redirecting the pro-life effort

I have been an active Libertarian for most of the last 16 years. I have likely been to four score or more meetings of libertarians. Often the discussion moves rapidly over areas of agreement to focus on animated discussions where we do not agree. The pro-life vs pro-choice question is one of the main ones.

Nobody wins that argument. Remember, this is a group that eschews existing rules and rulers in favor of philosophically proper and theoretically pure. No pre-existing guidelines carry weight in these arguments.

For us there is no agreed upon role for government in this question. That means neither paying for abortions nor monitoring and controlling womens’ reproductive systems.

Those who would use government force to ban legal abortions must be unaware of the bad old days where botched abortions were the number one source of emergency room visits for women of childbearing age. “Vacations to Mexico” and metal coat-hangers had special meaning. Government force is violence – not a magic wand.

Opposing government intervention is not the same, however, as saying the current system in the USofA with over 600,000 abortions per year is okay.

Typical healthy-baby birthing in a USofA hospital maternity ward costs in excess of $10,000. This can destroy many household budgets. Free thinking brings me to wonder how humankind ever made it to this century without expensive AMA-monopoly care for our moms giving birth. In that previous sentence there is a hint of how something as natural as giving birth came to transfer money from the poor to the rich.

Popping the baby out and giving it away costs over $10,000 for ‘transfer of title’, thanks to the lawyers, but worse still, it can be undone. That same legal profession has established that the birth mother can un-abandon her child a dozen or more years later, ripping the heart out of a family who was foolish enough to adopt a Made In USA baby.

Those two plus the daunting expense of raising a child corner many women into choosing a free or nearly free abortion. The more often that happens, the more normal it seems.

Were some schemers fighting human population growth on Earth, they couldn’t have done much better than build the system we have today.

By “amazing coincidence”, I remember that in those bad old days mentioned above, there were a lot of people raising alarm at runaway human population growth and proposing numerous “solutions”.
You don’t suppose …?
Zero Population Growth founded in 1968
Roe v Wade cleared the Supreme Court January 1973

But what is a pro-lifer to do?

So far the protests, letters and other activisms have not turned the trick. I doubt doubling down will either. When what you are doing doesn’t work, change what you are doing.

The Pareto Principle, says you can solve 80% of the problem with 20% of the effort. I believe it applies here.

1. Refocus on making adoptions easy, inexpensive and FIRM.

2. Wrest the birthing process from the AMA-monopoly hospitals. Turn the midwifes loose.

If it saves one life …

How about 80% of 600,000?