A new anti abortion law has gone into effect in Texas, and SCOTUS has refused to block it, thus effectively gutting Roe v Wade.
So now the state of Texas is basically forcing women to carry babies to term that they don’t want. And as we all know about the so-called Pro Life movement, they’re only concerned about the fetus right up until the moment it is born, at which point they consider their job done.
So, if a woman is forced by the state to have a baby, can the state be sued for child support? After all, it seems if the state is going to force you to have a kid, then it should be forced to pay for food, clothing, education, health care, etc for that child at least until the age of 18.
I don’t think the “forced” argument would carry legal weight because when a woman gets pregnant, the default outcome is that she…gives birth. The government is not forcing her to give birth. The government is merely making the status quo continue. It is the woman who is trying to make a change to the status quo, not the government.
This would be like as if someone said, “I would like you to adopt my son.” And you say “No I don’t want to adopt your son.” And she says, “You are forcing me to keep my son.”
So the end result of this new law in Texas is basically going to be thousands of unwanted babies being left at firehouses, police stations, etc. I wonder if Texas is planning on bringing back orphanages?
Especially since Planned Parenthood clinics are one of the few reliable sources of birth control for many Texans. So if an abortion-providing PP clinic gets shut down and/or bankrupted by these lawsuits, Texans can have lots more unwanted pregnancies to go with their lots fewer abortions! It’s a twofer!
I am under the impression that there are far more couples wanting to adopt infant children than there are infant children in the USA (otherwise, why bother going to China?), so I doubt this will spark a need for “orphanages.” Besides - aren’t orphanages for older children?
Healthy white babies. That’s what they want. They go to China because they could at one time…pretty sure that’s not still an option…and too many kids available in the U.S. are not white or have health issues.
Also cute healthy little white babies - pretty much over like toddler isn’t particularly adoptable. If I wanted a kid, and couldn’t pop one out myself, and was desperate enough to jump through the adoption hoops, I would take whatever I could get agewise. I can agree with wanting healthy though.
There are about 135k adoptions per year and over 600k abortions. I think, if abortions were illegal nationwide, the adoption system would be overwhelmed.
It sounds like abortions are effectively illegal in Texas right now, so we will see what a post-Roe world is like.
On possibility is that most of the women who might have had an abortion in Texas will travel to a blue state where it is legal. That’s the same as what would happen if Roe is overruled. So for however long it takes for a test case to go through the entire legal process, we also have a test of whether there are enough adoption agencies and adoptive parents. And we will also have a test of whether hospitals, now full with COVID patients, will have to care for substantial numbers of women injured in home abortion attempts.
Personally, I think that women’s safety and rights are good reasons for abortion to be safe, legal and, I hope, rare. Claims that unwanted children are better off never having been born, or anything in that direction, I do not find attractive.
A common misconception. My dad died when I was fifty, my mom died eight years later. I looked into local orphanages but they wanted nothing to do with me.
Nearly all the women I know who had abortions didn’t want a baby at that time. And nearly all of them subsequently had children when they were better equipped to raise a child. Having a child at the wrong time can mire a woman (and her child) in poverty for life.
But the justification for abortion is not “women shouldn’t have to have a child they don’t want”. We certainly don’t allow that for men, or for women who have given birth to children and changed their mind.
Whatever the motive for an abortion, the right to an abortion is rooted in the idea that a woman has the right to control her own body and decide whether or not she wants to be pregnant at that time.