Externalities

It is not true that I hate pregnant women

I read an article on the Irish referendum on abortion.

In it, the writer notes that the current state of abortion in the country - more or less, illegal no matter what - does not produce the outcomes usually predicted by the proponents of its legalization.

While it is true that hardly any Irish woman dies in back-alley abortions, it is a bit of a disingenuous argument in that they simply take a plane, and move to the nearest country where it is legal to have it.

However, the article also notices that the Irish government does something more than just prohibit the medical procedure, in its efforts to convince women to keep their babies - it reaches into its dilapidated pockets and manages to fork out some benefits, a well as some helping labor rules, to try to offset the burden that represents bringing a pregnancy to term.

The Irish government, and the conservative forces driving its policies on reproductive issues, seem to be open to the incontrovertible fact that one can't have something for nothing.

It is a bummer, as it really botches the vision of conservatives as I know them.

As far as I can see in the U.S.A and other  countries , most often than not the same ones  that would punish women for doing the financially sensible thing - cut their losses and move on with their life - are usually also the ones that press to reduce "entitlement programs" like the one that helps cover health care for poor children.

They want women to keep their children - sometimes adducing truly honorable reasons like "we need them kids to work and pay for our retirements" (1)  - yet they refuse to help in the upkeep of the produced offspring.

I realize that wanting the barrel full and the wife drunk is an integral and basic human characteristic, but a bunch that usually complains about the financial unrealism of wild-eyed progressives should really know better.

They want women to have babies - maybe just to put them up for adoption once delivered? (2)

Let's pay them their time and pain, generously - I suspect it would tip the scales in the right direction more than the kind of draconian laws that most conservatives favor.

If they do not want to sacrifice any sizable portion of their wallets for the cause of life - which I suspect accurately describe an awful portion of GOP supporters, even among the fervent pro-life evangelicals - then they should just shut the fuck up.

(1) Which kind of conflicts with the "in the next ten years, as much as 30% of U.S. workforce will be made redundant by automation" - after which, chances are the tech will really improve and all bets are off. If by the mid of the century all but a fraction of the general population is going to be jobless, having more kids to jail for being vagrants is not going to improve things..

(2) That was the way in Causescu's Romania, and the effect of being reared that way isn't exactly genial... a study found that - on average - it resulted in 20 I.Q. points less, when compared to siblings who were raised normally, for those unfortunate enough to receive no maternal cares in their fist three years. It beats the alternative, until you factor in the content of note 1 here above, which leads to a " we could as well enroll them in jails as they are born, it would be more earnest" kind of illumination. .