Before diving into this, a few disclaimers.
First off, I write this being a person who recognizes themselves as 100% pro choice on all all abortions in the first two trimesters and also third trimester if medical issues happen. The second is I write this as someone who’s been an atheist since about the third grade and never had any real attachments towards the idea of a higher power or God. I was the classic contrarian attending a catholic school who’d sit there in seventh grade quietly in the back of room whispering under my breath about how miracles aren’t real, heaven is the playboy mansion, gays are cool and yes, abortion was fine and dandy.
Yet with that, the third thing I mention is I’m a laissez faire capitalist, foreign policy non aggressive, socially open person and with zero doubts your token libertarian in the room. The fourth thing is I’m a proudly registered Republican and number five is I don’t believe someone needs to be pro choice to recognize as a libertarian or even that being pro choice is a conflict on libertarianism.
With that, I’ve opened on my registered Republican wicked pro choice/atheist ways and will progress further.
The fact is this, regardless of being pro choice, pro life or in between, it’s just a fact that the pro life movement has universally failed to make any major political action. Despite being an addressed issue in nearly every election and also an extremely popular fundraising issue on both sides, it’s held little political action on it for even the standards of congress.
Sure, very minor modifications to funding, late term abortions and a couple other minor things have happened, but those were all complete dead ends not doing anything to stop even 5% of the abortions yearly. In fact, third trimester abortions have been so historically rare that the steaminess of the new sports illustrated covers probably have produced more abortions over the last five years… With that, it’s not really any serious win.
And looking at that, what have both sides won?
The wins for the pro choice movement?
55 million abortions in under five decades….
The wins for the pro life movement?
Rick Santorum
Mike Huckabee
Pat Buchanan
A lot of money raised for social whack house politicians.
That witch lady from Delaware
And the mother load, Todd Akin!!!!!
With that, the pro life movement is a complete failure making absolutely zero political gains and it’s only achievements being found in lunatic politicians which make the Republican Party look bad.
Yet some have argued that things are getting better. In some polls, the opinion on abortion has been slightly more negative over previous years and some evidence exist that people are personally sick of it.
Yet really, what would it take to ban abortion? What does it take to knock out the landmark bill of Roe V Wade?
Well, simply something the pro life movement will never achieve. That is two thirds of the house and senate being willing to vote on an amendment to ban abortion. Which to show how far back in fantasy land that is, remember this point. There are currently 54 republicans in the US senate. Of that 54, about five of the senators officially have themselves put as pro choice. Also, several of them are pretty weak on the issue being semi pro choice. Meaning, in current form, with the 100% of senate Democrats being pro choice and moderate number of pro choice Republicans, the pro life movement would need to gain 17 senators to even have a chance of a pro life amendment to the constitution. It’s simply a political impossibility which won’t happen. Zero chance….
With that, millions of dollars in political donations yearly over this issue, but nothing to make the bang for that buck besides some looney toon Santorum Republicans capitalizing on it.
What are the better ideas? What are the politically possible ideas which can make the eradication of abortion happen?
Here’s three simple and very very electable issues which overnight could likely help cement the end of abortion.
Number One-Deregulating Birth Control
The simple truth, America is the toughest nation in the world to buy birth control in. Over the counter birth control is expensive, has too much red tape in obtaining it and eliminating very minor regulations, it could be cheaper, easier to get and likely open the market to new and better options.
This method actually seems to be a new trend in the GOP for people not named Rick Santorum. Politicians such as Bobby Jindal and Rand Paul who seem more concerned about the problem of unwanted pregnancies over people raising millions on it like Mike Huckabee or Rick Santorum seem to actually be very for this deregulation happening. So much so that Bobby Jindal as assistant HHS made efforts to re-examine birth control laws in the early 2000s and Rand Paul has in the senate worked on birth control bills in the past.
This movement is actually going somewhere.
Number Two-Fastlane FDA Approval of Birth Control Drugs & Procedures
To get a pill onto the market takes 10-15 years along with a billion dollars in funding for testing. For procedures such as vasectomies or tubal ligations, the process can also run years with tens if not hundreds of millions spent on it. In short, it’s hell.
In a world where the FDA didn’t make this process take years, better surgeries and drugs would be developed, invested in and introduced. The outcome would be very visibly a world where unwanted pregnancies become much rarer and countering this is much cheaper.
Number Three-Incentivize
While congress wasted its time trying to take 500m from planned parenthood, they did so just losing votes and really achieving nothing. And they really achieved nothing in doing this….
One somewhat un-libertarian idea could be this. Tell companies or groups who make certain achievements in pregnancy prevention technology, that they will get money which would have come from planned parenthood. If a group comes in with a new method to make a painless easy reverse vasectomy that cost $100 to do, reward them with 50m. It’d be an enormous amount of money saved later on with funds taken out in a revenue neutral way.
Concluding Thoughts?
My concluding thoughts are this…. Abortion as an issue is simply not a big deal. It’s such a small issue that I won’t even bother to do a serious edit of this article and won’t even bother to show numbers or statistics with citations due to that being a waste of a Tuesday night.
Why is the abortion issue not a big deal?
The fact there will very likely not be any abortions within 10-30 years. Due to science and entrepreneurship, the problem of unwanted pregnancy is known and minds are focusing to stop it with good technology. Not awkward sex-ed classes, bizarro Christian leaders or anything else the media uses to harp into people’s throats. Just science and monetary incentive.
With that, writing this really was just a chance for me to rant, but hope it did give some good thoughts to have….
Charles Peralo
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