If they make Abortion illegal then what?

[nolabear]

16. These are very real questions, and need to be answered.

I get the desire to just take shots at the GOP, but you're exactly right; men can and do simply walk away, and women seldom do. And if they do, the duty for child care falls to their own mothers.

I suppose if the government fails us utterly then women will become even more of an underground society than we are now. We'll be the third world in the United States, living in the shadows whe we can and raising a whole lot of children who will function more and more poorly, including boys who become men who walk away because they don't know how to do otherwise (it's not just knowing what to do; it's having the ability to function in a world that has screwed you from before you were born and so not having biopsychosocial resources to help you be a good father and partner).

The problem is only barely addressable now. If the gov't. would start at the most basic level with good birth control education and accessability, good prenatal health care, good job training and child care options, good schools that teach kids and provide places for them to go after school, legalization of drugs so that the incentive to deal goes away and other options are necessary, support systems for both mothers and fathers so they can tolerate the stress of parenting, and in general a sense of inclusion for these people who feel no reason to invest in a society that has shut them out, then in thirty years we could have a much, much larger segment of the population that could get to that ideal the GOP likes to wave around.

But if you don't acknowledge how very crippling the current system is and just punish those who are injured by it for being injured, including the abandoning men and struggling women and deeply damaged children, if you take the shaming, condescending, holier-than-thou stance the Republicans do and believe that things will improve, not by work and sacrifice but by magic, then the future is dark indeed.