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So you want to outlaw abortion?
What happens to the poor, lower class or lower-middle class young woman who ends up pregnant with no money, no insurance and no resources? Do you know how many more of those there will be if you outlaw abortion?
Who is going to take care of all these new babys? How will you deal with the increase in child neglect and abuse (women can be more likely to neglect and abuse their children in unplanned pregnancies).
Who is going to PAY for all these births (an abortion costs about $300, a birth, without complications, costs about $8000). Who will pay for prenatal care for the woman?
Who will pay for the orphanages we'll now need; not everyone can afford private adoption, not does everyone have access to adoption agencies and organizations. Who will pay for and manage all the new adoption centers that we will need to open?
Who will house these young women when they are kicked out of their homes? What will happen to all the young women who can't finish college? What about all the women who won't be able to afford daycare? Who will pay for free or affordable daycare?
Who will pay for the medical care of botched illegal abortions? How many young women will die because they feel they have no other choice - because they can't afford to care for a baby or the birth of the baby, or who don't have enough support around them to care for it?
What do you propose to women who aren't prepared to take care of a seriously disabled child? What do you propose to the women who find themselves pregnant with a fetus which has fatal abnormalities? What do you suggest to women with health issues -- not only the ones where pregnancy or birth could cause death, but could cause other medical issues? What do you propose to the woman who was raped or suffered through incest, and what type of home will the baby be born into in the latter (incest victim RARELY tell while being victimized... they often suffer in silence until much later in life, if ever).
How will you prevent doctors from providing the service secretly, but in less safe environments because there are no policies governing safety? How will you police it? Who will pay for that policing? How much personal privacy will you have to violate to enforce it? This gets right down to the issue of Roe vs. Wade:
"According to the Roe decision, most laws against abortion in the United States violated a constitutional right to privacy under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The decision overturned all state and federal laws outlawing or restricting abortion that were inconsistent with its holdings."
This is NOT a cut and dry issue, and we ALL want to reduce the number of abortions... but we don't need to create a society with unsafe, illegal abortions, more and more children that can't be adequately cared for, with more mothers who need to rely on "the system", with increased substandard prenatal care and with the government invading our medical privacy to enforce such a law. We CAN reduce the number of abortions through better education and health insurance FOR ALL... not through outlawing abortions all together.
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