This has come up several times in recent weeks for obvious reasons and I’ve been hesitant to talk about it over on YouTube. In fact, I specifically asked Patreon backers if I should talk about politics and social issues on the channel and almost universally, I was told no.
Therefore, I’m going to do it here. See you below the fold.
This is one of those questions that I get asked when people find out I’m a secular conservative. How can I be against abortion? Well, I’m not, not in general anyhow. Most people have no clue what conservatives actually think because they’re so used to the religious lunatic fringe that they assume everyone is just like that.
That’s not the case. See, when I left religion, I had to re-evaluate my conservative views. A lot of people don’t, they just throw them away but that’s stupid. Conservatism works. It continues to work without religion attached, it’s just not as cut and dried.
Therefore, while I remained a staunch fiscal conservative, some of my social views had to become more moderate. It’s the same positions that I hold today.
Here’s the problem that I had initially. I have always been pro-responsibility. It’s the core of conservatism, after all. Everyone is responsible for their actions and the consequences thereof. Therefore, even without religion, and in the absence of things like rape and molestation, I ought to be against abortion, right?
Except the world isn’t so black and white. While I absolutely am in favor of personal responsibility, it’s an unfortunate reality that most people aren’t, in fact, responsible. In a perfect world, there would be no need for abortions. Every pregnancy would be a planned and wanted pregnancy. There would be no rape, there would be no incest and every pregnancy would be perfect, without birth defects or external factors that cause deformed fetuses.
Unfortunately, we don’t live in a perfect world. Bad things do happen and we have to deal with the facts, not the fantasy. Therefore, in cases of rape and incest and the like, that’s a no-brainer. Abortion is fine. I’m also absolutely on-board with any cases of fetal deformity or health of the mother being at risk.
Where I’m a little more iffy is the cases where people should have known better than to get pregnant but didn’t. You know, the people who are abjectly irresponsible and just don’t care. You can certainly argue that these people are ignorant but really, there’s a point where ignorance stops being an excuse and people need to be responsible for their failures regardless, but this is where we just have to deal with the stupidity of people.
From a purely utilitarian perspective, I honestly don’t want these people breeding. They’re too stupid to live as it is, I don’t want them passing that along to the next generation where it will harm society. Therefore, get your abortions. Please, go right ahead. Maybe you’ll manage to kill yourself along the way and do humanity a favor. I don’t respect these people one bit but, given the alternative, I’d rather they just didn’t reproduce at all.
But what about adoption, people will ask? That’s simple. We don’t have enough adoptive parents to take in all of the currently unwanted children out there. What in the world makes anyone think that we’ll be able to find more than a million additional parents should abortion go away? That’s irrational. Adoption is great but the vast majority of people who are against abortion, you don’t see them helping to lighten the load, do you? In fact, they’re often the same kinds of people I don’t want around innocent and impressionable young minds to begin with. They’re likely to try to shove religious nonsense in there. So no, adoption just doesn’t work, at least not under current conditions.
That doesn’t mean I like the current situation but we can’t deny that this is, in fact, the reality that we live in. I wish people would be more responsible but, at least at the moment, that’s unlikely to be the case. Therefore, abortion has to remain safe and legal because it’s the only way we can get anywhere worthwhile. Otherwise, we’ll be overrun with religious assholes and irresponsible dumbasses and we have enough of both right now.
How about people just learn how to be in rational control of themselves instead? Wouldn’t that be nice?