven't cared about bread-and-butter economic issues in a long time.
The voice of the Party has been one of an anointed elite demanding their due as the self-regarded moral and intellectual pinnacle of human history.
Is Rebecca Solnit somehow unaware that contraception exists and is legal and cheap everywhere? Is she also unaware that any woman can give her child up for adoption? If she's unaware of these, she probably also doesn't realize that the pills for a drug induced abortion can be sent through the US Postal system.
Listening to abortion rights people, one might think that women become pregnant randomly, without warning or ability to avoid it. It just happens. Like magic.
Solnit jams a square peg into a round hole.
One of Ann’s interests is politicians who inappropriately use children in political ads. Senator Megan Hunt is an extreme liberal running for the Nebraska Senate. She had a Facebook post showing her with an under 10 girl wearing a Wonder Woman costume and pushing for abortion rights. Sexualizing little kids is the new frontier for the Dems.
"Abortion is a bread-and-butter economic issue. We need to treat it that way"
'Bread-and-butter' seems an unfortunate description for the abortion issue.
Grain is ground. Butter is churned. Baby is ______.
No one wants the Subway Aborted Baby Foot-Long.
I am Laslo.
I want to address one quote in that article: More than 50 women have been prosecuted for child neglect or manslaughter in the United States since 1999
That seems like a very low number to me (50 people -- out of millions! -- in the last 20+ years!), and I will bet a good amount of money that the women in question were also charged with other (more serious) things. It is just not a very persuasive stat.
aren't the anti-abortion laws really aimed at the abortionists?
Aren't we Really giving THEM the option of quitting, being a criminal, or getting a new job?
Oh please. Once again, in chorus: use contraception. And Texas abortion advocacy groups, pay for transport and (as if Texas plans to prosecute the women instead of the abortion providers!) legal assistance for Texan women who need abortions.
And when, as you're driving them to New Mexico or waiting with them at the airport, you discover how many of them are underage girls who have been repeatedly raped by a "family friend" or girls whose boyfriend refuses to wear a condom and also refuses to take responsibility for his actions, maybe do something about that too, if you're so strongly for women.
Or - here's a thought - help Texan women obtain morning after pills ahead of the need and carry them around the way you carry an asthma inhaler, or work in the realm of politics to make your case and change the law. (So far apparently you haven't been sufficiently persuasive, so you may have to consider changing how you make your case.)
As for economic justice, maybe part of your advocacy role - again, if you're for women and not just for abortion - ought to be educating poor and poorly educated women, starting in high school at the very latest, which may mean educating their mothers first so you have permission to talk with minor girls, about how to avoid an unwanted pregnancy and the reasons why early pregnancy and single motherhood are not optimal for their lives and futures, even though they themselves may be the product of early single motherhood.
In addition to be dead, a criminal or a parent - aren't there other options: Not have sex? Use birth control?
Granted, travel out of TX would now be an expense, but who paid for the actual abortion itself before this?
Finally, Kamala Harris and other progressives paid into funds to bail out "mostly peaceful" rioters. Couldn't these folks from Hollywood and the Vineyard start an abortion travel fund?
People with money should have more rights. Why else work hard to bootstrap yourself above it all? It's like American Way! These people need to learn to keep their chastity belts on until they put away enough money to pay for having the kid or to buy themselves a get out of jail free card abortion.
Birth control is cheaper than beer or drugs.
But the problem is some women just don't want any responsibility for anything.
Responsibility is for splooge stooges.
She's right. It is an economic issue, along with multiple, conflicting moral issues.
Make abortion legal up to 15 weeks. I think we can all live with that. That let's a woman miss two or three cycles to figure out if she's pregnant. Plus she probably knows her own sexual activity.
BTW...author Rebecca Solnit - University of California Berkeley - 1984. She must be a nightmare. She's got a Wiccan look to her. Comes from the inside out.
I'm sure she's all for ninth month infanticide.
This Rebecca Solnit person is missing the great opportunities available in the state of Illinois, which welcomes abortion tourists.
And what is NARAL doing? They should get off their butts and organize Freedom Buses from Texas to Cairo or East St. Louis or Carbondale. Or Lake Forest or Winnetka. All those rich supporters of Planned Parenthood should be helping poor women end pregnancies now. And where is NOW?
It is enough to make a person cynical.
Knowing what you know, Rebecca Solnit, I'm assuming you'll use great judgement in contraceptives when going to bed with some guy. Or not going to bed with some guy. You know what the possibilities are. You know the situation in some states vs other states. Gauge your ability to handle what might happen if you need an abortion, or if you were to raise a child, and act accordingly.
Unless...that's too much to ask of you.
Why is the person looking to get an abortion always looked on as the victim? And no- I'm not talking about the 1-offs where a woman was raped, or her life may be in jeopardy if she carries the child to fruition. Those are serious situations that need to be addressed. But they are not the great majority of abortions. Not by any count. I'm asking seriously: Why is the woman seeking an abortion always looked on as the victim?
Pfizer echoes her sentiment regarding forcing people to buy their evil product. There's money to be made here.
I should note that my "oh please" above is responding to the overwrought headline. I do have sympathy for girls and women who find themselves pregnant and no longer have this (hopefully backup, but let's be honest, probably first) option in several states. Texas, Louisiana, and Oklahoma are now "abortion deserts," which would certainly make it tough on a poor girl in San Antonio.
But it is not a bread-and-butter issue. It's an issue that primarily affects a small cohort of young (that is, childbearing age) women who don't use contraception but rely on abortion to prevent their having a child. There may be knock-on effects, now, as some of these young women's mothers are going to be pressed into caring for their grandchildren. But I don't see how you can call abortion both "bread-and-butter" (meaning it affects everyone) and "economic justice" (meaning it affects some disadvantaged subset of everyone) at the same time.
I'm guessing this is an attempt to make the case and change the law, as I suggested in my previous comment, on different grounds from formerly. We'll see if being more straightforward than before about how important abortion is to the well-being of poor women of color will bring more voters around.
Rebecca Solnit should make this argument to the state legislatures, which make the abortion laws.
... it’s an economic justice issue in that those with the financial capacity to take time off, travel in search of care and pay for it out of pocket are not affected the way those who cannot do so are.
tru·ism
[ˈtro͞oˌizəm]
NOUN
a statement that is obviously true and says nothing new or interesting:
a proposition that states nothing beyond what is implied by any of its terms.
1. The rich get away with things--in every country, every civilization, every religion, always. One example would be Epstein before his death, and even today many of his clients.
2. I want to get away with the same things the rich get away with. It's only fair.
They never want to explain why the baby doesn't have inalienable rights. Why is that?
(I already know why.)
Yes, but you see the baby has certain inalienable rights too. And if the baby doesn't have human rights, you don't either.
Adoption amongst many options not mentioned, but that doesn’t support her narrative.
"those with the financial capacity to take time off, travel in search of care and pay for it out of pocket are not affected the way those who cannot do so are." We are talking about a few tens of thousands of cases per year. There are half a million abortions today in the US, and only some of those will become illegal. Call if 20,000/year.
IANAL, but isn't it certain that travelling to a different state for abortion cannot become illegal? If so, the economics of this issue are completely solved by paying for people who want abortions to travel to a different state, and back. Call that <$500/person, for a nice plane ticket to a nearby state where Planned Parenthood will do it for nothing. If there are 20,000 people per year who have this issue in the US, that's $10,000,000.
Do you understand how ridiculous this number is? It's a rounding error. Not just for the US government, but for California. Not just for some liberal states, but for Bill Gates, or for Elon Musk for that matter. Any number of liberal or libertarian billionaires can handle this problem without noticing, all by themselves.
There are no economics to this issue, and no one is being forced to have a child by economics. Anyone who CARES ABOUT THESE POOR WOMEN can just take care of it.
Team Abortion spent billions on keeping the Supremes on their side. Team Abortion can now afford shell out for bus tickets...
in search of "care"
How's about "birth mother for an adoption" as an option ??
The waiting lists for infants are huge and years long. Adoptive parents usually contribute substantially to living expenses for the birth-mother. I also covered bi-monthly emotional counselling for her. I was in my early 60s when my adopted daughter was, and was able to avvoid the wait by working with a private agency.
Adopting her allowed her to live, and she is a deep and enduring jpoyy in my life even now as singe father, due to very unfortunate circumstance.
The author was, I suspect, intentionally unimaginative.
Up next: Euthanasia is a bread and butter economic issue.
"Having no options but to be dead, criminal or a parent is not a sane or moral argument for parenthood..."
Besides the options not to have sex, to use contraception, to take a pill, or to give the baby up for adoption.
Is this an instance of women exercising their moral agency?
This argument covers slavery and murder as well as abortion.
Attaching a monetary value to killing babies is just crass.
But really. Pregnancy is not a virus you are unable to avoid. It takes concrete decisions and action. Several on social media have cluelessly stumbled onto the truth when women commeted they were going to have to be a lot more discriminating picking the men they had sex with. I Remember when dad had "the talk" with me. I was 17 and dating a girl serious. Dad asked if I really liked her? Yea I really did. He asked if I liked enough to eat breakfast with her the rest of my life? Because, that would be my reality if I got her pregnant. End of 'the talk', expectations delivered, nuff said.
Its like their Great Great Grandmother is giving them advice from the grave.
I just made a round trip from Houston to Chicago for under $250. I’m having a hard time believing that is such a high cost that the only other options are death or becoming a criminal. Another option is pushing for sensible legislation. At this rate. Should we allow abortion only for those raped? Because that seems to be the argument and it doesn’t make sense to me.
Also, now that abortion is unavailable under almost all circumstances in Texas and other states, it’s an economic justice issue in that those with the financial capacity to take time off, travel in search of care and pay for it out of pocket are not affected the way those who cannot do so are.
There are people who think that if they can just string together the right words the right way, they can turn issue X (that people mostly don't care about) into a different issue Y (that people mostly do care about).
Mostly, they are wrong.
From the baby's perspective: "Having no options but to be dead."
1. The rich get away with things--in every country, every civilization, every religion, always. One example would be Epstein before his death, and even today many of his clients.
True that!
Not all who deliver go on to become parents. One can bring up some reasons why putting a child up for adoption is also a difficult or even unfair choice. But she is saying "there are three choices," and there aren't. It is more than an oversight, and it is one reason why people do not trust the pro-choice camp. They keep conveniently overlooking stuff. Not that the prolife camp is always entirely fair either. But those of us in the adoption community notice this all the time, and we don't pretend our kids came from nowhere.
I'm asking seriously: Why is the woman seeking an abortion always looked on as the victim?
No woman must be made to feel bad about, or responsible for, anything, ever.
They never want to explain why the baby doesn't have inalienable rights. Why is that?
Their answer is that the fetus isn't a person. (yet) But they can't tell you when and why it becomes a person.
Here is an idea- how about Solnit and her compatriots get together, donate lots of money, and help these women out with travel expenses and medical care payments? That is perfectly legal.
Yes, murder, capital punishment under a layer of privacy, or human rites performed for social, redistributive, clinical, political, and fair weather (e.g. climate stasis h/t The Guardian) causes is a socially-forward choice, again,and again, and again. The wicked solution a.k.a. planned parenthood is necessary to keep women and girls affordable, available, and taxable, and the "burden" of evidence sequestered in darkness. All's fair in lust and abortion.
That said, there is no mystery in sex and conception, mutual consent, safe sanctuary, and shared responsibility follow with first choice.
Abortion is murder... if they wanna murder go to another state than Texas.
Abortion is not illegal.
Any destitute person can afford birth control.
If you are mentally ill and a ward of the state, you should not have children.
Fuck off Harpy.
I’ll bet the farm she was quite comfortable forcing people to take the jab during Covid. Greater good and all.
Progressive prices are forced by single/central/monopolistic solutions. Climate is corrupted through environmental arbitrage. Workers are disenfranchised through labor arbitrage. Democracy is gerrymandered without accountability. Granny freezes in darkness. "our Posterity" is aborted under a veil of privacy. Demos-cracy dies with social divergence.
'People with money should have more rights.'
Money buys choices and convenience.
The best reason to have money is to do the things that you want to do when and how you want to do them.
Simple...
All I see are insane people going batshit crazy because they want to kill babies so badly, and putting limitations on those murders is the only thing they care about...They want no limitations, and they won't let pharmacies sell birth control over the counter, because Republicans had that idea. Grow up. Stop having sex if you can't control yourself.
Abortion is murder...
Under a layer of privacy, in darkness, if you can get away with it. That said, from six weeks when baby meets granny in state, if not in process. However, generally, civilized society has a compelling cause (i.e. commoditization of human life) to discourage the performance of human rites for social, redistributive, clinical, political, and fair weather causes. #HateLovesAbortion
She’s so right. We simply must get to the root cause of this horrifying condition of pregnancy that afflicts women and figure out how to prevent it.
This argument covers slavery and murder as well as abortion.
Slavery, murder/abortion, and diversity [dogma] (e.g. racism, sexism, ageism) that are the traditional "burdens" h/t Obama of a minority class past, present, and progressive. Unfortunately, unlike slavery, and diversity [dogma], murder/abortion is a choice that can be processed in darkness, and requires some social finesse to discourage.
Granny freezes in darkness with Green (i.e. renewable, unreliable, ecological blight, multi-trillion dollar flatline) deals.
Those are the same options that face any man whose sexual partner is pregnant and doesn't want an abortion, yet somehow he doesn't get any say in which will apply to him.
If abortion is about avoiding pregnancy, then it is a woman's issue. If it's about avoiding parenthood, then it isn't.
@MadisonMan
That seems like a mistake. Maybe it was supposed to be 50 thousand. Even that seems low.
The only question---period---is personhood. Once a fetus is a person (I do not know when that happens but I know with 100% certainty it happens at some point significantly before the baby exits the womb) I don't want to hear how murder would promote job growth. Okay, Marxists! 😘
Oh... wait... you cut that sentence off. It's: "More than 50 women have been prosecuted for child neglect or manslaughter in the United States since 1999 because they tested positive for drug use after a miscarriage or stillbirth."
That's not just prosecutions for child neglect or manslaughter. It's specifically cases where a drug-using woman lost a baby.
There is no mystery in sex and conception. The nominally secular ethical religion, not limited to planned parenthood, denies women and men's dignity and agency. That said, other than rape... rape-rape h/t Whoopi, women and men are not compelled to bear "our Posterity", and even in cases of rape, a woman has six weeks to choose, and women and men have an equal right to self-defense through reconciliation. However, in a civilized society, in a functional culture, mutual consent, safe sanctuary, and shared responsibility follow with first choice. Don't take a knee, stand up as humans do.
Make abortion legal up to 15 weeks. I think we can all live with that.
Well, there are a LOT of people who CANNOT live with that. Literally. Because they are made dead by that abortion that you are so eager to "live with."
Why do you pro-abortion people keep saying nonsense like this?? Why do you simply assume that everyone else shares your utter disregard for human life?
Whinging about one's inability to satisfy one's personal desires doesn't create an obligation for anyone to fulfill them, or even to acknowledge those desires are legitimate.
People have lost sight to the plot due to the absolute post-WWII affluence. Life is nasty, brutish, and short. I hope we as a civilization aren't about to re-learn that the hard way.
Solnit has received two NEA fellowships for Literature, according to Wikipedia. Your tax dollars at work. It’s time to defund the NEA, along with NPR and PBS. They are money laundering operations for the left.
they tested positive for drug use after a miscarriage or stillbirth
That would be her Choice, not Her Choice. The situation is similar to education, where children fail in the first 12 years, then the situation is partially, purportedly remedied but at a far greeter price in the latter years.
@Althouse, you may be right. But either it's a super low number, or the author made a mistake. Neither is a good look, and it makes me want to ignore the rest.
because they tested positive for drug use after a miscarriage or stillbirth
I didn't mean to edit selectively. I read the lead-in and just stopped because it's such a very small number. The author might want to edit the sentence to make it clearer (and more persuasive). I am also inclined against that "More than 50" construct; I usually think that means 51.
The reason abortion isn't a key issue in this election is because:
1. There are real crises happening that are being ignored or downplayed. Illegal immigrant capture on the southern border up >400% in 3 years?!? Do we think are are returning 2 million a year, or that they are being filtered in to the country? Russian war and aggression where we are involved by barely hidden proxy? Cold war came back? How about hyper-inflation on a global level fueled by global government printed-money handouts reaching never-before-seen global levels during covid, de-sync'd with production/supply?
2. Anyone who isn't a craven partisan who looks beyond talking points sees the supreme court didn't ban abortion. It returned it to states rights. And that broadly speaking, abortion is still widely available.
3. That those seeking to use it as an issue aren't actually seeking to solve it. They are seeking to use it to drum up emotion to win an election, where they will work hard to do slow things like nominate judges who may someday be in a position to rule in favor of abortion-supportive policies. In other words, it's craven politics and not an actual human rights issue as speakers like to claim.
...
I could go on, but I think we can all see the writing on the walls. Democrats will begin to downplay abortion after this election cycle because its no longer working as a tool for their electoral success.
Some, Select [Black] Lives Matter
There’s always planning. My sister tells me there’s an that tells women when they are ovulating. I did not know this but apparently there’s only a relatively speaking small window for women to become with child.
If the issue was not politicised, abortion now, abortion tomorrow and abortions for ever, maybe that information would be part of the arsenal of options available to women who presumably don’t want to get with child. I don’t want to say pregnant because that would bring the trans issue into this conversation and I want to abide by the rules of this blog.
“Having no options” is a bullshit line.
If only 50 women "became criminals" after 1999, because they were tried after a miscarriage; then that doesn't sound like a major abuse of authorities trying to make women criminals. Perhaps that was because abortion was legal, but I think it is probably that those cases involved other things than drugs and a miscarriage. For instance, child neglect would seem to require a child and not dead stillbirth or miscarriage. How many of those 50 women (still a small number regardless), had children, then had a miscarriage while using drugs, and then were tried for neglect of the living child?
When you come right down to it, anybody that thinks of a gestating baby as a 'thing' to be optionally rid of as a matter of convenience, really shouldn't be reproducing until they've got their mind right - starting with an education on birth control methods. Abortion is not a 'bread & butter' issue, groceries and gasoline and rent are. Babies are a life and death issue. It would be better to act responsibility and treasure life with the respect that it deserves.
Pretty much the first lines of Rebecca's Wikipedia entry:
Solnit was born in 1961[2] in Bridgeport, Connecticut, to a Jewish father and Irish Catholic mother.[3] In 1966, her family moved to Novato, California, where she grew up. "I was a battered little kid. I grew up in a really violent house where everything feminine and female and my gender was hated," she has said of her childhood.
Well that would explain a lot ... if that's actually true.
She's right. Giving someone the choice of being dead, a criminal, or a parent is completely unjust. That's why parents should be allowed to kill their toddlers.
Nice try. Quite a lot of hulabaloo about a "problem" that could be minimized by practicing birth control. Of course, that's why Planned Parenthood, their Democrats in Congress and their apparatchiks in the FDA oppose OTC Oral contraceptives.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2019/06/11/i-am-a-conservative-i-agree-with-aoc-on-over-the-counter-birth-control-column/1402941001/
An economic issue? Really? How does it compare to the cost of open borders, Bidenflation, financial support for Ukraine, interest on the national debt, energy dependence, etc.
In the overall scheme of things the premise of this article, like most Democrat arguments, is an appeal to imbeciles. That's why there can be no political discourse and why lefties precipitate violence while pretending it is a right-wing thing.
birth control... look into it.
As I understand the Texas law it bans most abortions after six weeks, i.e. appearance of fetal heartbeat. Any woman who does not wish to carry a child to term has the capability to know she is pregnant within four weeks of conception. I'll spell it out. If you have been sexually active and haven't had a period in the last four weeks you might be pregnant. You should take a pregnancy test. Pending the results under Texas law you'd still have two weeks to make a decision.
It requires taking some responsibility and some intentional actions, but a pregnant woman DOES NOT face the options of 'dead, criminal or parent.'
As a sidenote, as much as this is framed as a 'women's issue' I really think men need more accountability in the whole question. Men who get a woman pregnant should be on the hook for costs associated. But I guess I'm pretty old-fashioned.
Why do pro-abortion arguments, like the economic justice argument presented in this post, completely ignore the fact that an abortion is exterminating a human being?
I think the tactic to ignore the human being being exterminated is signature significant in that it's single act that's so remarkable that it has predictive and analytical value, and should not be dismissed as statistically insignificant.
"Oh please. Once again, in chorus: use contraception."
Oh please. Once again, in chorus: contraception does not always work. Women who use contraception can and do get pregnant.
(This doesn't include those who may not have easy access to contraception, or who are impregnated through rape by strangers, acquaintances, friends, lovers, or family members.)
Adult humans are going to have sex. Unintended and unwanted pregnancies will result in a percentage of all the copulating going on. There is no reason we should not allow unwanted pregnancies to be terminated within a reasonable span of time after the estimated date of conception.
"But the problem is some women just don't want any responsibility for anything."
Where is your scorn for the men? They're as responsible as women to ensure contraception is used. But, often, if that means they must wear a condom, they resist or refuse.
There is no reason we should not allow unwanted pregnancies to be terminated within a reasonable span of time after the estimated date of conception.
Unless of course you oppose homicide.
"But the problem is some women just don't want any responsibility for anything."
Where is your scorn for the men? They're as responsible as women to ensure contraception is used. But, often, if that means they must wear a condom, they resist or refuse.
And at that point, a responsible woman refuses to have sex.
Robert Cooke asserted: "Oh please. Once again, in chorus: contraception does not always work. Women who use contraception can and do get pregnant."
63,000,000 abortions since 1973. How many, in your estimation, are due to contraception failure?
"Men who get a woman pregnant should be on the hook for costs associated."
Of course. But you've got to compel them do it if they won't pay voluntarily. The common term "dead beat dad" betrays the reality of men who won't pay for associate costs, even when they have been legally ordered to pay them.
"birth control... look into it."
Brilliant! Who'd have thought? The problem is solved!
@Robert Cook wrote, "Adult humans are going to have sex. Unintended and unwanted pregnancies will result in a percentage of all the copulating going on. There is no reason we should not allow unwanted pregnancies to be terminated within a reasonable span of time after the estimated date of conception."
"Who really has the moral high ground in the abortion argument? It’s certainly not the ones that are exterminating helpless human beings because they blindly shirked their personal responsibilities regarding sexual intercourse and unintentionally created an “unwanted” human being. Yes, there are actually responsibilities regarding sex that are something other than “getting off” to fulfill your personal enjoyment goals. There are responsibilities for those who engage in sexual intercourse regardless if it’s consensual sex or not and every male and female should be taught these things by their parents and reinforced by our society/culture before they enter puberty and continued as they grow to be an adult."
Imagine If You Will...
"Here is an idea- how about Solnit and her compatriots get together, donate lots of money, and help these women out with travel expenses and medical care payments? That is perfectly legal."
What about those lawmakers pushing for laws to prosecute those who (are able to) travel elsewhere to obtain legal abortions? Or those who want to criminalize the use of "morning-after" contraceptive medication?
Texas done went and gave the abortion crowd a taste of their own medicine, putting strict limits on timely legal abortions in the state. Sorta like the opposite of pro-abortionists demanding and getting partial birth abortion be legal without life of the mother being at risk - just not quite as gruesome, as Texas gives 6 weeks for a legal abortion. And that time limit is likely to grow more towards the consensus value of 4 months or so in coming years, as even the Texas Legislators react to constant pain in the ass whining.
"63,000,000 abortions since 1973. How many, in your estimation, are due to contraception failure?"
I do not know. Here is one study I found quickly that measures contraceptive failure in the U.S. from 2006-2010. It finds 10% of failures including all methods of contraception, a decline from 12% in 2002. It may have have been greater going as far back as 1973.
Here is another, earlier study.
I'm sure even further digging can provide a good estimate of what the percentage on those 63,000,000 may be. It certainly isn't all or most, but it may be a substantial percentage over that span of time.
Robert Cook:
Contraception is extremely effective if used properly. Of course both the man and the woman share responsibility, and the guy should be on the hook for child support if he impregnates someone. Ironically the availability of abortion enables the guy to push for it rather than accept responsibility (and to be irresponsible about contraception).
In the vast majority of cases (which is what is being talked about), not getting pregnant in the first place is free. There's also birth control, which is costs a bit of money, but certainly not as much as children.
Reading this comment thread, I can see that Republicans are just refusing to win. Read my comment about the trivial amount of money involved. With that one comment, you can entirely take this issue off the table. There is no reason to lose one vote over this issue, no reason to lose one Congressman, no reason to risk losing Congress. For nothing; you can all chime in and say what I said and there is no more swing-voter issue.
It costs nothing at all, zero, to sink this issue.
Or, you can blather on about your moral high ground and all those babies' lives, and maybe manage to lose.
Contraception, Robert Cook, is unquestionably a better option than abortion, particularly invasive methods like D&C and vacuum extraction. The risks to the girl or woman associated with contraceptive use are far lower than those associated with abortion. Yet abortion advocates, who claim that their advocacy is for women, pretty much ignore contraception, except to cry about how "unreliable" it is.
Can contraception fail? Yes, of course. Use it wrong and its efficacy suffers. How can you maximize its efficacy?
1. Use it right. Take your pill every day at the same time - which means carry it with you, if there's a chance you won't be home at that time.
2. Layer your methods. Use the Pill with a condom and ovulation awareness. No raincoat, no sex. Happily, this precaution will also help you avoid STIs.
3. Delay your gratification. Along with this, show some discretion about those with whom you share such bodily intimacy. Guess what - just as before the heinous Sexual Revolution, there are men who will do and say anything to get you in the sack, and those who respect you enough to let a night pass without nailing you. Pick the latter ones, and learn to masturbate if your sex drive is so overwhelming that you simply must get off. This approach is available to any woman or girl, independent of financial need.
The women and girls who are sometimes even driven to abortion centers by their rapists? Again I say, if abortion advocates are on the side of women, why aren't they more involved in stopping the ongoing rape instead of facilitating it by getting the rapists out of the legal and moral jam they've put themselves in?
As with just about everything else about the Sexual Revolution, abortion benefits men a whole ton, and until abortion advocates get a lot more convincing about advocating for women, I'm going to continue having trouble seeing them as much more than procurers, keeping women and girls available for sex.
I wish I had wrote it this way, first: The writer's strident outlook on abortion really encapsulates the way that Progressives try to redefine things to suit their cynical and selfish ends: "Abortion is a bread & butter economic issue" says the Progressive, attempting to trivialize something that is quite literally a life & death issue.
I am so happy that this issue has been returned to the states where the people most affected can determine what's best for them. It really takes all the impact out of these kinds of gaseous expulsions.
How boring.
"Pronatalism" has been an academic topic for a half-century.
It's time for somebody to examine "antinatalism," where it comes from, and where it's taking us.
Robert Cook said...
"Oh please. Once again, in chorus: use contraception."
Oh please. Once again, in chorus: contraception does not always work. Women who use contraception can and do get pregnant.
(This doesn't include those who may not have easy access to contraception, or who are impregnated through rape by strangers, acquaintances, friends, lovers, or family members.)
Adult humans are going to have sex. Unintended and unwanted pregnancies will result in a percentage of all the copulating going on. There is no reason we should not allow unwanted pregnancies to be terminated within a reasonable span of time after the estimated date of conception.
As an aside my mom was on contraceptives when I was conceived.
One of the prerequisites for a free society is that it is populated by individuals that can take responsibility for themselves and their actions.
A society where individuals demand the right to kill a baby/fetus because something as obvious as "contraceptives fail" is morally degenerate.
Human societies in history before the advent of anglo protestant religions lacked the individual virtue in the average citizen to allow freedom. The people in these societies would just steal each others shit and rob and murder each other without a despotic social contract and militarized police force to keep them from acting like animals.
The high trust society we have built in the United States and that is replicated around the world has resulted in massive wealth generation and the elevation of billions out of poverty.
If people don't understand how societies are built and shaped you end up with socialism/progressivism taking over and leading societies back into the dark ages of despotism.
person - definition
NOUN
1. a human being regarded as an individual:
2. grammar - a category used in the classification of pronouns, possessive determiners, and verb forms, according to whether they indicate the speaker (first person), the addressee (second person), or a third party (third person).
3. christian theology each of the three modes of being of God, namely the Father, the Son, or the Holy Ghost.
fertilization - definition
NOUN
the action or process of fertilizing an egg, female animal, or plant, involving the fusion of male and female gametes to form a zygote.
zygote - definition
NOUN
a diploid cell resulting from the fusion of two haploid gametes; a fertilized ovum.
COMMENT
A zygote is a carrier of an the absolutely unique DNA combination, making it an individual, making it a person.
Some actual “bread and butter” issues:
The rising prices of bread and butter.
The rising prices of everything.
The shortages of energy.
If you are trying to make ends meet, those things are far more “bread and butter” than whether abortion should be subject to limitation by state legislatures.
Contraception is cheap, easy to use and very reliable when actually used. Women need to hold men accountable for their sperm spew. If you don’t like your state’s abortion laws MOVE. One way or the other.
Sixty million is far too many. Perhaps we can compromise with six. A 3/5... nay, 1-2 compromise short of an authentic wicked solution to buy time... for what? Maoists compromised at over 100 million, and their heir apparent at millions more. A handmade tale, a "burden", a baby... fetus, a technical term of art for social distance. Ok (pun intended).
Writes Rebecca Solnit in "Abortion is a bread-and-butter economic issue. We need to treat it that way" (The Guardian).
It's nice that the sociopaths are self-identifying
"Prices are too high? Don't you wish you could kill your kids!?!"
Or is she just a bigot who things that poor people are too stupid to figure out the correlation between sex and pregnancy?
Vote out the people who passed the law. You don't have to wait for them to die of old age.
Gee.
Once again, in chorus: contraception does not always work. Women who use contraception can and do get pregnant.
That's why you should try to think beyond your 30-second orgasm, and think about stuff like intimacy, and love, and whether this is a joyful relationship, before you ejaculate into her vagina.
Teaching men that pregnancy is none of our business is an idiotic ideology that hurts far more girls and women than it helps. We actually want men to step up and be fathers to their children, and we want women to step up and be mothers to their children.
This ugly and dishonest ideology that posits that human reproduction doesn't involve a baby, or a father, is a lie. To use Joe Biden's language, it's a Big Lie.
I would ask any feminist with ears to hear me. Is it possible, is it in fact likely, that many abortions are coerced by men who don't want children?
What are you doing to stop that? Or raise awareness of it?
Why this ridiculous assertion that sex is coerced all the time by men, but abortion never is? Who believes that shit?
Republicans should also note that our failure to stop these massacres, including killing babies in the middle of birth, has now escalated to where the left wants to castrate a 6-year-old boy when he says he wants that.
Any coercion there? Any problems with consent? Or is this something else we're just supposed to ignore?
As for you doctors who throw out the Hippocratic Oath like yesterday's garbage, don't be shocked if people lose their faith and trust in you. To many of us, it now seems like money is sacred to the AMA, and human life is not.
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