Fighting Abortion Now Requires Fighting Increasing Hatred Of Children – The Federalist

The impending change in the federal abortion landscape with theDobbs v. Jackson Womens Health Organization case promises plenty of added legislative battles over abortion, including efforts to curtail theepidemic of chemical abortion.

Exposing abortion as lethal violence towards innocent people and abolishing it as such is the fight of our lifetime, and knowing exactly who (or what) that fight is against is mission-critical.

In the nearly five decades that unrestricted abortion has been legal in the United States, pro-abortion sloganeering has explored many avenues, sheltered safely in the realm of misdirection and ambiguity.To defend abortion honestly requires a fairly stark deviation from the standard moral compassthat requires we protect the weak and helpless.Hence, vague propaganda like reproductive rights, never again, no uterus, no opinion, and my body, my choice became mainstays over the years for Womens Marchers and angsty college students alike.

Butold sloganshave been increasingly joined by a new fellow: F-ck them kids.Signs with the crass messagewere spottedat Womens Marches nationwide in 2021, and again atcampus protestsagainst Students for Life of America President Kristan Hawkins during a speaking tour visit to the University of San Diego in the fall.

Its easy to write these off as a few rage-filled outliers. Buta recent Pew Research studysuggests this hateful new addition to the pro-choice mantra family is grounded in a depressing reality; childless Americans flat-out do not want kids. Like, ever.

Along with the rise of the term childfree (reducing the idea of children to burdens), Pew is finding that an unprecedented number of Americans dont plan to have children for no reason other than that they dontwantthem.The study, released in November 2021, found that a whopping44 percent of childless 18- to 49-year-olds said theyre not too or not at all likely to have children.

Of the childless, more than half (56 percent)said theyjust dont want kids.Another 74 percent of those who have kids said they dont plan to have more.

Other polling hones in further on specifics, withone outlet noting,3 in 5 childless millennials say kids are too expensive and they want to focus on their career. Mic.com tookan audience pollon why young people did not want children and received answers like, The physical changes my body would go through with the pain of birth is not appealing at all to me, With the way I want to live my life,kidswould get in the way, and I dont want kids because theyre a f-ckton of work.

A desire to remain childless doesnt exactly explain the bitter vitriol that staunch F-ck them kids abortion supporters seem to harbor towards children. Perhaps Pew ought to explore that dark enigma next. Nevertheless, the pro-life movement now faces the challenge that reasons for abortion seem to have shifted towards undisguised selfishness, laziness, careerism, and contempt for children, versusthe older datathat showed women were choosing abortion for reasons of circumstance, such as finances, relationship trouble, coercion, or health concerns.

IfRoev. Wade is indeed reversed this summer, the right to regulate abortion will be returned to each individual state.Nearly half of statesare projected to ban abortion, meaning the pro-life communities in those states will be busyoffering assistance to womenwho wouldve otherwise found themselves at Planned Parenthood. Now, on top of those not insignificant duties, pro-lifers are set with the task ofde-stigmatizing children.

When attempting to appeal to a population of self-interested young adults, perhaps the most compelling approach is indeed an appeal to self. Rabid abortion supporters, anti-natalists, and other child-averse groups may have their minds most effectively changed on the issue via data that conclude a positive outcome for parents.

A lot of research on parentsis very nuanced, with many studies on parental happiness presenting more than a few flaws (most notably, an inflated definition of happiness itself as the end-all, be-all of human existence).Writing forThe Atlantic, Paul Bloom squashes this horde of deficient parental happiness studies:

theres more to life than happiness. When I say that raising my sons is the best thing Ive ever done, Im not saying that they gave me pleasure in any simple day-to-day sense, and Im not saying that they were good for my marriage. Im talking about something deeper, having to do with satisfaction, purpose, and meaning. Its not just me. When you ask people about their lifes meaning and purpose, parents say that their lives have more meaning than those of nonparents. Astudy by the social psychologist Roy Baumeister and his colleaguesfound that the more time people spent taking care of children, the more meaningful they said their life waseven though they reported that their life was no happier.

America would benefit from more babies, and rejecting the furtherance of our species harms us all.The United States has been riding a downward spiral of population since before Covid, having seenrecord-low birth rateseach of the last five consecutive years. Right now, we restbelow the replacement rate.

Happiness, selfishness, and procreative aversion aside, the most pressing issue at hand is the rate at which Americans are killing offspring as opposed to not conceiving them at all.

Working mother Brenna Lewis is a staff writer with Students for Life of America.

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Fighting Abortion Now Requires Fighting Increasing Hatred Of Children - The Federalist