..... abortion, like so many other things in alleged public-policy, is about so much more than the act?
What if the knowledge that if you get pregnant, or get someone pregnant, you now have at least gestation, childbirth and a child (whether you put same up for adoption or raise the kid) to deal with -- like it or not? Would this deter sex among young people not intending children? It did for me, and millions of others who were teens when chemical birth control was not available to minors and of course condoms do fail.
What if that decrease in teen sex means many, many fewer teen pregnancies in the first place?
What if that decrease means fewer young women carry the psychological burden of knowing that they could have had a child -- and didn't -- because they destroyed what was going to become their born child?
What if that decrease materially improves, on a societal basis, the mental health of said women?
What if the decrease in sexual activity among teen boys and young men means they're more-able to form permanent bonds with women because they treat sex more-closely to what completely-unprotected sexual intercourse actually is -- both the greatest power and greatest responsibility two human beings can express, complete with an always-present risk of both good and bad outcomes?
What if that improvement means more children are ultimately born to two-parent, stable family homes -- and divorce falls?
What if that improvement in turn radically cuts child poverty, gang membership and the dealing of drugs?
What if that improvement means fewer young men, especially young black men, both shoot other black men and get shot?
What if the improvement in both economic and social outcomes is largest among racial minorities, particularly blacks?
What if all of this means more men and women, in said stable, two-parent homes decide that one of them will raise the kids and the other will go work and earn enough money to keep the family stable?
What if that shift means the big, expensive blue areas become unattractive since that simply doesn't pencil out?
What if since one parent is at home raising the kids now homeschooling becomes much more-reasonable and the blue-hive and even red-area teacher's unions find themselves either being forced to stop teaching six year olds about sex or they find themselves with an empty classroom and out of work as their budgets are decimated by the loss of pupils?
What if the reason companies are now popping up saying they'll pay for travel to states where you can get an abortion if Roe is struck has nothing to do with "respecting women" at all and everything to with treating women as farm animals, deliberately goading them into abortion so they don't have to pay for maternity leave and lose employees who decide some -- or all -- of their energy is best spent on their baby instead of being a slave to the company?
Is any or all of this wild-eyed crazy? No.
But none of it is known or proved either.
It's just a possibility -- a possibility that has been foreclosed on purpose by the so-called "social structure" we've had for the last 50 years.
Exactly how interconnected all this really is in terms of outcomes is not known because we've always assumed abortion is a one-dimensional thing and that the definition of the boundaries isn't even that set forward by Roe -- oh no, that wasn't far enough, was it?
It's not a one-dimensional thing.
I know for a fact that it isn't.
I know it isn't because when I was a teen there were many times I said "No" to sex because I knew the only protection I had against her getting pregnant was a condom, and while they work the odds are what the odds are -- they're not good enough standing alone. That's not to say I didn't have sex. I did have sex. But I had a lot less sex than I would have otherwise.
Many times I said "No" because of that risk; if there had been no risk I would have said "Yes" a lot more, and that's a fact.
Today any girl who wants chemical birth control can have it without her parents knowing she is getting it. Today, any girl who wants an abortion can get one and in most states her parents do not have to be informed or give consent. Today, the "state of play" that I and everyone else had in my younger years in college where we're all adults, we're over 18, we can go to the health center and get whatever since its nobody business but ours extends to twelve year old kids yet the costs of same are never theirs; they are thrown off on their parents or society generally by force.
If you think this doesn't change how boys -- not just girls -- look at the risks and rewards you're dead wrong. It most-certainly does.
If there are 50 state laboratories in a few years, certainly within a decade we will see if any of the possible good things -- or some bad ones -- come to pass. We'll have multiple different states, different sets of rules and different outcomes.
The evidence will rapidly accumulate as to who was right -- and who was wrong.
I'm sure there will be both good and bad on both sides. There's plenty of both now from what we've done over the last 50 years, so why would one expect that the same won't occur here?
Only one side of this debate, however, is scared of that happening -- aren't they?
And if you think it ends there wait until you you read about what I think is going on with the employers and what they are actually afraid of. It's not just paying for maternity leave.
