(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Abortions have not declined in America - proving conservatives are anti-women, not pro-life [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2023-10-24 Republicans claim their anti-choice crusade is pro-life. It is not. And their duplicity is hurting women — which is likely their aim. Since Roe gave women personal autonomy, conservatives have been fighting in state house trenches to regain control over women. They achieved nirvana when the Supreme Court, ignoring the vox populi, granted their sadistic wish in the Dobbs decision . And in doing so, stripped women of a half-century-old constitutional right to reproductive self-determination — an evisceration of existing rights unprecedented in American history. However, that decision, and the gleeful rush by red states to enact legal misogyny, have not reduced abortions in America — although it has changed the geography of the procedure. Restrictions have forced women to travel from authoritarian jurisdictions to places where doctors still practice medicine freely. The map on the right shows that while anti-choice states have seen a massive reduction in abortion, pro-women states have met the demand. Uncritical conservative thinkers (a redundancy?) will use this data to lobby for a country-wide ban on the procedure — arguing that what worked in some states, will work nationally if every state adopted their philosophy. But — even if they succeed in criminalizing the procedure nationally — that will not change the number of abortions. How do we know? We have been there before, And we have the statistics. Before Hawaii legalized abortion in 1970 (followed soon by New York, Alaska, and Washington), it was illegal in all states. However, abortion was still common in the US. As the Guttmacher Institute reports , Illegal Abortions Were Common Estimates of the number of illegal abortions in the 1950s and 1960s ranged from 200,000 to 1.2 million per year. One analysis, extrapolating from data from North Carolina, concluded that an estimated 829,000 illegal or self-induced abortions occurred in 1967. Ironically, those numbers indicate that many of the mothers and grandmothers of today's anti-abortion zealots had an abortion. And I bet many of the strident anti-choice women today have also undergone the procedure. Therein lies the rub. If Conservatives were truly pro-life, they would work to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies — the reason for almost all abortions. They would dig into why women get abortions and discover that economics is the main reason. Women terminate pregnancies most frequently because they lack the finances to raise another child. An overwhelming majority (61%) of women who get abortions are already mothers — sometimes of multiple children. They cannot afford another. And they have nowhere to turn. With that fact in mind, it is easy to understand that simply passing laws banning abortion is as effective in reducing abortions as Nancy Reagan’s “Just Say No” campaign was at reducing illegal drug use. When people want something, others supply it — alcohol during Prohibition, drugs during the War on Drugs, undocumented workers during Republican administrations. Uganda may have passed laws making gay sex a death penalty offense — but gay Ugandans still have sex. Can it be that conservatives are too dumb to understand that? Maybe. But there is another possibility, which I think is far more likely. Conservative politicians — and I suspect many fundamentalist Evangelicals and Catholic Church managers — are less interested in reducing abortions than they are in power and control. And the quickest way to that goal is picking on the less powerful — as human society has done since one group of people decided they should have a larger slice of the pie. The ‘sanctity of life’ piety is a misdirection. Does the Governor of Texas really give a damn about the potential third child of a poor Black woman in South Dallas? The answer is obvious. If they did care, they would ramp up the state’s financial support for that expectant mother. Instead, they are slashing financial aid and nutrition assistance, fighting increases in the minimum wage ( $7.25 since 2009 , the longest period without an increase since its introduction in 1938), and rejecting the ACA’s Medicaid expansion — after they tried to scuttle Obamacare and its healthcare subsidies in its entirety. This map tells the story. Much of the Bible Belt claims to be pro-life. Yet those Christians are the most aggressive in keeping people sick. Bill Clinton put it well. Abortion should be safe, legal, and rare. Regardless, conservatives rush to smear liberals as pro-abortion. That is bullshit. Liberals are pro-choice. Take the good Catholic Joe Biden. He is religiously opposed to abortion. That is his choice. Yet, he accepts and fights for a woman’s right to have their choice honored. Because he is not a hypocrite. Conservatives are. For Republicans ‘freedom’ is a mantra — free markets, free enterprise, freedom of religion, freedom to own anti-life guns, et al — but only for the things they want. If someone from a disfavored demographic wishes to be free from pollution, work hazards, predatory banks, climate catastrophe, contaminated food, poisonous water, or forced birth, liberty’s champions crush them under the weight of large government. The silver lining is that conservatives have overreached. Abortion is the one issue that unites all liberals and turns independents, and even some conservatives, into Democratic voters. Deo volente, and with a good turnout, the 2024 elections will see Republicans hoist by their anti-choice petard. It could not happen to a nastier bunch of people. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/story/2023/10/24/2201366/-Abortions-have-not-declined-in-America-proving-conservatives-are-anti-women-not-pro-life Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/