Is Abortion restrictions motivated by slower population growth?

[Bootes Void]

I think this is the main reason not necessarily religion.

[CEO Mindset]

no

it's incel type mentalities towards women as the main motivator with religion a distant second

[TML]

It is actually motivated by a desire for rich people to dominate the middle class and poor people. Rich people can easily get around these restrictions (e.g. by traveling to states where abortion is legal), while middle class and poor people can seldom afford to do that.

[Biden his time]

No...

and not the previous two responses either


Religious reasons are generally #1

[KoopaDaQuick 🇵🇸]

No...and not the previous two responses either, religious reasons are generally #1

Religious, yes, but I'd say that morals are really the reason why most people have a position on abortion. It's the only reason why pro-lifers exists, and pro-choicers are usually dominated by the "my body my choice" crowd and whatnot. If humans didn't have emotions, abortion wouldn't be a debate.

But yes, as religion guides a lot of people's moral compasses, "religion" is a much better response than the other options presented.

[lfromnj]

No...

and not the previous two responses either


Religious reasons are generally #1

Which definitely seems like a possible bad sign for the pro life movement. Its still possible to make a secular moral argument for being pro life but if pro lifers insist on clinging to religion as the main reason to oppose "murder" it may actually cause a collapse with the decreasing religiosity of Americans.

Put murder in quotes here just to quote pro lifers.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     Population growth is much too abstract a factor to motivate most people. I could see it being an important factor in governments considering such restrictions, but I heavily doubt the average pro-life voter cares about that.

[Ferguson97]

No, it’s motivated by a belief that life begins at conception.

I fundamentally disagree with that belief and will do everything in my power to prevent anti-choice legislation from being passed — but I don’t see how it’s useful to pretend that they’re motivated by much else beyond this belief, along with some influences of sexism.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

Yes, but not because anti-abortion people want to accelerate population growth. It’s a function of the ageing population - it becomes much easier to support banning something you can no longer be caught up in. Women who can no longer have children (and men of that age) have something in common with immigrants who can become more protectionist only after their families have joined them.

[Kahane's Grave Is A Gender-Neutral Bathroom]

No. It's motivated by a misguided belief that a <1mm fetus has more rights than a fully-grown women.

[progressive85]

No.  All of this is from the religious right.  Interestingly enough, Roe when first decided in the ruling by Justice Blackmun, was from what I've read was really a Catholic thing - like Catholic groups expressed grave concern, but it took a while to become this political movement and then in the late 70s, there were several issues that created the modern day religious right (which may or may not today be waning and fading away, I'm not sure about that because it's extremely powerful within the Republican Party's base).

I know there was opposition to what was believed to be a liberal Supreme Court that was attacking religious people's rights (and this is what they believed) to practice their religion without any interference from the state, and that kind of Barry Goldwater thinking was becoming very popular and would manifest itself with Ronald Reagan's campaign in 1980.

Oddly enough in today's world with this terrible Plague we have, it's that same group of people in our society that have made it very hard to contain this virus, and they are dying because of it so it's a real problem that needs to be addressed.  Religious fundamentalism of any religion and any deity leads to excess and it can eventually be a perversion of the religion itself.

These "body issues" - gay love, gay intimacy, women's sexuality, premarital intimacy between two people, and everything that has to do with having a baby and creating a family - these issues are the number one issues to a huge swath of Americans in the electorate and they've been prodded and pushed by some very charismatic religious right spokespeople over the decades, starting with the televangelists in the 1980s and their shows with very high ratings....

but to bring it back to the restrictions, I think this is entirely about pleasing the base of the Republican Party, getting their votes to keep these state legislators in office, saving them from primary defeats because that is a huge fear to any aspiring conservative Republican politician, and delivering for that base...

Even in conservative states this is not going to be popular.  They think it's good but it's backfiring, as it should.  A full-on assault on every single aspect of a woman's pregnancy and her reproductive rights at the very early part of the pregnancy is scary... it's not saving lives, it's endangering them, and I'm someone that's going through my own personal evolution on abortion - going from someone that was once very outspokenly pro-life to someone that's starting to think that maybe there's a possibility that I'm not looking at the whole picture here.

[Comrade Funk]

It's motivated by Evangelicals and other extremists not wanting women to have sex.

[CEO Mindset]

It's motivated by Evangelicals and other extremists not wanting women to have sex.

true. why does atlas allow prolifers to post incel-tier arguments?

[TheReckoning]

It's motivated by Evangelicals and other extremists not wanting women to have sex.

I’m pretty Evangelicals don’t want just men to have sex, if you get where I’m coming from.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

     Population growth is much too abstract a factor to motivate most people. I could see it being an important factor in governments considering such restrictions, but I heavily doubt the average pro-life voter cares about that.

That is basically correct I think, though there can be times when population growth becomes a more salient issue in the public consciousness.  Ceaușescu's Romania is a striking example of restricting abortion for population growth reasons, but this cannot be called typical. Are concerns of slowing or falling population more part of the concern in Eastern Europe, where the threat is greater than in the US? I think maybe it is, but it's hard to disentangle the nationalist pro-natalism from Christian traditionalist oriented politics where they are aligned.

In the other direction, concerns about the impact of the coming "population bomb" on the planet were influential in the push for legalization and access to abortion in the 60s and 70s.  This argument has mostly faded from abortion rights advocacy, but one may occasionally still hear this thinking from people today.

[Houstonian Sock]

I am against abortion and I am not worries adout population gtown

[Schiff for Senate]

     Population growth is much too abstract a factor to motivate most people. I could see it being an important factor in governments considering such restrictions, but I heavily doubt the average pro-life voter cares about that.

This. Politicians who oppose abortion do so because they genuinely personally oppose it, most of their constituents oppose it, or both, not really because of concepts like slow population growth.

[Kahane's Grave Is A Gender-Neutral Bathroom]

No. 'Pro-Life' voters, specifically the rural Trump ones who want government handouts but hate anyone who is different than them, have incel-like beliefs about women.

Unfortunately, they are a significant voter base in many places.

[Former President tack50]

Unless your name is Nicolae Ceausescu no, it absolutely isn't. (Indeed if you really want population growth at all costs you'd ban abortion as well as contraceptives, just as Ceaucescu did)

Opposition to abortion really comes from moral positions in most cases. These are usually religiously motivated, but not always (plenty of pro-life non-religious people exist; as well as a smaller portion of pro-choice religious people)