I had a weird thought about Republicans and abortion

[gollygee]

I had this dream last night that involved people riding a bus that had anti-abortion propoganda movies playing. When I woke up I had this thought.

Is it possible that the reason the Republican Party is opposed to aboriton is this:

When abortion wasn't legal, there were a lot of unwanted babies born. We had orphanages because there weren't enough families who wanted babies. When the unwanted kids turned 18, they were sent off on their own, but they had absolutely nothing and had to support themselves somehow. Their choices were . . . try to find labor jobs for whatever people would pay, or join the military. There weren't very many options available to women back then but a lot of women watched people's kids or cleaned house for almost nothing, or became prostitutes.

Anyway, maybe some older Republicans remember the "good old days" of having this regular pool of new cheap labor and new military recruits and think, "too bad that's gone."

I know there are a lot of people who have religious or other moral reasons to be opposed to abortion, but there are both Democrats and Republicans in that camp. I don't think the Republican leadership is that religious or moral so it seems like there might be some other reason for their desire to make abortion illegal.

The thing that makes me wonder if I'm wrong is that I'm not sure if Republicans think that far ahead.

[Crankie Avalon]

1. Sounds like a bit of a stretch to me...

...too much religious superstition and too little common sense and reasoning seem more likely culprits.

[dbonds]

2. I thought it was about sex.

They feel that people should not have sex out of wedlock and any girl wanting an abortion must be sleeping around (paraphrasing their thoughts not mine). They feel having the baby is actually the punishment from god for sleeping around. You can see this also with their desire to get rid of any birth control. They think if there are no options to stop conception or an abortion after the fact, that people will choose abstinence. (This worked so well in that past :sarcasm: )

[mrreowwr_kittty]

5. For the hyper-religious ones, yes

It's just anti-sex prudery and misogyny with them. But I think the OP is referring to the elites. I don't think they really care that much about it but they like it as a wedge issue and they probably wouldn't mind having some expendible cannon fodder and slaves around.

[gollygee]

7. Exactly

Like I said, there are a lot of religious people who have various moralistic reasons for wanting to make abortion illegal. But the Republican Party leadership? I don't think most of them are all that religious or moralistic.

[gollygee]

8. Yeah that's what I thought but it hasn't explained it all

There are Republicans who are moralists who want abortion illegal for various moral and religious reasons. But I don't think all the decision-makers in the Republican party fall into that group. I think the elite of the Republican party might be using religious people to carry out their objectives.

[goddess40]

9. It's about control and feeling superior

They like to live do as I say not as I do

[ThomWV]

3. When Abortions Were Illegal There Were Plenty Of Abortions

And plenty of women dieing as a result of horrible infections and bleeding.

The pictures you have in your mind of orphanages galore comes from sappy movies from the 50's that for the most part portrayed a short period of our history centered more in reality around the flu years than the height of Republican splendor, the Eisenhower years.

[gollygee]

6. There were illegal abortions too

but there were also a lot of babies born who grew up in orphanages. And yes, a lot of that happened before the Eisenhower years.

[mrreowwr_kittty]

4. Makes sense to me

Remember how there was that state legislator who claimed that abortion had decreased the cheap labor pool. "We could have used those people!" she said.

Republican, go figure. And don't forget that extra mouths are extra consumers.

[BonnieJW]

10. I think the military is why the repubs in congress

have decreased the availability of student loans. If you can't get a loan, you can't go to college. What's left?

[gollygee]

11. And the bankruptsy bill

Yep I agree with that.

[Annces]

12. Republicans are just trying to woo the "religious" vote

and do what they want. There is plenty of cheap labor from immigration pool.

[alfredo]

13. It is not about abortion. It is about the right to

privacy. It was how Roe V Wade was decided. They said there is an implied right to privacy. They used Griswold Vs Connecticut that gave families the right to family planning (birth control) without government interference.. Roe Vs Wade said there are parts of people's lives the government have no business prying into.

The Republicans say there is no implicit or explicit right to privacy in the Constitution. Americans have no right to keep their private lives private in their eyes.

[ComerPerro]

14. Well, for one thing, they obviously don't give a fuck about human life

not only because of their sick love of war and death, but also because of their absolute refusal to help people once they leave the womb.

[SheilaT]

15. It's too much of a stretch

to think that those who oppose abortion are thinking that far ahead. They pretty much invariably express their opposition in moral terms.

But consider this: During most of human history abortion was extremely risky, much riskier than childbirth. Easily half of babies born did not live to grow up. And so policies like "be fruitful and multiply" and strict restrictions on intentional abortions were appropriate to save women's lives and to insure the survival of the group. Keep in mind I'm talking about conditions for the first several hundred thousand years of our being human, NOT conditions more recently.

However, women have always been in circumstances when they were faced with an unwanted pregnancy, and so methods of abortion and birth control have always been out there, some more effective and more safe than others. But the power of the memory of those earlier times has not completely left us. However, things are vastly different today. At least in industrialized countries, the majority of babies born will live to grow up. Abortion methods pose almost no risk to the health or life of the woman. There are too many people already out there, and so simply used as birth control it's a population control measure (think China).

But religion is a powerful force for most people. And when their religious leaders, who unknowingly invoke the values of a pre-industrial world to regulate this modern world say that abortion is wrong, a lot of people can't or won't question that.

[dsc]

16. actually according to nearly all pro choice posters on the board

you can't possibly be right. Very few of them acknowledge that abortion rates went up at all upon abortion being legalized. Thus your senario couldn't be true.

[gollygee]

17. I think they must have gone up to at least some extent

I'm very pro-choice but it seems pretty logical to think that when legal abortion became available, more women would have made that choice.

There's no way to get good statistics about abortion rates before they were legal though so it's pointless to argue about it I suppose.

[leftofthedial]

18. might be a factor for some

I see two major camps of anti-abortion repukes

1. religiously insane wack jobs
2. cynical politicos manipulating a wedge issue