The goal of pro-life shouldn't be to minimize abortions. The safest way to do that would be to minimize births, which is the opposite of what pro-life wants.
The problem I have with pro-choice people isn't necessarily that they get abortions, but that they are low fertility and just don't seem to like children and big families all that much. If your average pro-choice person had four kids and aborted one Down syndrome kid along the way that would be fine, but in reality pro-life people are averaging at least an extra kid per woman over pro-choice people. I think peoples view on abortion is basically just a proxy for their views on what kind of status family and children should have.
Pro-life should focus on making people want to have kids, and thus they will voluntarily get fewer abortions. And while it would "be more expensive" in the short run those incentives have to include the middle and upper middle class because its really them we need to have more kids. They may not get abortions, but they are birth controlling themselves into sub replacement TFR.
Two more, complementary approaches to reducing the incidence of abortion:
1. Improving support for women who choose to give birth and raise families.
A number of prominent pro-life women, including Rachel Larimore and Sarah Quinlan, have advocated for changing the culture by better supporting women. As Quinlan writes, "we can reduce the number of abortions by providing sufficient resources and support ... for women and families. And we can stop seeing the fight over abortion as “us versus them” and instead frame it as “us helping them” instead."
There are a number of specific proposals mentioned in Quinlan's piece:
While many men are willing to take more responsibility for preventing unintended pregnancies, male birth control options are basically limited to condoms, vasectomies, and withdrawal (urgh).
Pharmaceutical companies need to be persuaded there's a market, for starters:
And we can support organizations such as the Male Contraceptive Initiative, which "provides funding and advocacy support for the research and development of new methods of non-hormonal, reversible male birth control":
The Pro-Life Should Play a Different Game
Thoughts on this? https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/09/07/us/abortion-data-bans-laws.html
The goal of pro-life shouldn't be to minimize abortions. The safest way to do that would be to minimize births, which is the opposite of what pro-life wants.
The problem I have with pro-choice people isn't necessarily that they get abortions, but that they are low fertility and just don't seem to like children and big families all that much. If your average pro-choice person had four kids and aborted one Down syndrome kid along the way that would be fine, but in reality pro-life people are averaging at least an extra kid per woman over pro-choice people. I think peoples view on abortion is basically just a proxy for their views on what kind of status family and children should have.
Pro-life should focus on making people want to have kids, and thus they will voluntarily get fewer abortions. And while it would "be more expensive" in the short run those incentives have to include the middle and upper middle class because its really them we need to have more kids. They may not get abortions, but they are birth controlling themselves into sub replacement TFR.
Two more, complementary approaches to reducing the incidence of abortion:
1. Improving support for women who choose to give birth and raise families.
A number of prominent pro-life women, including Rachel Larimore and Sarah Quinlan, have advocated for changing the culture by better supporting women. As Quinlan writes, "we can reduce the number of abortions by providing sufficient resources and support ... for women and families. And we can stop seeing the fight over abortion as “us versus them” and instead frame it as “us helping them” instead."
There are a number of specific proposals mentioned in Quinlan's piece:
https://www.thebulwark.com/its-time-for-pro-liifers-to-change-the-culture-on-abortion/
2. Improving birth control for men.
While many men are willing to take more responsibility for preventing unintended pregnancies, male birth control options are basically limited to condoms, vasectomies, and withdrawal (urgh).
Pharmaceutical companies need to be persuaded there's a market, for starters:
https://www.statnews.com/2018/05/11/contraceptives-for-men-pharma/
And we can support organizations such as the Male Contraceptive Initiative, which "provides funding and advocacy support for the research and development of new methods of non-hormonal, reversible male birth control":
https://www.malecontraceptive.org/
Ok. Interesting..what do you suggest we do to raise birth rates?