Reply #37: I also remember the days of back-alley abortions, but I'm not so [View All]

[Nay]

sure this society would go back to that wholesale. Remember, one of the reasons coat-hanger abortions existed was that if you were UNMARRIED and pregnant, you became a social leper, were unmarriageable, and were considered a total tramp.

That social fabric no longer exists. We don't do that to "unwed mothers" anymore. We don't even use the term "unwed mother" and I suspect most young people would laugh out loud at the term. Also remember that, back then, one of the problems with being pregnant and unmarried was that you would be unable to support your child without a working husband. Nowadays, most women work at a job their whole lives and can support themselves and a child with no man in sight. And they do.

So, a lot of the social pressure to not be pregnant is simply gone. If Roe V. Wade is overturned, what I would love to see is millions of pregnant women (those who don't want the baby and would have had an abortion) go ahead and have the baby and simply give it up for adoption immediately. Can you imagine the glut of little babies clogging up the adoption/welfare/social services systems? Cuz I can guarantee you that all those lily-white evangelicals in Omaha aren't going to be adopting too many little black kids. And they are already having trouble finding enough black or multi-racial families to take in the children being born now -- add hundreds of thousands to that number, and keep on with the destruction of the economy, and even fewer families will be able to adopt. They won't even be able to take care of the kids they have already.

So, I think it is incorrect to assume things will revert to the way they were back in the 50's. The whole social aspect is totally different. No one blinks an eye at an unmarried pregnant woman today, and believe me, it was totally different back then.