America's Successful War on Poverty (axios.com) 304
America's child poverty rate plunged in 2021, hitting a record low and accelerating a decadelong decline. That's the main message from Census Bureau data released yesterday, Axios' Felix Salmon writes. From the report: Millions of children aren't growing up in poverty today, thanks in very large part to government poverty-reduction programs. The most recent decline can be linked directly to the increase in the child tax credit that was implemented in July 2021 but then expired at the end of that year -- which means that next year's number is likely to see a rare increase.
A reduction in child poverty goes hand in hand with a reduction in the number of poor parents -- specifically mothers. The number of women heads of households in poverty declined to 4.95 million in 2021 from 7.8 million in 2020, per the census supplemental poverty measure, on top of the 3.4 million children who were taken out of poverty. The report is a "kids story but it's also a women's story," said Kate Gallagher Robbins, a senior fellow at the National Partnership for Women and Families.
A reduction in child poverty goes hand in hand with a reduction in the number of poor parents -- specifically mothers. The number of women heads of households in poverty declined to 4.95 million in 2021 from 7.8 million in 2020, per the census supplemental poverty measure, on top of the 3.4 million children who were taken out of poverty. The report is a "kids story but it's also a women's story," said Kate Gallagher Robbins, a senior fellow at the National Partnership for Women and Families.
This is a lie (Score:2, Insightful)
Health is good and all, but it doesn't pay me.
Re:This is a lie (Score:5, Insightful)
Which services are they cutting and where is the data for this?
If people are cutting services like food, shelter, energy, healthcare then we should tackle those issues directly. No reason anyone in America should be struggling for the bottom rung of the needs pyramid.
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Have gone without food from a couple of days cause of cost.
Currently behind on my power bill.
Re:This is a lie (Score:5, Insightful)
I feel for you but to be fair that is a sample size of one.
People have been cutting and turning away from healthcare because of cost for my entire life, this has been a problem for 50+ years in America and it's not going to be solved without a fundamental change to the way we treat healthcare. Every other developed nation on earth has realized this fact and implemented a system that takes into account the reality of how humans treat health services because that behavior breaks markets. Vote accordingly if you want to change the cruelty of the system.
I agree that things like SNAP and WIC and other food assistance programs should be more universal and easier to get. Nobody in this country should go hungry. America produces well in excess of the the amount of food we consume so it's certainly not due to a shortage that prices are too high.
Re:This is a lie (Score:5, Insightful)
THAT is one of the chief PROBLEMS we have in the US, especially amongst the poor of our society.
There is no good reason so many of these kids are being raised with no fathers!!
We should, as a country, take a lot of this money being spent for welfare programs and use it and our energies as a country to encourage couples that have kids to stay together and raise these kids.
This alone would pay off fiscally for the US, in that we'd likely have less money putting out supporting these kids since they'd have extra hands working to support and raise them!!
Hey, hats off to the single Mom that raises kids....its a tough job, BUT it is something that should be rare rather than the norm.
Studies show that kids with no father in the picture, run much higher risk of being arrested for committing crimes and going to jail. They have a much less chance of getting themselves an education and being successful in life.
The mothers and fathers of these kids need to be more responsible for raising and supporting these kids they produce...it takes two to make them, it really takes 2 to stand the best chance of raising and supporting them.
The current welfare system, the way it is set up, often rewards no father at home....we didn't have this much problem with single mothers prior to the modern welfare state that started during the LBJ presidency.
Just ike the "war on drugs" isn't working, and needs to be re-examined...we need to examine also the laws, policies and programs that aren't supporting poor kids properly and look into promoting keeping fathers with their kids IN the household.
In the long run, this will give the kids their best shot in life and will also lessen the burden on the tax payer for supporting other peoples' kids.
Re:This is a lie (Score:4, Insightful)
Great, I agree.
Let's have a multi-payer universal healthcare system.
Let's have a public housing initiative where nobody ever has to be at risk of losing shelter.
Let's have mandated maternity and paternity leave so parents are encourages to care for their kids in the early years when it's the hardest.
Let's implement a negative income tax or other redistributive program so people can always have their very basic needs met and the crushing stress of worrying about food, shelter, healthcare and energy are alleviated.
It's great to point out the issues but we can't legislate culture directly.
Before LBJ we had lot's of different problems, it's not as though poor families did not exist in that time, we just were not as aware of it.
If you have "free market" solutions to these issues lets hear them.
Why free market? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you have "free market" solutions to these issues lets hear them.
Sometimes in the West, "free market" has a meaning akin to "apple pie," i.e., some magical fairy dust that is assumed to be so obvious as to obviate the need for explanation. Is there any semblance of an explanation for why any free market ideas would be helpful to alleviate poverty? While free markets tend to do fairly well in maximizing over time the goals of the market, the alleviation of poverty is never a goal of any economic free market. Thus, free markets never help those in poverty and in reality often produce poverty as a byproduct. I suppose there is a (Christian?) hope that the rich people produced by the free market will help out the poor, but unfortunately that doesn't happen as often as is needed.
Re:Why free market? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's why i put the question out there because I see people ragging left and right on public and social programs but have no realistic solutions to problems. It's libertarian masturbation to think if we just take the guardrails off capitalism it will come to everyones rescue.
Like you said, markets work for lot's of things but definitely not everything, especially when it comes to things people cannot afford to be without.
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"Free Market" is code for some private sector company wanting to gain profits from the spending of government money
FYI, it does not work, some functions of government work better without a profit motive and including "free market" solutions just means funneling money away from the intended goal into an executive's pockets
Re:Why free market? (Score:5, Interesting)
Markets work great for many things, but not everything.
Just healthcare alone in this country is a massive market failure because the normal economic forces that are required for markets to operate (consumer knowledge, price knowledge, ability to turn down purchases) are all essentially turned upside down.
Really anything where a person is required to puchase something to live their life markets cannot cope with. Even food in America only works as a market system becasue we heavily subsidize so many parts of it starting right at the farms themselves.
I am also still waiting for the social democratic countries to "run out of other peoples money". No offense but conservatives have been telling me France is going to undergo economic collapse for 40 years now. They have their issues but I think the socdem countries are actually doing ok and better than America in many regards.
Re:Why free market? (Score:5, Interesting)
Again, I head pretty much that exact same line from people in the 90's during the Clinton admin. It didnt happen then, why is it going to happen now?
People are under the impression that because their system is "free" that it costs more when in fact the opposite is true. Look up healthcare spending per capita for countries. USA is by far the highest, it's the US who is running themselves ragged with healthcare costs, not the countries with universal socialized care.
Also the US loves as a matter of policy handling the defense needs for NATO, it's what keeps us the global hegemenon and even if we start cutting back (are we? That defense budget is still pretty fat) the EU nations are spending more in defense even today. Also the fact is that a single country like France and Germany does not in fact have to spend 15% of GDP on defense because they are in fact all allied with eachother.
So I am still going to take the prognostications of doom with big lumps of salt.
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If/When the US stops paying for every one of our allies' defense needs and they start having to pay for their own in a more meaningful way, they won't have all that money for "free" health care....their people will start seeing the cost of that. They don't generally have enough money to pay for all their social spending AND the true cost of their defense if the US stop subsidizing it.
NATO's goal for defense spending is 2% of GDP. Granted many countries don't spend that much (and the US spends much more), but even if they did it would still be trivial next to social programs like healthcare and education.
And I know the US likes to think it is the protector of the world, but France has nukes, Britain has nukes, they both build their own jets and tanks and other munitions. The US spends a vast amount on it's military so is always looking for ways to justify it, but benevolence is just
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Yes, they give women the financial freedom to divorce their abusive husbands. But this is a good thing.
Re:This is a lie (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds like you have never had to deal with the American family law system. The current system in nearly every State is designed to force a parent (father normally) mostly out of their children's lives. Title IV-D incentivizes States to maximize child support payments and in turn that gives the State money from the federal government.
You want father's involved, then do like a bare handful of States have done and make it a presumption of 50/50 parenting time. Of all places, Kentucky has this as law.
The system supports false allegations and so much crap by mother's due to child support being a multi-billion dollar industry.
In just over 6 years, I've spent over 250k to get 50/50 and joint decision making which has led to bankruptcy. I even had a full day trial where a judge ignored the report of a psychologist with nearly 40 years of child custody evaluations and found that my ex is not a suitable parent for even 50/50.
Start small, allow father's to be in their kids lives without spending insane amount of money. Studies have shown that 50/50 has outcomes simliar to peaceful 2 parent homes, so let's go for that.
Re:This is a lie (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree....we definitely need to rewrite the laws to quit making fathers out to be the bad guys, and incentivize families to stay together first, and if that just cannot work...then make the next best thing to KEEP the father active in the child's life and support.
Let's redo the law system and quit assuming the father is automatically bad, abusive and that the mother is a saint and needs to have everything ruled in her favor.
Re:This is a lie (Score:5, Informative)
Here is the thing that has led to the dismantling of poor families
In order to qualify for services, there cannot be a man in the house
It was based on racist ideas of layabouts getting government money and it has progressed into fathers simply being excluded
This will require decades to fix, and reformation of the propaganda (thin "welfare queen" trope) among the general population
Yes, that is a steep hill to climb
The steepest hill is that having really poor people around, makes people that are not poor feel better, and makes the rich feel like kings
Re:This is a lie (Score:4, Insightful)
You must be as much a geezer as I am, in order to even know that it was once different. Because that was back in the 60's. LBJ wanted to help poor families, but his programs (which were the foundation of the current welfare system) destroyed them.
While this affects all races, it has especially changed black culture, where it is now perfectly normal for a woman to have multiple kids from multiple baby-daddies - with no intention of staying with any of them. Good intentions destroyed families, especially black families. Just as destroying poor families took decades, fixing this problem would also require decades.
What I find really annoying is that the problems of LBJ's Great Society programs were so predictable. "If you want more of something, subsidize it." The programs subsidized not having two parents stay together, and they subsidized having kids. Today's programs still do.
But it's all ok. It doesn't matter how many millions of lives have been destroyed, because their intentions were pure...
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No, it is exactly what it says..they don't like the police.
And for some reason, they think these problems can be solved by sending social workers into these same situations will help anything....it'll most likely get said social workers injured or killed.
For some reason, they think the police as an entity is inherently a bad thing.
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As to food: while some programs are required, expanding will just make the middle class once again pay for the poor. I'd prefer food allocations-"Here's some food for the month, it's healthy" - as opposed
Re:This is a lie (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't exactly believe those numbers but lket's just accept that as the fact. Answer is, I don't give a shit?
Part of a comprehensive restructuring of healthcare also has to involve making it much more affordable for those who want to become doctors and nurses to be able to pursue that. If doctors didn't have to come out of residency with mountains of debt and sky-high insurance bills do they need to earn such high salaries? Probably not.
All those countries still have systems where people pay less per capita (sometimes far less) and get equal or better outcomes with universal access, just overall better. There definitely is not a big correlation between doctor salaries and health outcomes.
In no other country are there poor doctors, doctoring will always be a top 10% job but maybe it won't be a top 1% job, but if your sole reason to become a doctor is the money maybe those people go into other careers.
Also when people talk about the artificial limites the AMA puts on residencies they are right, we need to lift those caps. We have seen an increase in the number of DO's in response to that recently.
Docts and nurses pull big money because our system is wildly inflated in terms of costs, and those costs are everywhere, from school right through to the grave. The market is incapable of bringing those costs down, an open market for healthcare cannot and will never work, the sooner we accept that the better off we will be.
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Even if that is his situation anybody living in America should not have to go without necessary medical care due to lack of funds. To me that is barbarism.
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If people are cutting services like food, shelter, energy, healthcare then we should tackle those issues directly.
I haven't had health coverage since the great recession. My state (Florida) never accepted the ACA extension, so low income by itself isn't a qualifier for subsidized coverage. As you said, we should tackle those issues, but when the majority of Florida's electorate is satisfied with a policy of "fuck you, I got mine", the issues remain.
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Oh as a fellow Floridian I fully understand, it's a clusterfuck and I don't think people realize that there are still states that literally turn away ACA Medicare money for "principles", especially when Florida literally elected a man who should be in prison to two terms of goverenorship.
In general it's a stopgap though to the broken system.
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"The differences among the 2020 to 2021 percent changes in median household income for the regions were not statistically significant. Neither the rate nor the number in poverty was significantly different from 2020."
Supplemental poverty measure decreases because it accounts for all the government handouts during covid. Of course, it caused sky high inflation so it is not sustainable and we are back at square one.
Re: This is a lie (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: This is a lie (Score:2)
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Inflation is only "unsustainable" when the wealth gap decreases. When inflation is caused by tax cuts and Wall Street bailouts, no one seems to have a problem with it.
Define "no one", because I'm quite certain bailouts have affected the innocent, as opposed to the guilty who are pocketing the cash. You know how Greed pays for fines? Layoffs.
Kids need to have access to healthy food and quality education, no matter how rich their parents are.
In the public system of indoctrination and low budgets, kids have access to neither of those things. It's why our public edumucashun system is considered a joke now.
That's much more important for the future of a nation that any inflation.
Agreed, but it's not more important than inflation, especially rampant inflation. Those parents will be dead-ass broke and suffering far before 13 years of public edu
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well you might want to look at the EXPLODING cost of food then! Inflation at the grocery store is vastly out pacing core CPI. If there is one group this is HURTING the most its people who were already food insecure.
Inflation over 3% or so should imho be regarded as UNACCEPTABLE from a policy standpoint. Pretty much ANYTHING the government does should take a back seat because, inflation running beyond that goes against the core constitutional mission to "promote the general welfare"
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Bullshit. Look at the sky-high PROFITS the oil industry, and a good number of others posted. Look at the massive increases in CEO salaries and bonuses.
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And then... (Score:5, Insightful)
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There actually are two distinct parties, and they really do have different agendas in some areas. That is one of the areas where their agendas differ.
FWIW, I, personally, feel that this is properly a state, or even a city or county, issue. But the Supreme Court has ruled that it isn't, and that a city has to support with General Assistance equally everyone who shows up, regardless of whether they were a resident before they needed help. So for the last 5-7 decades (I forget just when that decision was pa
uh, This is Slashdot... (Score:2)
The report is a "kids story but it's also a women's story,"
We have little to none of those around here...
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This is the PROBLEM....it should not be a single mother problem.
We need to encourage the fathers of these children to stick around raise and support them and not have it up to the taxpayers to do so.
It takes two to make them, it really takes two to raise them.
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So what, specifically, do you suggest be done?
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Well, rather than configuring the welfare safety net to pay more to single mothers, maybe we start by configuring it to where payments are a bit more if the father is there in the house?
Or, something along those lines.
Incentivize.....we do it all the time, why not promote whole families?
Did they redefine the poverty line? (Score:3, Interesting)
Downward that is. Because this sounds way too good to be true.
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How about we consider what is called "poverty" in America (really, they mean U.S.) vs the rest of the world. Groups in the U.S. bitch about the 1% all the time, without many of them realizing that, in comparison to income worldwide, they ARE in the 1%.
Re:Did they redefine the poverty line? (Score:5, Informative)
How about we consider what is called "poverty" in America
Why, so people like you can go "Sorry you cant afford basic services, but the world average says your rich"
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"Poverty" basically means you cannot partake in society to a reasonable degree because lack of money. Hence your statement is totally inane.
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So, roughly, the richest 10% of Americans are in the global 1%.
Re: Did they redefine the poverty line? (Score:3)
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Poverty is a relative number your smooth brain.
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This is just false. Poverty in American often looks a lot like what the third world considers poverty. You just have to walk down a few side streets in most major cities to see homeless people in squalor, begging. It might not be in your face daily, but it's there.
Sure there's a "middle class poverty" that is slightly better off but still destitute - about 40 million - but there is at least a quarter million living in true, dehumanizing poverty, even under the most rosy claims of the government.
Response of half the electorate (Score:2)
America's "war on ..." (Score:2)
I was honestly expecting them to just shoot everyone below the poverty line to accomplish that feat.
Hey, that's how a "war on ..." is done in the US normally.
Meanwhile the UK... (Score:3)
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Data Point and prediction (Score:5, Interesting)
In the US the definition of Poverty was written in 1963 by Mollie Orshansky and is updated annually to account for CPI (Inflation). It was simplified in the 80s by removing the distinction for male and female headed households, farm and non-farm households, and expanded by increasing the number of members of the household from 7 to 9.
<prediction>Next year we'll see a significant jump in the number of households in poverty because of this year's staggering CPI. It might be a bit early to declare victory.<prediction>
Let's not forget a Father's role in this (Score:2)
One there is criticism about the way that the Census Bureau measures this. As another data point, another way to measure this is it has remained steady at 11M children in the US, not 3.8M [americanprogress.org]. Note this from the Center for American Progress, which I don't always agree with so take that with a political grain of salt. But at least is suggests that there's a broader debate here about how to actually measure this so resources can be allocated successfull
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Thankfully the media helps me cut through the spin (Score:2)
Child poverty was a disaster under Obama, everything became perfect and ran just swimmingly under Trump, and Biden is damaging it forever.
Whew... imagine if I had to figure it out myself!
WIth this much gaslighting (Score:2)
With this much gaslighting we'd light the whole world and not use one watt of electricity.
War on Proverty (LBJ's Great Society) is a monumental flop, see my other post in this thread about culture.
Change The Culture. The culture is the root cause.
But please, admit... the gaslight in that article is such that you can light the world with it. Hell the gaslighting in general these days is like that.
This is silly (Score:5, Interesting)
It's like throwing a car off a cliff, determining that it immediately has a really good MPG for distance travelled, and ignoring the eventual crash.
Wackamole (Score:2)
Poor people got less poor because the government printed money to give them. This in turn caused inflation, making everyone else poorer. So, the question is, are you happy with the new prices in place in order to bring all those people out of poverty? ...And, to continue the rate of price increase as productivity fails to keep up with future giveaways to "the poor"?
Or, would you rather that maybe "the poor" produced fewer babies that had to be supported by you, the taxpayer?
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ok, no (Score:3)
So, from a neighborhood where I was the grinch against the "Protect our children! Vote NO for the mega-shelter" campaign (no, I did NOT drive on anyone's property just to run over those signs) . . . I think we're pretty much still the "if you're poor, it's your fault" country we've been for a while.
As many above have noted - it's just like not counting jobless people who are jobless too long or 'retire' when they wouldn't have normally.
Until we decide to offer complete mental health services to anyone who wants it and require it from people that we send to jail that aren't actually dangerous or are dangerous due to medical reasons . . . we are not even trying. If we can achieve THAT, you'll notice that any effort or money we put into social programs for poverty, education, drugs, violence will go a LOT farther.
Jesus Christ on a Moped (Score:3)
"America's Successful War on Poverty"
Just...wow. I am at a total loss for words at how incredibly stupid this statement is.
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Sadly, that option is being taken away by more and more states as we speak.
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Sadly, that option is being taken away by more and more states as we speak.
There are ways other than abortion to avoid childbirth. Birth control options are mandated to be no-cost to the insured under the ACA. If you don't like pharmaceutical options or can't use them, there are barrier methods--the most popular of which is promoted as a must for the prevention of disease. In the event of failure of the latter (or rather than failure, if a woman is raped) emergency contraception (i.e. "morning after pill") exists as well.
Note: despite being pro-life, I am certainly not claiming
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The ACA definitely helped but there is still work to be done on access, variety, and the process of aquiring a prescription in the first place (quite a few products should be over the counter by now). Sex education and general knowledge that these options are out there as well is a problem. There's a lot of complications with womens contraception, it's more complicated than just going the pill. In general these are the negative effects of our healthcare system and the way we structure it.
Contraception I [npr.org]
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How about condoms?
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None of that contradicts my suggestions. I already said more and better sex education for kids and that means free condoms as well. If it were up to me I would also plow a bunch of federal research dollars into cracking the problem of male birth control as well since people in general don't like condoms.
Good luck legislating people not to fuck eachother though, especially when life is rough. May as well herd cats, about a realistic a solution.
It's like arguing for abstinence in 2022 when every datapoint
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There are ways other than abortion to avoid childbirth.
The left would have you believe that pregnancy is something that just happens.
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Well, it does. Two people fuck and bam.
What's next, we don't let people get rid of STDs either because we need to punish women for fucking?
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but if you're relying on abortion as a primary means of birth control you are doing something terribly wrong.
That's about as true as the old "welfare queen" myth. The reality is that unless you have a uterus you should stay out of the abortion argument.
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That's about as true as the old "welfare queen" myth.
I am replying to someone who said that "the option [to be proactive and not make babies you cannot afford] was being taken away in more and more states." While abortion is certainly being restricted in many states (and in most of those cases, being overly restricted) there are many other ways to proactively avoid being a parent. Pointing that out is not equivalent to the "welfare queen" myth (further thought: abortion is certainly a reactive measure rather than a proactive one).
The reality is that unless you have a uterus you should stay out of the abortion argument.
If we start from the premis
Abortion is always last resort, like bankruptcy (Score:5, Insightful)
Note: despite being pro-life, I am certainly not claiming that abortion is wrong under all circumstances, and I am willing to bet than I am as disgusted as you are by some of the draconian state laws that have been passed (or were preemptively passed and are now taking effect) in the wake of Dobbs, but if you're relying on abortion as a primary means of birth control you are doing something terribly wrong.
Abortion is always a last resort, like bankruptcy, welfare, or even many surgeries. When you do things right, you don't need one. However, fuckups happen. No one wants to see more abortions. Everyone wants to see less unplanned pregnancies.
My girlfriend had an abortion because her doctor forgot to inform her that the medication she had to take for a sinus infection would nullify her birth control. I don't really think that was irresponsible on her part...she's not a doctor and her doctor forgot to inform her of the risks. I'm glad I've never lived in a red state, especially today.
Folks can get judgmental all they like, but we all bear the cost of their mistakes when you take away abortion. Everyone knows someone who is a reckless idiot. At least with abortion, we weren't funding their mistakes for 18+ years and hoping they turn out smarter than their their mother and father and out of the penal system.
We've seen trends of increased poverty and crime with reduced abortion access. It's ugly and gross and NO ONE WANTS people to have an abortion. It's just those of us who are more clear-headed think the consequences of no abortion access are worse than the abortion...especially when the GOP in every deep red state is stupid enough to not allow health exceptions...so yeah, your older mother or some woman with health concerns took some antibiotics, gets pregnant with and now has a potential death sentence....and the "pro-life" people in the red states seem to have no concern about that.
You want to be "pro-life?"...put your fucking money where your mouth is and pay enough money to take care of the kids you force these women and families to have. Babies are cute and fun, but they're fucking expensive and your "right to work" laws, among others, ensure that the wages available to most people are not living wages. You want everyone to have their babies?...try paying for them...giving proper support, pre-K, partially subsidized childcare, etc so they get what's needed to make them healthy, functional adults, no matter their mother's income.
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It's just those of us who are more clear-headed think the consequences of no abortion access are worse than the abortion...especially when the GOP in every deep red state is stupid enough to not allow health exceptions...so yeah, your older mother or some woman with health concerns took some antibiotics, gets pregnant with and now has a potential death sentence....and the "pro-life" people in the red states seem to have no concern about that.
I thought I had made myself sufficiently clear--you even quoted the part of my comment addressing this--but apparently not. You are preaching to the choir on this score. There are certainly times when abortion is an appropriate measure, and the blanket bans on abortion going into effect in many states are, simply, disgusting and wrong.
your "right to work" laws
Holy non-sequitur, Batman! But yeah, you got me, I support right-to-work laws--and I also support unions (well, maybe not "public sector" unions where the employer is the go
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Note: despite being pro-life, I am certainly not claiming that abortion is wrong under all circumstances, and I am willing to bet than I am as disgusted as you are by some of the draconian state laws that have been passed (or were preemptively passed and are now taking effect) in the wake of Dobbs, but if you're relying on abortion as a primary means of birth control you are doing something terribly wrong.
I'd venture a guess most people aren't pro-choice because they think abortions are the greatest thing since sliced bread, it's more about not forcing women to live under your own system of beliefs.
The reason we've been seeing a rise in draconian anti-abortion laws is because it was never about taking the moral high ground, it was always about control.
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If you can't afford a fucking rubber, then you have some things in life you need to put efforts into besides fucking.
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So is the airbag, still we don't see a lot of people arguing that we should remove them from cars.
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It has a lot to do with abortion, accidents and mistakes happen, twice so when emotions and hormones are involved.
Re: A little proactivity... (Score:3)
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I'm pretty sure the OP was a troll.
It's mind bottling that it got modded "insightful".
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Texas delays publication of maternal death data until after midterms, legislative session https://www.houstonchronicle.c... [houstonchronicle.com]
Because deaths from childbirth complications are up.
Re:A little proactivity... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: A little proactivity... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Except that cost money and goes against the christian conservative narrative they have built themselves.
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An alternative technological solution is to simply harvest the eggs from females immediately after birth, leaving no possibility for them to get accidentally pregnant, and for the woman to be able to use in vitro fertilization if or when they choose to have a child.
This makes every child birth a deliberate choice. With absolutely zero accidental pregnancies. Abortion in such a system would of course only be allowed when there are genuinely unforeseen complications in the pregnancy.
After a certain p
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Among other problems.
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We respect all life!
I lost my job and can't afford formula or healthcare for my baby, will you help?
Should have kept your legs closed you whore! Stop being a freeloader!
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You know things happen that are generally beyond the control of the individual, right? Job loss, illness, death, birth control failure, etc that will change the circumstances of an individual in such a way that being able to afford a child is impossible.
You let the 1 Welfare Queen you heard about that one time cloud your judgment in a way that doesn't allow you to see the other hundred people that actually need the help due to circumstances beyond their control. Heaven forbid we risk providing help to som
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One? ONE?
What fantasy world do you live in, where this is an anomaly??
C'mon down here and tour around the projects in New Orleans and the poorer neighborhoods and you'll see just how prevale
Re:A little proactivity... (Score:5, Insightful)
So, what are you saying? Infanticide should be legalized?
That's a HELL of a leap to get to from "supporting safety nets" to "killing babies"
That's the thing I don't understand about all the pro-abortion arguments... there's precious little separating those arguments from arguments for being able to kill a newborn, or a toddler, or...? Where does it stop?
This horse-shit (along with the rest of your comment) is why sane pro-lifers and sane pro-choicers can't have a productive adult conversation. Too much fucking noise from the nutjobs in the corners. I have a feeling you're too far-gone to try, but in case you're not here's my take from the pro-choice side:
1) Very (very very very) few on "my side" support abortion post viability (early 3rd trimester).
2a) You'd have a hard time finding anyone that supports killing a baby post-delivery. (Do you guys ACTUALLY thing "we" support such a thing? That's pretty fucked up.)
2b) Once a child is born, you realize there are many options between "killing it" and "forcing a mother to raise an unwanted baby", right? Ever heard of adoption?
3) Before viability, we believe it's a woman's choice if she has the baby and offers it up for adoption or terminates the fetus.
4) Any justifications for reducing the availability of reproductive care that involve the words "God" or "Bible" or "religion" are automatically invalid.
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What are your prescriptions that are not "taxpayer funded programs" that alleviate the issue of single mothers and deadbeat dads?
Re: The Child Left Behind. (Score:2)
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Thats great but we can't legislate culture, only the environment people interact within.
I wouldn't say we demonize intelligence, more people graduate college than ever before, but when our society is centered upon the aquisition of wealth we get people who value money over everything else and that leads to some negative outcomes.
I think a world where poverty is reduced to smallest amount possible, where the bottom rungs of psyiological needs are never in risk of being lost a better culture can arise from it
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Oh, so a fantasy solution. Got it.
Why not just suggest Star Trek transporters that take the baby from the womb and it grows in a plasma bath until its 12?
"Everyone that disagrees with my solution that has 0% chance of working in any current reality in any country is the problem". What a childlike way to approch the world.
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Oh, so a fantasy solution. Got it.
What the GP is proposing is more commonly known as "eugenics".
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I don't think the guy who is opposed to public programs is exactly a communist.
Thing is when you go far enough left or right they tend to end up with the same stupid, unworkable solutions. Ancaps and communists and really more in the same pool than they would like to admit.
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That's great, what are your policy prescriptions to "change the culture".
I would say we cant legislate "culture" we can only affect the environment in which the people interact. We can steer it with taxation, public programs and economic changes.
You want more nuclear families? Maybe help make it that having a kid isn't a huge financial burden for most people. Maybe help with the exorbinant healthcare costs that the mother and child will accrue just to have the baby. Gotta have both parents working to su
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Well, rather than give mothers more money for kids and being single....make the money allotted for these welfare programs based on having the father there with the kids.
Or something like that...make it a BONUS to have the father around in the home raising the ki
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Absolutely, I definitely prefer carrots over sticks.
However what you can't really do is punish mothers for actions of the father, that just ends up punishing the child who really had no agency over the decision or who they were born under in the first place. There is a bit of a conundrum there but I think you gave the right response, how do we make it more appealing for families who have kids to stick together.
To me since the #1 issue for divorce is finances we have to alleviate the economic pain points f
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The problem is culture.. specifically, this culture
How are you going to fix that? What 'culture' are you going to continue to force down everyones throat.
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Yes, bad choices cause poverty, but poverty also causes bad choices [science.org], so you still have to spend tax money to pull people out of poverty before you can effectively teach them how not to be poor. This is why free school lunches are so effective: kids lear