Outlawing Abortion, It is a costly Endeavor
Boston Public Radio May 19th episode held a discussion of the consequences for the nation when abortion is outlawed. The guest was Jonathan Gruber, the Ford Professor of Economics at MIT. He was involved with the ACA and the Mass health insurance system.
Getting right to it:
Based on studies: Women who wanted an abortion but could not get one are more likely to die in child birth, have worse mental health outcomes and a huge increase in serious financial difficulties. An 80% increase in bankruptcy. Increasing costs for society.
When abortion was made available, It lowered births by 10% and reduced teen motherhood by 34%. In black women there was a 30% decline in births, 1/3rd decline in maternal mortality and a 25% rise in the odds of graduating high school and going to college. All are results that reduce costs on society.
Not being able to delay having a child by even 1 year lowered wages 11% later in ones career.
When mom can not get an abortion, the resulting child is 60% more likely to be in a single parent household, 50% more likely to live in poverty, 45% more likely to live in a household receiving welfare, 40% more likely to die in the first year of life and 12% less likely to attend college.
“The bottom line is, if abortion is not available, women’s economic opportunity is limited, children are born into much more difficult circumstances and that effects those children’s prospects later in life.” All things that increase costs on society.
Here is the thing, the Supreme court received an amicus brief regarding this data. When the lawyer brought this up, Chief Roberts did not want to hear it. It was not “relevant”.
Ultimately, as noted during the discussion, Janet Yellen’s is noted as being correct. Removing abortion will place a huge tax on the nation. This will be one more path for further federal dollar inflows for the Red States who repeal abortion.. However, if it is a federal ban, then these Red states don’t stand out as net recipients of federal support for the mess they created. Of course, this assumes the Republicans would step up and increase the support of the safety net programs. There is nothing that suggest such is the case. It is quite clear Republicans/Conservatives are looking to cut if not eliminate these programs. Such was noted in the discussion by how they have turned down receiving ACA medicaid expansion money.
Lastly, Professor Gruder talks about the effect outlawing abortion will have on companies’ abilities to hire women. Where are they going to get the population that will replace women as a source of workers? Immigration? This nation has depended on women working since the economic shift in the 80’s.
Once again, the conservative way of living, one of selfishness is blinding them. Life is an experience of singularities to them. Then again, authoritarian, unitary executive allows for nothing else. It is inducing a more difficult life for themselves than is necessary. Unfortunately, the rest of us suffer too.
To keep this economic, the Right, the Republicans do not have a word for “externality”. It is a concept, a truth of life that just does not exist in their world.
It is a simple equation. The cost of one’s sacrifices for the sake of morality must be borne by oneself, but the cost of one’s pretense of morality can be hoisted upon everyone else.
“When the lawyer brought this up, Chief Roberts did not want to hear it. It was not “relevant”.
I wonder how much the SC is “allowed by the Constitution” to take reality and real effects on real people into consideration, or are they bound by their own strict logic about what the Framers meant, and what they failed to mention in words “the court” could understand? [“One Ring to rule them all and in the darkness bind them”?]
See how that works?
The question before the court really isn’t answered by this kind of data. This data is immensely relevant to legislatures if they need to establish abortion regulations, but that’s not what the court is wrestling with in Dodd. I do think it is incredibly appalling to write something about how the children might have difficult circumstances effecting their prospects later in life. Jesus wept, that’s monstrous.
This data is exactly what the Court is influencing and thus addressing. The choice to have or not have a child is not purely outside one’s economic/financial condition present or future.
You take away one’s ability to chose to have a child or not, you have influenced the economic position of that person which has influence that child’s life. That it often results in a lesser financial position for the parent (s) and child is the reality society needs to face.
There is nothing appalling about reality. There is plenty appalling in not facing the harmful results of decisions made.
You know what is appalling? That they will take away this decision which then determines one’s financial position and the forced upon them child while providing no support to offset the negative results.
In other words, the Court is taking upon its self a decision that is not theirs to make while the ideology they ascribe too refuses to take on the responsibility they created.
And it’s even sicker when you consider the case of a minor being told to have a child. So much for the rhetoric of parents having more say.
Yes, very much on choice.
The court’s job here is to find whether or not Mississippi can have such law under the constitutional system, not whether the law is a good one or not. If the law is permitted, then the legislature needs to consider what it should do. If the law is not permitted, that does not come at all from this kind of data. To submit to the court a document that sure seems to say that aborted kids maybe ought to be thankful that they are dead rather than alive seems pretty monstrous to me, but it is possible I can’t understand what the intended point was from a brief excerpt.
First, it is Dobbs not Dodd. Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization to be precise. What the hell does religion have to do with this? Not a damn thing; but, you do raise a point which should be looked at more closely. How is religion impacting the court’s decision(?) Does it have as much impact as its political influence?
It is monstrous that you even bring religion into the court.
Appalling?
“They are Man’s, And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it!” cried the Spirit, stretching out its hand towards the city. “Slander those who tell it ye! Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse! And bide the end!
Have they no refuge or resource? “Are there no prisons? turning on him for the last time with his own words. Are there no workhouses?”
Ignorance is worse than Want. Want is an immediate need – food to eat, a bed to sleep in. But Ignorance keeps you from ever improving your situation. Without education, children are condemned to a lifetime of poverty, creating a permanent underclass that dooms society as a whole.
You portray the ignorance well.
Ron
exactly.
I wonder how much the Court is allowed to consider reality and the real effects on real people, or are they bound by their own strict logic to what they think the Framers meant. Certainly privacy and the freedom to be left alone, unless you are a corporation, have no place in the history of American and medieval British law. They said so themselves.
Of course we c0uld try to Amend the Constitution, in the light of present day realities and the discovered need for more explicit guarantees of Freedom and Justice for all.
In spite of Rs contol of the political high ground, a groundswell of public opinion might make it happen.
Coberly,
“…I wonder how much the Court is allowed…”???
Allowed by who or what? The US Constitution provides very solid guidelines for the jurisdiction of courts, but is mute over their deliberative responsibilities and limitations, other than that the courts decide how to interpret the law. Whatsoever that the courts give, then the courts can take away.
At the beginning of LBJ’s second term, his only elected term, then the Democratic Party had 68 US Senators in office and 295 seats in the US House of Representatives. They could have done anything except a constitutional amendment (ratification is a bitch) with a majority like that. What they chose not to do was as telling as what they chose to do. Between those two sets of choices, then here we are now. IOW, choices have consequences as does self-righteous blindness or simple overconfidence.
OTOH, the Republican Party has played their hand well over the subsequent decades while taking every advantage to cheat, lie, and obfuscate along the way. However, they could never have done so well had we not made it so easy for them.
Trial by jury is a wonderful thing, but trial by old men in robes is a holdover from the divine rights of kings.
Ron
I was being obscure. The Court is “allowed” by itself. Or by Constitutional Amendment…which is very unlikely..unless there is a popular groundswell.[i.e. we don’t have to make it easy for them. but you are right, ther is coup going on. I don’t know how ambitious it was at the beginning: what their ultimate goals were. But now they have seen how easy it is, they are going for the thousand year reich.]
I was thinking an Amendment might work as a shot across their bow, like FDR’s proposal to pack the court.
Not sure but I think the Dems at the beginning of LBJ’s term became R’s at the end of it.
They didn’t have to change the way they voted.
Daniel:
“Guttmacher, which supports abortion rights, finds that the overall number of abortions dropped 7% — to 862,320 in 2017, down from 926,200 in 2014, the last time the data were updated.
In 2017, the abortion rate — which measures how common abortion is among women of childbearing age — dropped to 13.5 abortions per 1,000 women ages 15 to 44, down from 14.6 in 2014. That continues a downward trend since the peak in 1980 of 29.3.”
That may be but it coincides with a declining birth rate. It is about 20% decline since 2007. Education early in one’s life regarding contraception maybe working. Especially if the goal were to reduce abortion.
Daniel:
You sparked my memory and I am pretty sure I mentioned it at AB “300 Million and Counting, Joel Gareau, Smithsonian.
“What are we to make of the moment, projected by the U.S. Census Bureau to arrive this month, when the population of the United States reaches 300 million, behind only that of China and India? Demographics is simply the arithmetic of culture and values—it only quantifies, it doesn’t explain. Is 300 million a good thing? A bad thing?
As Joel Garreau said in 2006, The issue is not population growth, “It’s not catastrophic population growth. It’s catastrophic population shrinkage” globally. The birth rate was 2.1 back in 2006 and of course it has shrunk for he majority White population especially. Immigration is the key if the nation want to maintain a young population
“The total global population has not yet finished increasing. But nearly half the world’s population lives in countries where the native-born are not reproducing fast enough to replace themselves. This is true in Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Russia, Japan, Canada and the United States. It’s also true in much of East Asia, pockets of Latin America and such Indian megacities as New Delhi, Mumbai (Bombay), Kolkata (Calcutta) and Chennai (Madras). Even China is reproducing at levels that fall short of replacement.”
I believe coincide is the wrong word and it puzzles me. Perhaps more childless couples. The rate is correct and may coincide. However the white population is deciding not to have children or stop at one. Immigrants are reproducing at a replacement level. Coinciding does not necessarily mean an active decision. I hope I got that correct.
“The birthrate has dropped to shockingly low levels in the last two generations: 1.3 in both Italy and Spain in 2005. In metropolitan Tokyo, the rate dropped to 0.98. In Hong Kong and Macau, it hit 0.96 and a hitherto unthinkable 0.84, respectively, the latter the lowest on record. Few demographers ever dreamed that in the absence of war, famine and pestilence—in fact, as a result of urbanization, development and education—birthrates would drop so dramatically. No one knows where the bottom is. Keep this up, and eventually your civilization will disappear.”
The US accepts more immigrants as it should as a large percentage of people are aging out.
“The United States’ population is growing at the rate of almost 1 percent per year, thanks in part to immigration and its secondary effects. Not only does the United States accept more legal immigrants as permanent residents than the rest of the world combined, but these recent arrivals tend to have more children than established residents—until, as their descendants attain affluence and education, the birthrates of these Americans also drop below replacement levels. Overall—that is, counting both immigrants and the native-born—the United States has a replacement rate of 2.03.”
I am guessing white folk have aged out, are still in the majority for another couple of decades.
“Nearly half of the nation’s children (2006) under 5 belong to a racial or ethnic minority. The face of the future is already in our schools: our kindergartens now prefigure the country as a whole, circa 2050—a place where non-Hispanic whites are a slight majority. High-achieving school systems are already adapting: in Fairfax County, Virginia, for example, where 93 percent of all high-school graduates go on to post-secondary education, programs that teach English as a second language accommodate more than 100 native tongues, including more than five flavors of Chinese.”
Okay, but if abortion lowered birth rates and abortion has been in decline but rates are still declining then contraceptives is what I would consider to be the reason. It allows choice as I doubt sexual intercourse is on the decline significant enough to result in declining birth rates.
With that, this aspect really is not the significance of my post. Removing abortion is going to create a worse social environment as it relates to economic/financial security for more people than currently. If contraception is playing a roll in keeping birth rates down and thus not producing the negative economic environment, then the consideration that contraception is next on the chopping block our social environment is only going to get worse.
At the same time, the Right has no consideration at all for a social contract of a safety net.
Take this into consideration with today’s news about the latest Supreme Court ruling addressing a right to competent representation. They really are showing their nastiness and authoritarian persona. I can’t think of the word or period but the image I have is the priest lecturing that all are sinners, you can repent, but it will never be enough as the priest whips their self out of view of their “flock”. You can never be punished enough and thus you can never be saved. Driving it all for the priest is the high of being the authority, the power, the chosen…
It is sick! The court is sick. I’m sorry, but it is. I know your story and you know my story of my court experience.
We are watching the Constitution being rewritten by this sick, hateful group of people. It’s not just the 6 on the court. They are just the ones put in the position to do the job.
Let me finish with trust. You know I pointed out years ago that what was happening in the US was the Right destroying trust and that was the singular activity that was harming this nation’s ability to economically grow, for this nation to mature further as a society. The 2005 World Bank report I posted about didn’t put it this way, but it was what they were talking about.
Well, the Court has become the single most powerful tool for destroying trust. And this F’n Court and the ideology they represent does not even see it. They have no concept of externality. They have no clue that the nirvana they believe they are creating is not possible within their ideology of life.
Well over 1 million people have died in 2 years and we have no discussion of it. Nothing. It has been intentionally squashed by these people. What does that say about us.
Okay, I’m finished. Thank you all for reading my venting.
Daniel:
I am with you on this. I am just as angry as you are today. I do not know what people are doing in the privacy of their homes and I do not want to know. I think there is more to it than just abortion and contraceptives.
Yes, I agree the Catholic religion is on a roll to eliminate far greater than the majority of the nation wants. A Catholic influenced Federalist Society, aligned with SCOTUS is bringing this to bear. It is horrific that a minority segment of the nation can do this through the courts.
Ron wrote: “They could have done anything except a constitutional amendment (ratification is a bitch) with a majority like that”
But short of a constitutional amendment the SCOTUS could strike down any law enacted just as they are doing now. From gun control (NYSRPA v. Bruen) to abortion to even constitutionally protected rights ( Shinn v. Ramirez) the Robert’s court has proven they respect neither precedence or even the originalism they claim to adhere too.
No right we take for granted is safe unless you are a firearm or a corporation. As you said it is a matter of how the courts interpret the law.
I wonder if this is what it was like to go from the advances of Rome to the dark ages.
Turtles
I don’t think so. Rome fell from a variety of causes, not, I think, by a bold, slow coup..while we all were standing there looking.
Oddly enough, letting the Barbarians cross the Rhine had something to do with it.
Turtles,
A different emphasis on legislation during LBJ’s first term would have had a different outcome today. If Nixon’s Southern Strategy had been blocked without sacrificing civil rights for minorities, then we would have had a much different outcome today including in SCOTUS. There is no way to know what outcome though. Sure, we could have probably done worse, but we also could have done much better.
…actually the beginning of LBJ’s second term.