This question is for people who believe abortion should be illegal in all or most cases: if completely free and freely available birth control for all was conclusively statistically shown to both lower the abortion rate and be less costly to taxpayers (due to less costly pregnancies and medical complications, etc), would you support it?
I very much doubt it. Planned Parenthood prevents more abortions than anyone, yet the right wing wants it to die. What the right wing wants is for people to stop having sex and “getting away with it”. Or better yet, stop having sex altogether.
You will never be able to convince them that making abortion available will result in a lower abortion rate than making abortion unavailable.
I’m not suggesting that- just the hypothetical that free birth control is proven to lower the abortion rate, whether legal or illegal abortions. I’m not suggesting this as an alternative to outlawing abortion.
“The right” and “the posters on this MB who are on the right” are two different classes of people. The OP is addressed at the latter, not the former.
Whoops, sorry… I saw “free and freely available birth control” and my brain said " free and freely available abortion."
I suspect that many on the right want people to keep having sex and keep “getting punished for it”.
Sure as long as the abortion ban isn’t half-assed and 1) bans all abortions except if the mother’s life is threatened, rape, and incest (ideally this would be limited to if the mother’s life is threatened and rape/incest in cases of underage girls), 2) carries real penalties for all parties to the abortion, and 3) treats abortion post-viability (or even better post-detectable brain wave activity) for reasons other than the ones outlined above as equivalent to first-degree murder
Not “people”; women, and only women. It’s always been that way with these Christian sex-moralists; women who have sex are to be punished, men who have sex are slapped on the back and congratulated.
Absolutely! IMO anything that lessens the need for abortions is a good thing.
My question doesn’t have anything to do with an abortion ban, and is only about a hypothetical program to provide freely available and free birth control.
The very fact that you want to extract payment for something that achieves your goals shows you’re being irrational here.
You want to reduce abortions. Policy X will reduce abortions. You are demanding that in order for Policy X to be instituted, abortions must be restricted. Why?
Why don’t we stipulate that studies show this will reduce abortions by 25% or something in that neighborhood. Per your OP, it reduces, but does not eliminate abortion. There is no “ban” (not sure where he got that idea) but a significant reduction.
Unless you have actual numbers from studies that you want to use instead.
And I think you probably need to address the age issue. Is this free and readily available birth control to be given to minors as well? How young? I think that is going to be a pretty big sticking point with a lot of conservatives as they fear validating sexual conduct by minors, especially young teens.
Sure. Let’s make it 40%.
Let’s say it’s available OTC for anyone 16 and up, and anyone under 16 can receive it with a doctor’s note (parents’ permission not required). If this is too permissive, then the conditions of my proposal can change- but for the purposes of the hypothetical, for every age-year 13 and above that requires parents’ permission for the birth control adds ~1% to the abortion rate.
For example- if my “free birth control for all” changes to “free birth control for everyone age 18 and up, free with parents’ permission to 17 and below”, then the abortion rate is only reduced by 35% instead of 40%.
Yes. For me it’s a simple equation: whatever peccadillo in terms of wrongness might possibly be associated with the use of birth control are nothing compared to the saving of life that would result from fewer abortions.
Wait, I thought we were punishing men too by making them support their unwanted kids for 18 years…
As for the OP, although I’m prolife I’m not against any birth control short of RU486. I don’t want people having abortions, and if more free birth control keeps them from having to contemplate the possibility, great. The problem, of course, is you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it wear a free rubber. Availability of birth control isn’t so much an issue as failure to take advantage of it.
It’s free access to birth control plus sex education that’s necessary, I’d say.
Quite an education to learn that folks like BobLibDem believe abortion should be illegal. Never would have guessed it.
I’m not sure if I qualify for this thread: I am in general opposed to abortions, and would not object to them being made illegal, but I don’t think making them illegal would have much effect without a lot of other societal changes, so I don’t actually support such laws.
In any event, sure, I would support free access to birth control, but it should also come with both free sex ed and free education on risk evaluation. I don’t want teenagers thinking that just because they’ve got a rubber in their wallet that they’re invincible. Learn how to use the birth control effectively, learn that even if you do everything right it can still fail, learn what the consequences are if they do fail, then make an informed decision.
Answers to this question will vary widely from person to person, though. My father thought that abortion, birth control, and homosexuality were all the same issue (try though I might to explain to him that gays have very few abortions), and would never believe that birth control could possibly decrease abortion, while my mother finds it quaint and outdated that the Catholic church still insists on trying to ban birth control.
I’m pro-choice, but read Randy Alcorn’s “Pro-Life Answers to Pro-Choice Questions.” He believes life begins at conception, and any birth control that prevents implatation is murder (i.e. IUD and The Pill).
Of course, since the title is the only place he uses the term “pro-choice,” (the rest of the time, it’s pro-abortion), take it with a grain of salt.