Abortion and contraception (OP)

I saw a post on Facebook asking for opinions regarding abortion and I quickly realized that my response was growing far too long to fit within a small comment. So, I will go ahead and post it here.

I am pro-choice, not entirely for morality reasons, but more economically and socially. I do not believe in morality influencing politics as it is largely dependent on perception, something that is different from person to person and culture to culture.

I don’t support publicly funded abortions (contraception is another case, I will discuss later). It’s already tricky enough to publicly fund abortions because it lands in a gray area of rights regarding religion, a problem that’s been brought up recently (making religious organizations provide healthcare incl. abortion, contraception, etc); the amount of coat-tail legislation needed to firmly declare the rules would be substantial and wouldn’t last very long as religion itself is an evolving force. While it may help prevent societal issues with unwanted children, it would tie up the legal system rather heavily.

However, as the landmark Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade decided, preventing a woman from undergoing an abortion is a violation of that person’s due process rights. Neither states nor the federal government can deny that right, plain and simple; this isn’t a matter of argument, it’s fact, and it’s laid out in the Bill of Rights itself. I am supportive of that.

Contraception is another thing. While it falls under the same problem as publicly funded abortions, I do believe it is in the country’s best interests to have healthcare providers do what they can to provide contraceptives, especially to young adults that are most susceptible. The U.S. is one of the worst developed countries in the world in regards to teenage pregnancy largely because the country has failed to prevent it, spending years on fruitless “abstinence only” education and deliberately preventing young adults from obtaining contraceptives. Let’s face it, teens are going to have sex. Maybe it isn’t me or you or your children, whichever is relevant, but there are and there always will be. So while providers can’t be legally required to provide contraceptives to stifle teenage pregnancy, I do believe it is in their best interests in order to solve a growing problem in American society. Ultimately, this falls under pro-choice because it is up to the person to choose whether to take up on the offer.

Tying in both issues, unwanted children are generally going to grow up in dysfunctional families or impoverished situations. The children fail to socialize to society properly and end up outcasts or outlaws at worst. The very same people who reportedly “live off of welfare” and other publicly funded securities are the unwanted children, as far as I can postulate. While the thought of preventing a life from being born is ethically unsettling, at the same time doing so doesn’t drag down the budget in the public securities field. Think about the tax benefits you get for having children; those cuts ultimately lower the budget and prevent other issues in the fiscal agenda from being addressed. You ultimately raise the standard of living as people who would otherwise be left with an unwanted child are now able to pick themselves back up without such significant government assistance.

Finally, some last words about buying into the pro-choice or pro-life crowd (they may not be relevant but I’d like to throw in my two cents): subscribing to either extreme agenda is unwise and is like saying “I’d rather pick a side and be ignorant so I don’t have to think about it too much because it’s a touchy subject.” An American citizen is obligated to understand and take a role in the government system because a democratic government system is only as strong as its people allow it to be. When too many people start relying on extremes we get into a situation where there are a handful of parties leaning on the far left, far right or totally far out that control the government, but none of them really support public opinions.