daoneandonly wrote:Its 2019, who the heck stigmatizes single moms?
Employers.
The number one self-reported reason reason for choosing to have an abortions: "I can't afford a baby right now, I would lose my job". Add in the question of child care expense in the years before it reaches school. And afterschool.
It's against the law, but makes sense to any HR person. A single mother will miss work if their kid is sick. That's twice as many sick days as a single person would use. That drives up premiums for company health care. Their hours will have to account for school days off and early dismissal and hell, simply the fact that the school day ends at 3 while the work day ends at 5 plus travel time. And that doesn't even discuss the time off needed if a woman got pregnant while on the job.
Women earn less per hour then men do. Some part of that has to do with motherhood itself. A baby often means a significant gap of time while on Family Leave. FMLA guarantees the job will be held for her for a few weeks after birth. But most jobs won't pay for that time off. Most laws don't require it. And no 6 or 9 week old baby is really ready to leave it's mother. Around the civilized world we are thought as barbaric for the short time we give mothers. It's like we dont value motherhood or babies at all. Reasonable from a political stance. Babies don't vote.
But consider again the economics of motherhood, why someone with an unexpected pregnancy might choose any other option. Look at the lifetime income disparity between a single mother and any other other demographic. Then look at the minimum required income per state to survive as a single parent. Cross reference with the average age of single mothers.
No matter how frustrated you are that other people are having it, you're not going to be able to ban sex. You can't lock up everyone who ever has sex or has their birth control fail. (Who hasn't had a condom break, ever? ). You're not going to prevent relationships from failing and women being left to carry a baby when their man leaves. Or he dies in a car crash. Or is killed in action with his regiment overseas. Or it turns out he lied and is actually already married and she simply trusted and believed in all that 'forever' talk. Or she herself develops cancer and needs to take chemo and radiation which would kill the baby at a much later stage. Or any other reasonable or plausible scenario aside from rape. Rape is only one reason. Rather than argue all of the instances, just understand the point is there are many causes for why a pregnancy might prove incredibly difficult. Rape is not the only argument. Concede at least there are many other reasonable possibilitites for why a pregnancy is trouble.
You can demonize all you want the person who makes a decision not to choose motherhood at a critical time. But nobody chooses abortion lightly. A D&C hurts. It costs serious money for a young working woman. It's scary as hell. It's upsetting to think about. It's sad, even. People work to make it clean and safe but people get infections or suffer long term consequences, even death, from almost any medical procedure.
Organizations like Planned Parenthood work very hard to encourage family planning and contraception and to promote women's health. They prescribe birth control pills and give away condoms for free and give procedures for IUD insertion etc. They even prescribe day-after pills for that broken condom scenario, for instance. If you cared about preventing termination of pregnancy (even as they were simply a few cells dividing) you would advocate for more organizations like this.
But lets consider something: If you could prevent every abortion by guaranteeing that the mother had family leave to to give birth and breastfeed it, and then had good childcare options for when she returned to work, and was guaranteed housing (say at least the equivalent of a prison sentence, if abortions were banned and the government had to lock her up and feed her anyway). Would you be willing to pay for that? If your tax money were saving the life of a child that would otherwise be aborted, would you subsidize it?
If not then, yes you are interested more in punishing people for having sex, and locking them up, out of displaced anger and puffed up moral outrage, or the fact that other people are having sex and you aren't, I don't know, you can supply your own reason for why this has become an issue for you -- than you are actually solving the problem. Do you want to punish women or save the lives of little babies? Would you be willing to subsidize birth and health care and daycare for single mothers?
I suspect your response is along the lines of "why should you have to pay for..." fornicators and sluts and immoral harlots having all that sex they are not giving you. But maybe you will surprise me. Are you a foster parent? I have been. Have you adopted babies?
If you were a true believer you would spend any sort of money to prevent even one child's death, right?
I guess that's why this stance rings hollow:
daoneandonly wrote:They also didn't boo him out of some moral outrage, because come on, its the DMV, the moral compass here is non existent
...
the left want things given to them on silver platters while getting massages at the same time. All paid for by tax dollars mind you.
The people on the left that I know are highly moral people who disagree with you on that single issue. (Or even if they personally agree that abortion is a tragedy, like moral Catholic people I know, they believe that in order to prevent it they should work to make a better healthier society to be born into). They are people who work for non-profit organizations dedicated to making a cleaner healthier world or a more just society. They are defense attorneys working for poor people. They are community organizers teaching english and advocating for people who otherwise have no voice. They are judges, and people writing policy, and economists. They in general earn a decent wage and say: tax me more so that nobody starves to death, or dies without health care, or that kids get Head Start education and that we have public libraries for lifelong learning, for everyone, for free (you don't get more socialist than that) and free Wifi and computer access so that even poor people can take online courses or apply for jobs in an increasingly technological society.
None of that is immoral. That is the DMV I know. Highly educated, and highly committed to putting their life on the line to work for causes they care about. And willing to pay their fair share for the principles in the constitution: to establish justice, provide for the general welfare, ensure domestic tranquility...
Willing to pay their fair share. Where it is reasonable to ask the question: what is the fair share that a billionaire should pay? Why should a civil society be paid for most by the people who work the hardest. Not billionaires and pigs like Trump who inherited daddy's money and pissed away billions of dollars of his family fortune in failing upward again and again. A guy who was smug about being born rich and thinks it has to do with his genetics. That he is simply smarter than everyone despite all evidence to the contrary.
I think we get nowhere assuming people we disagree with are fundamentally morally empty. Trump has proven he is though. Again and again. And is arrogant about it. And has earned every boo he ever hears about him. Even you admit he is pretty terrible, but that while being immoral at least he has been a useful idiot for protecting the single issue over which you feel you have moral authority in your opinion, if not your action.
Are you going to adopt a baby ever? I know a family of liberals who have adopted seven. Over a lifetime of public service and good works and business. And while they are religious, they are as liberal as their blood is red. Because someone has to fund civilization. That's all that good governance is about. If we are going to have society, who pays for it and how and what is it for? To look out for the least of us seems to be a reasonable baseline. To keep us from falling into barbarism.
