Remember Abortion?

If I had a nickel for every article written about the impending doom of Roe vs Wade, I’d have just enough money for a bus ticket to get a scared pregnant girl from a Red state to a Blue. I would then be liable for a felony.

We like to look at issues from every perspective. I’d like to take a macro view: Who is going to put up with this chaos? Are we to believe that the need for 629,000 abortions that occurred in 2021 are not going to happen again next year?

At an average of $750 per abortion, where will that $471,750,000 go? Will anybody miss it? Will this alone be a cause for action?

At an average cost of $13,000 a natural birth and $22,000 for a caesarean, where will the majority of the needed $8.97 to $15.18 billion to deliver these children come from?

Then, there are the societal costs of 629,000 children unwanted by their parents. This is of little importance to Republicans, who apparently desire a failed and over-crowded prison system, the political capital of those who benefit from incarceration, and a steady stream of desperate workers who have no choice but to accept their sh*tty jobs.

The resulting numbers from unwanted children in this world are astronomical. The US spent $81 billion on incarceration last year. I’m not suggesting that abortion is a solution to crime, but the $471 million spent on abortion is six one-thousands of that total figure.

At a $33,000 average price per an inmate, per year, 690,000 unwanted children pencil out to $22.77 billion—if every single one of them entered the criminal justice system in a given year. What reasonable percentage of that number will face incarceration?

Let’s pivot back to the poor pregnant girl on the side of the road.

That poor girl is supposed to do what?: Take a three-day bus ride to another state, pay for food and lodging, suffer job insecurity due to the missed work, and sacrifice her lost wages? How is this good for society or the economy?

If Red states want to fully repress their women, where will it lead? Does it bode well by any measure of the body politic? It certainly bodes well for the repressors. You can feel their glee, but it does not bode well for any of us. They have created a solution that requires all of us to cope with their wishes: no abortions, supposedly happy homes, a wealth of productive citizens.

Wishful thinking.

In response, let’s not resign ourselves to this new reality and cope. Instead of gnashing our teeth, let’s address the malfeasance of a stacked Supreme Court, and push back on totalitarian legislatures. Who are the major offenders in this conflict? What organizations are effectively fighting against them?

If you have to boycott a state or shun its products, so be it. How else do we make it clear that the actions of their representatives are unconscionable?

We can pretend these actions don’t have a cost, or that the affected will somehow cope, but isn’t it better to see the situation clearly?

Those who can’t afford the bus ride face unimaginable suffering. They are to bear their children into a world that will not support them, that values life only by how far it can be exploited. It’s a world that condemns the mother to poverty and the children to crime. We are already ignoring the needs of so many of our citizens.

What’s 690,000 more?

Illustration by Paul Antoniades