2018-07-02 – I am not a fan of abortions. To me they represent a sub-optimal solution to a dreadful problem. This does not mean that I would ban them. But I would prefer to attack problem pregnancies by preventing them in the same way I would prefer to attack heart disease with diet and exercise rather than bypass surgery.

And that’s the thing that gets me about the decades-old GOP frenzy about abortion. They seem less interested in actually reducing the number of abortions than they are in just fighting against liberals. If they were interested in reducing the number of abortions, they wouldn’t oppose measures to prevent the pregnancies in the first place—wouldn’t you think? At the very least.

So here are the two consequences of banning abortion. First, abortions go underground. Abortions early in pregnancy can now be done with a pill. There will be a black market in pills. No reduction in abortions. Later abortions, which are always done due to a health crisis, will simply be outlawed and women will die (and presumably the fetus will too)

Second, women with money will be able to avoid the ban. They’ll simply fly to somewhere that they can get a safe abortion. They did this before Roe v. Wade. They will do it again if the GOP succeeds in passing the bans.

In other words: if you a rich, abortions are okay; if you a poor, tough shit.

Conservatives moan and groan about poor women having babies without being married. They say that early motherhood dooms a woman to a life of poverty. Maybe that is the whole point of trying to restrict family planning options for these women.

Rich women are not restricted, regardless of what the law says.

Now I don’t mean to say that some people’s beliefs about abortion are craven and classist. Many people sincerely believe abortion is wrong. I’m sympathetic to that belief. What I’m talking about here is the craven and classist politicians who promote measures that are supposedly anti-abortion but in fact do the opposite. They are just pandering.  Their women will always be able to get on a plane to get their abortions. They don’t really care about anyone else and they never expect to live by the same rules they impose on everyone else.