Getting Beyond The Act

Focus On Abortion Is Wrong

I think that President Bill Clinton said it right back in the day. Abortion should be rare.

When I see statements on social media, they all focus on the act of abortion. They focus on if a baby is viable outside the womb. Many Democratic leaders want abortion legal until 9 months! No one is focusing on why they might occur.

The reason they don’t like to talk about it is it changes the debate and focus. It goes from the mechanical act in a clinic to talking about real societal problems that they don’t really want to try and solve.

They don’t want to solve them because that would mean gutting a lot of sacred cows they have raised over the years.

So as the leftists say these days, let’s have a conscious conversation! A candid one.

What we are doing in America and the way we are approaching the problem isn’t working and has to change if we are going to make abortion rare.

Data helps to look at the problem. It’s not a be-all-end-all but it sure helps. I tried to find objective data to lay out the problem. For example, I found some data that showed California had the highest population of people living below the poverty line but California also has the most people so that data point isn’t really good for analysis.

The out-of-wedlock birth data is interesting. By the way, this is not just a US phenomenon, but out-of-wedlock birth is happening more in the EU and other countries. Yes, my chart below has data that ends in 2008, but does anyone think the pattern has changed? In 2015, Black out of wedlock birth was 77.3%.

When you look at 2020 state data, it puts a bit of a finer point on it especially when you look at government-run educational systems and poverty. For example, Nevada has a horrible government-run educational system and it also has a very high rate of out-of-wedlock pregnancy. Mississippi is a favorite punching bag of liberals and it has a poor government-run education system and a high level of poverty. We also know from data that kids who come from two-parent homes, regardless of race, and graduate from high school do better than kids who don’t. Why do Asians do so well in America? They don’t have many out-of-wedlock births and they are educated.

2015 Data:

The trends are clear. The higher the percentage of out-of-wedlock births and you see a correspondingly high percentage of poverty. It’s a vicious circle of poor education, out-of-wedlock birth, and poverty. Immigrants have lower out-of-wedlock birth rates than US Citizens. No amount of government money or any government program can cure it. Turns out, government money being interjected into the process might have terrible network effects since out-of-wedlock births have escalated since 1965 when the war on poverty was declared.

Economist Gary Becker looked at all kinds of data in his research. He was brilliant. He might have been more brilliant than Milton Friedman because he took economic concepts to places no one else did and reached valuable, actionable, conclusions. I want to point you to some of his and Emily Oster’s research on AIDS and wonder if it could be correlated to out-of-wedlock birth.

Becker found that in Sub-Saharan Africa, people didn’t take a lot of precautions against getting AIDS because they didn’t think they would live very long. They didn’t see a future for themselves. This is from 2007 and the old Becker-Posner blog which was magnificent,

A study in progress by Emily Oster of the University of Chicago shows the importance of two "economic" factors. One is the lower income of Africans, which means that the gain to them in terms of lost future income from taking actions to reduce their exposure to the AIDS virus is smaller than it would be in a richer country like the United States. The second is that the much greater prospect in Africa of death at younger ages from other diseases, such as malaria, reduced the gain to them from lowering the risk of contracting the AIDS virus. These factors are very important but perhaps not the whole story.

One part of Becker’s solution was to use DDT to get rid of mosquitoes to extend the life expectancy of people so that they would change their behavior and try to live longer.

Let’s make an intellectual jump to abortion even though there is no data to support my claim. Maybe some enterprising economist going for a Ph.D. can do some peer-reviewed research?

Here is what we know.

Kids that don’t graduate from high school don’t earn as much. They see no hope. They don’t have anyone around them that earns a lot of income and if they aren’t white they have been told that it’s the color of their skin. They are fatherless and rudderless. There is no incentive to change their behavior.

Men have been told by mass media and public government-run education they are “bad people”. They are evil. They commit crimes against women constantly. If you are a white male, you are even worse and are part of the problem. They also haven’t had role models for years, so there is no incentive to change their behavior.

Religion used to play a big role in America. Now it doesn’t. Democrats are violently opposed to religion and see it as evil. That ethos showed yesterday at the Supreme Court in the way Sotomayer wrote her opinion. America is a very secular society and I would call it non-religious. Religion gets castigated for all of its faults but the principles laid down by religion are pretty good to live by. Religion gives a person hope and purpose and without it, there is no incentive to change behavior.

The fallback. They have sex. That makes them feel good. It might give them self-worth. When you have sex, you get pregnant.

We don’t have an abortion problem. We have a hope and opportunity problem.

What’s the solution?

• A radical change in our education system must happen now. School choice ought to be implemented and embraced everywhere. Kids getting access to better education will give them hope and help them see opportunities so they choose to change their behavior on their own.

• Demonizing religion has to stop. Helping kids find simple spiritual guidance so they can find a purpose in life is imperative.

• Changing all tax laws around marriage so that there are no marriage penalties.

• Change government programs so that if you get a job, you don’t automatically lose benefits. Effort ought to bring you more income.

• Increase the earned income tax credit. Don’t have a universal basic income since it doesn’t encourage work.

• Education on birth control but truly, most of these kids know about it and just refuse to use it.

• Emphasis on the nuclear family. The nuclear family has done America proud since its inception. If you read the book, America 3.0, you can see the history of the nuclear family and how it affected societies.

I bet if you took those small steps, the rate of abortion would go down, and out-of-wedlock birth would start to go down.