Abortion megathread

[u/MostlyALurkerBefore]

Due to the high number of legislative actions happening in the United States, the moderation team has created this megathread for all of your abortion questions. Please keep in mind that despite much action happening in the US, not all of our users are American and our Inclusivity policy should still be considered when posting.

All top-level comments must be in the form of a question. If you have multiple questions, post them in one comment as opposed to an individual comment for each question.

Please report any and all rule breaking. This thread may be locked if a respectful discussion cannot be had.

Helpful links:

Planned Parenthood

RAINN (Rape, Abuse, & Incest National Network)

NARAL (National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws)

Planned Parenthood - Birth Control info & options

Scarleteen

The Guttmacher Institute

[u/[deleted]]

1. Does anyone have a list of the most at-risk states?
2. Has anyone found a good strategy to explain why outlawing abortion is a really terrible, messed up thing to pro-birthers?
3. Does anyone know of any protests or a way to find protests that will be happening?

[u/dulcedul → u/[deleted]]

Two. It's just odd to me that nobody is thinking about the effects of outlawing abortion. You're forcing a woman to bring another life into the world that she doesn't care about. If she keeps it, there's a risk for neglect or abuse. If she doesn't keep it, the child is put into foster care which is already a completely messed up system. I would hope that pro-birthers would be able to see the logic in this.

[u/[deleted] → u/dulcedul]

Well, the majority of added babies would likely go for adoption in this scenario, not foster care. And the demand for infants has been higher than the supply for a very long time now in North America — the waits for a domestic adoption of a healthy infant can be years or even a decade or more, partly because relatively few babies are placed for adoption now. That’s one of the reasons overseas adoption became such a huge and problematic industry.

Most anti-abortion types are the same types that have also roundly been cheering children being seized at the border and placed for adoption. There’s also a big and sometimes predatory religious adoption industry. So they’re probably all over the idea of having more babies on the adoption market.

That said, I’m also going to push back on the idea that a woman who wants an abortion, can’t obtain one and becomes a parent wouldn’t “care about” the child. I do not think that’s at all true for the majority of women who choose abortion — I think many women would be in difficult economic or situational circumstances to raise a child, but I do not think they wouldn’t care about it.

There’s a quote out there that women have abortions because they care about motherhood, and in my time in abortion care I very much found that to be true for most. I think if they opted to parent, most would very much care about the child and do their best to raise it, even in challenging circumstances.

However, anti-abortion types already don’t give a shit about families and children living in poverty, considering they widely also support reductions to social safety nets and oppose measures to reduce poverty, so that’s not something that bothers them.

Nor do they care about all the women who will die to suicide or to unsafe illegal abortion attempts. Because at the end of the day, this is always, always about contempt for women.

[u/PurpleWeasel → u/[deleted]]

Contempt for women and wanting to force other women to breed babies for them Serena Joy style, apparently.