3D Abortion

There are a lot of theories about who votes for who in the USA. But the fact is that most people who vote conservative can't be persuaded to vote progressive for primarily one reason: Abortion. The most important thing they can vote for is getting a president who will stack the supreme court with conservative justices that will allow states to defy Roe vs. Wade, if not overturn Roe vs. Wade.

It's that simple. NPR listeners will known that many a Trump supporter's 2nd choice in 2016 was Bearnie Sanders. Today's conservative populists are potential supporters of many progressive agenda items. But are they going to sign on with baby killing? Nope.

But abortion is NOT that simple. As a progressive who has spent time in intercity communities, I can tell you that abortion is very important to keeping our society going. You don't want kids in our society being raised by women who wanted to abort them. A conservative may look at his 3 kids and his neighbor's 3 kids and ask "which of these children should have never been born?" But what he does not appreciate is the world those children live in would be far more dangerous if people who did NOT live his conservative lifestyle were raising more kids than they are now.

But that conservative does not only oppose abortion because abortion prevents childbirth. It's not just that abortion is wrong according to his view on the Bible. A fetus itself is a relatively intelligent organism which in a perfect world would not be subjected to pain or destruction, which is why various progressives are anti-abortion as well.

But it goes much deeper than that: what if your son gets his girlfriend pregnant, how can you defend that fetus from its mother if she decides to get an abortion? That fetus would be that conservative's grandchild. And this gets immediately to the real issue at hand, which is the reproductive rights of males, which categorically do not exist. When abortion is legal men have almost no reproductive rights what so ever.

A man can not have a baby without a woman's consent, but a woman can have a baby without a man's consent. Once that baby is born, how that baby is raised is primarily up to the woman, and this is all reinforced through our court system. The mom has the final say on the child's education, upbringing, religion, all of it. If a conservative's son gets his girlfriend pregnant, how can that conservative protect that fetus from being raised as a hedonistic criminal?

Both sides of the Abortion argument are:

1. 100% correct and virtuous.
2. Totally blind to the other side.

There is no easy answer to the abortion question. However we can and should reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies. Birth control should be free and strongly encouraged among all females not specifically trying to have children. This protects the women as they have to make important decisions for their own life, this protects any men they may be involved with from unwanted life changing surprises, and makes it less likely for abortions to happen in the first place.

But the intellectual laziness we have fallen into on this issue will continue to divide the USA, wreaking havoc on our political process for the foreseeable future. If we do not get into some serious 3D Thinking on abortion soon, it will continue to take the USA into darker and darker political futures.