By the way, is that a reasonable assessment of why abortions happen?
In the 46 states that reported data to the CDC in 2020, the majority of women who had abortions (57%) were in their 20s, while about three-in-ten (31%) were in their 30s. Teens ages 13 to 19 accounted for 8% of those who had abortions, while women in their 40s accounted for 4%.
The vast majority of women who had abortions in 2020 were unmarried (86%), while married women accounted for 14%, according to the CDC, which had data on this from 39 states and New York City (but not the rest of New York).
What the data says about abortion in the U.S.
BY JEFF DIAMANT AND BESHEER MOHAMED, JANUARY 11, 2023
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/01/11/what-the-data-says-about-abortion-in-the-u-s-2/
So, 57 + 8 = 65 % were under 30.
But surely, by 20 you have already moved out from your parents, haven't you? You have your own life, right?
Among Gen Z? Not universally, and that's stating it mildly.
So, imagine you were a girl who had been told to be proud of her femininity, encouraged to dress up, to wear a somewhat short skirt above reasonably dark or otherwise opaque stockings, to cherish your curves.
Imagine further, your parents have always told you no girl needs to abort if she doesn't want to, keeping abortion legal is about safe guarding her choice, they really never presented it as safeguarding their choice.
Then imagine that moment when it would be really awkward for you to insist on the condom or say "no, not now, I forgot the pill" ...
You were assuming that if you just happened to get pregnant, it would be no total disaster. After all, your parents had never put things as if it was their right for you to abort, for their convenience. When they had told you "some mothers really do better to abort, they are really just not mature enough to raise children" you had always assumed it meant someone else, right? Because the same parents (at least up till now) had always told you how mature you were, and if you weren't married yet with an apartment of your husband's, there was really no urgent hurry, was it?
You were wrong. When it didn't suit your parents for you to be pregnant, and you get pregnant anyway suddenly you weren't all that mature anymore. So, you gave in, your child is dead, but hey, nothing to be morose about! After all, it was your choice (the kind of choice where doing the other thing wouldn't really have been an option, if you wanted to stay on good terms with them, but it was in the end you who told the doctor you wanted to abort).
Is this a marginal case?
I don't think so. I think this accounts for most of the abortions up to age 30, most of the 65 % — and then some for the remaining 35 %, since some women over 30 are also depending on their parents or on a parent and fail to extract themselves from the situation, and so get deprived of independence. Or give it up.
In this landscape, some Christians, reacting to a very much more marginal issue, namely sex change, takes the rhetoric "they want to do away with parents" — "in reality parents are God's plan to protect the children" (not stating for how long one is in this sense a child) and see parental authority as something which needs to be boosted.
I think that most secular parents would if given the chance protect their child from a sex change (which is a slow process, fortunately). I fully agree teens should be protected from this. Ideally by such operations and hormone "therapies" being totally illegal. But concluding "hey, we must boost parental authority" supposes they would also sufficiently often i e nearly always, if given the chance, protect their "children" from abortion. Face it, if you were pregnant, you were no longer a child. And we would seem to see, this is not really the case.
So, imagine your mother tried to force you to abort. Don't obey her.
Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. Evarist, Pope and Martyr
26.X.2023
Romae sancti Evaristi, Papae et Martyris, qui Dei Ecclesiam, sub Hadriano Imperatore, suo sanguine purpuravit.
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