Christian Right Wants Less Liberty for Women, More Crime?
Sometimes, the left wing doesn’t know what the right wing is doing.
Unfortunately, the long-awaited passage of health care reform leaves us with little to crow about. Bart Stupak’s amendment to prevent anyone receiving a federal subsidy from buying a health insurance plan that covers abortions is a shocking attack on women on welfare.
What’s also appalling is the strength of the case that the pro-life movement is an anti-modern-woman movement, inasmuch as the modern woman can be expected to work or have her own life outside of caring for her children.
Here’s an example: until recently, I believed that the pro-life movement wanted to preserve unborn fetuses at all costs. I was, I thought, as in-the-know as I’d ever be.
A discussion in the wake of Kevin Drum’s recent post about abortion politics over on Mother Jones has taught me otherwise.
On November 8th, Dan S. wrote that in an Alternet interview, Christina Page said,
“[When I was researching this book [How the Pro-Choice Movement Saved America: Freedom, Politics, and the War on Sex,] I was happy to make distinctions and say, Well, we do have evidence that there’s a wing of the pro-life movement that supports child care. But [what I found is that] there is no wing . . . Not only do they want to take away legal and safe abortion, they want to stop people from having access to contraception. Coupling with that, they want to strip people of opportunities to put their children — whether they wanted them or not or can afford them or not — into child care.
What is the point of this? . . .The only conclusion that this path leads to is one: The modern family is deeply offensive to the Christian right. The family structures in which we are living today, in which both parents are equal and they both bring home a living, they get to choose the number of children they have to what they can support and want — that is offensive to the pro-life establishment. The whole reason why none of their programs are leading to fewer abortions is because that’s simply not the point. The point isn’t about abortion, it’s about the family. It’s about what the family looks like, it’s about who’s in it, who’s leading it, who has the power, and who’s the spiritual head.”
What’s troubling about this ideal of the traditional family—besides the fact that women are intellectually, emotionally and spiritually capable of heading their households—is that such strict dictation of social roles is not good for anyone. You see, it could be argued that it’s not good for the individual men and women who enjoy living as they please in our free country. But there’s hard evidence that’s not good for our society as a whole.
I turn again to Steve and Steve. In their New York Times bestseller Freakonomics, Steven D. Leavitt and Stephen J. Dubner write that “Perhaps the most dramatic effect of legalized abortion, and one that would take years to reveal itself, was its impact on crime.”
“In the early 1990s, just as the first cohort of children born after Roe v. Wade was hitting its late teen years-the years during which young men enter their criminal prime-the rate of crime began to fall. What this cohort was missing, of course, were the children who stood the greatest chance of becoming criminals,” state Leavitt and Dubner.
“And the crime rate continued to fall as an entire generation came of age minus the children whose mothers had not wanted to bring a child into the world. Legalized abortion led to less unwantedness; unwantedness leads to high crime; legalized abortion, therefore, led to less crime.”
The truth is that legalization of abortion allows members of our society to make healthier choices about when they want to bring a beautiful child into the world, and when they don’t. Abortion has an important function in society, which is to present women with the choice about when to be a mother.
Posted: November 14th, 2009 under abortion, crime, economics, health care, women's health, women's rights.
Tags: abortion, burt stupak, children, choice, christian right, christina page, crime, economics, family, Freakonomics, freedom, health, health care, insurance, kevin drum, life, mother jones, politics, roe v. wade, stem-cell, stephen j. dubner, steven d. leavitt, women's rights
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Time November 16, 2009 at 10:29 am
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