Cause and Effect, or, What You Want and What You Get
Madanthonywayne said:
Is this the "safe, legal, and rare" situation everyone claims to want?
Nope. As long as people continue to compromise with conservative economic policies, such safety, legality, and rarity is a nearly impossible consideration.
I would urge you, sir, to one day sit down and take a look at the conservative rhetoric that has for so long demarcated the party you support. The economic- and social-conservative movements are not, over the long run, compatible; and that's putting it gently.
So unless you want to get off the cutthroat, wealth-consolidation, let's-cry-for-the-rich-while-we-bleed-everyone else economic con job you're pushing, I think you need to stuff the abortion complaint.
What do you want, Moneybags? Capitalism, or Christian morality? What's more important to you, Madanthonywayne? Your money, or God?
Stop pretending you can roll around in the one while fulfilling your faith in the other.
It's dumb-assed, snarky stupidity like the question quoted above that make people not only disdain conservatism itself, but look upon its proponents as liars at best, if not outright psychotics who need heavy medication and a straitjacket.
Of course "safe, legal, and rare" is a better standard. But that involves more than just passing a law telling us how big a fetus can be before termination, or setting a hard count of days. It also involves educational and economic policies. And conservatives come down on the wrong side of those to achieve their abolitionist desire. To the other, it's only coincidental that such results will accord with other conservative ideas. With crappy schools, no sex education, and generations raised toward serfdom, you're only encouraging a lot more unintended pregnancies—statistically speaking. And, of course, if you get your way and make women into baby factories, that will be a lot more unwanted, undereducated, poor children to grow up into workers to be exploited in your bourgeois utopia. And when the crime rate goes up? Well, that's why you're a Second Amendment advocate—you need to protect yourself from all the poor, baby-making, black and hispanic criminals.
Psychologically speaking, it's quite the construction—even admirable for its polymer veneer of sublimation.
But here's the deal: When you advocate policies whose observable statistical results include unintended pregnancies, you're going to see an increase in abortion rates. When you couple that with economic instability among the working classes, you're going to see an increase in the abortion rates. So, look, dude, when someone who advocates policies that happen to increase abortion suddenly turns around and complains about the increased abortion rate, the first words to mind are profane.
So what do you want? A perpetual game of King of the Hill, in which we're always trying to knock each other off and destroy one another's enterprises, because that's what good, respectable, civilized capitalists do? Or a moralist utopia in which you can put your women back in their place? You don't get both. Perhaps once upon a time, you could have, but we're too far along in the human story for that ending.
But, actually, we know. You're not willing to choose. You want it all, and expect society to torture itself in order to give it to you.
But it won't happen.
So what do you want?
• Capitalism: Consolidation of wealth leads to increased poverty rates, contributing to increased abortion rate.
• Penny-Pinching Schools: By making education a secondary consideration of the schools in order to ensure the rich can buy yet another vacation home, you reduce the efficacy of the school system, with students growing into citizens less capable of making enlightened decisions. This results in a greater number of unwanted pregnancies.
• Racial Solutions: We've discussed race issues in education before, and as I recall, your solution is to do nothing about the problem and let people grow out of it like they haven't for the past how many centuries. By doing so, you perpetuate, even augment, gaps in educational outcomes, with results including higher unplanned pregnancy rates.
• Morality—Public/Private: Conservative opposition to sex and birth control education contributes greatly to the accidental pregnancy rate.
• Wages/Taxes: By maintaining the working classes as a generator for the lifestyles of the rich and famous, you advocate greater consolidation of wealth, leading to incrased poverty, individual and community instability, and, yes, higher pregnancy rates.
Stop and think about what you advocate. A higher unplanned pregnancy rate, and thus a higher abortion rate, are part of what happens when you get your way.
(P.S. — Just as a side note, it seems that you added an apostrophe to your quote. Mostly because it's so extraneous, I'm curious: Why?)
