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In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health, we immediately saw the anticipated protests breaking out, including threats of violence, arson, and all the rest. Freeways in California were almost immediately shut down and similar marches were taking place in cities across the country. It seems obvious that one decision by the Supreme Court isn’t going to make this issue simply go away.
christina heller on X (formerly Twitter): “a couple hundred lining the corners of #Hollywood & Highland. pic.twitter.com/5VJh5kLjZA / X”
a couple hundred lining the corners of #Hollywood & Highland. pic.twitter.com/5VJh5kLjZA
As I watched all of this chaos unfold on my television screen last night, I was once again struck by a question that has been nagging at me for many years. In terms of mankind’s response to various medical challenges, particularly in advanced, industrial nations like the United States, what we’ve been able to accomplish in the 20th and 21st centuries has been nothing short of miraculous as compared to earlier eras in human civilization. With enough of a coordinated effort, some diseases like smallpox that exterminated literally millions of people were wiped from the face of the earth. Through a combination of medical advances and social intervention, childhood mortality rates have plunged to levels never imagined possible in the 1800s. The bubonic plague once wiped out nearly half of the population of Europe, yet there hasn’t been a measurable outbreak in any advanced nation in living memory.
And yet, with all of our acquired knowledge and our demonstrated ability to work together as a society to meet and defeat daunting challenges, how is it that we never put an end to unplanned pregnancies? We’re not talking about something mysterious that erupted from a cave full of bats on another continent or escaped from a lab in Wuhan. (Although we’re on the verge of beating that as well.) In case you skipped health class on the day that this was covered, we actually know what causes pregnancy. And unless you are intentionally trying to start a family, we also know ways that are nearly (although not 100%) foolproof to prevent a woman from becoming impregnated if she doesn’t wish to be.
Telling people to simply not have sex is never going to work and the reasons for that date back to the earliest proto-humans who were driven to ensure the continuation of the species. But highly reliable contraceptive medications for women have been available for decades and we are now on the verge of having such birth control pills for men. How is it that we, as a society, have never seriously addressed this question? How do we still have this many unplanned and unwanted pregnancies? Why has this never been addressed in a serious fashion and driven into everyone’s heads?
Who makes up the constituency that would be opposed to ending unwanted pregnancies? Is there a single woman out there who finds herself three weeks late in her cycle, buys one of those home pregnancy tests, and says, ‘Oh good! I was worried I might never get to have an abortion this year. Now I can go have needless surgery and a painful recovery!’ (Yes, I know there are some female protesters who have been posturing and saying that during this chaotic moment, but they don’t mean it.) Is there a single guy out there who looks forward to receiving that phone call from their…
