Here's How Anti Abortion Activists Missed Their Target


If anti abortion cranks could get off their emotional bandwagon and think strategically they might get somewhere. They can't stop talking about "it's a baby." They think everyone involved is or will be preoccupied with this emotional notion. Instead, they need to realize everyone involved does not see it this way. A potential father or mother might be preoccupied with another thought, "It's a pile of bills to pay. And, I might lose my job." Perhaps they can think of nothing else. That is, the notion "It is a baby" may not enter their minds because their minds are filled with the job and bills. The anti abortion cranks could do something about this thought pattern. They could advocate the public pay those bills.

The link is not about abortion but about child support payments by the bread-winning parent. Usually this is the father, now divorced, who is behind in child support payments. The entire article is negative about what happens when a couple has children and then divorces. Every state has a department in its bureaucracy putting garnishments on salaries. When the parent assigned the garnishment cannot or will not keep up payments a debt piles up. In the story there is a day-labor man who owes $80,000. I have a friend who owes $100,000. The system's goal is to "make the mother (or sometimes the father) whole" after the divorce. There are huge numbers of people with child support debts. The state here has cut back to the number of people pursuing delinquent parents. If the delinquent parent works for cash and files little or nothing for income tax the state official says there is nothing that can be done. In many ways the system does not work.

In the landmark study of women who had abortions or were turned away from abortion facilities, The Turnaway Study, a frequent reason women sought abortions was uncertainty about the relationship with the man. They did not feel they could count on the man for help caring for a baby nor for financial help. If the public sector "made the woman whole" as the child support system tries to do many of these women might not have sought out an abortion provider.

When one sees abortion protestors shouting their prayers at women going into abortion clinics it's tempting to ask them why they give political support to the very people who help make abortion an attractive alternative, low tax politicians who will never vote for more public payments to mothers. Would not it be smarter to support a political party that had some potential for lower the number of abortions? 

The door for change is open to anti abortion zealots. They need only walk in.

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