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Economic solutions to abortion
Baby companies a natural ally of fetal rights advocates
By Johanan Raatz
The failure to achieve prenatal justice is a democratic failure. In a democracy, equal participation is necessary. Dead individuals are obviously disenfranchised, as they can’t participate 18 years after the injustice.
I have previously written about the usage of corporate power to address democratic failures. I decided to do another article like that, this time dealing with the abortion issue. In thinking about this I found I could approach the issue from the center.
My support for fetal rights hasn’t changed, but I can now support it from the common ground of a desire to reduce the number of abortions taking place. In particular, I think it’s a good idea to investigate how socioeconomic factors cause abortion and reduce abortions by addressing them.
So what do I have in mind? After studying the support of abortion I came to two conclusions. First, a modest majority supports the decision of legalized abortion, even though greater majorities oppose most abortions. Secondly, people seem to oscillate on the issue of abortion: a majority will say that abortion is homicide, yet an overlapping majority supports its legalization.
The failure to achieve prenatal justice is a democratic failure. In a democracy, equal participation is necessary. Dead individuals are obviously disenfranchised, as they can’t participate 18 years after the injustice.
Based on the statistics it appears that a majority unwittingly supports something that can be defined as undemocratic. They believe abortion is homicide (I think we all agree that homicide is undemocratic), yet they support its legalization.
This brings me back to my original idea. It may be logical to leverage corporate power on the democratic process to correct this failure.
Nearly a third of fetal children are killed via abortion. An entire third of children is a large market for baby companies like Gerber, Pampers or Huggies to expand into. As such it would be in the economic interest of these corporations to reduce abortions. Fewer abortions would mean higher profits for them.
Therefore, an alliance between fetal rights advocates and companies that make profits from those who have children would be logical. Since reelection is costly, politicians don’t like to aggravate donors. Once fully mobilized, baby companies could use their economic support to push for policies to reduce abortion. If the politicians don’t comply, those companies could punish them come election time.
What kinds of policies should the politicians promote? As I said earlier, I thought I would take the middle ground by promoting policies that would remove the socioeconomic factors causing abortions.
First, it may be prudent to promote policies that would create a cartel in the abortion industry. By treating a few of the larger abortion providers preferentially, the competition would vanish and the price of abortion would rise. This would assist poorer women into choosing adoption as it would be more economical.
At this point we are making excellent progress. By removing a socioeconomic factor that enables these women to get abortions we would reduce the number they can get. However, we must focus on rich and middle class women as well. This may require another approach.
What drives these women to get abortions may be less economic than sociological. They can pay for children but for some reason they don’t want to. This suggests that they may be prioritizing other things over their parental responsibilities. Though social in nature, this may also have an economic solution. After taking a sociology class, I learned about how companies reflect varying social norms when it comes to the role of gender in the workplace.
In communities with particularly high abortion rates, it may be preferable to use these companies to modify economic environmental factors in a manner consistent with the social norms that achieve the greatest equality between mothers and fetal children. Once responsible attitudes toward fetal rights are achieved, other accommodations to these social norms can be made.
Finally, it might be good for corporations that market to infants to finance public service announcements to raise awareness about fetal rights and feticide offenders. Like anti-smoking ads, this could reduce the desire for abortion.
Perhaps the best way forward is through a broader alliance between fetal rights advocates and corporations that profit from more births. It’s also nice to be able to address this issue from the middle ground while maintaining support for fetal rights.
> Comments
_ on Sep 29, 2008 at 12:07 AM:
but let's not work to educate people on how not to get pregnant.
Johanan Raatz on Sep 29, 2008 at 10:10 AM:
"but let's not work to educate people on how not to get pregnant."
To some degree that's a good idea. However this is more in regards to stopping abortions after pregnancies have occured. And part of the idea here is to find common interest between fetal rights advocates and baby product corporations. If their were fewer overall pregnancies that might interefere with the corporate interests of Pampers Huggees and Gerbers and thus with the basis for the aliance between them and fetal rights advocates.
This is not to say that women who should not be getting pregnant because they are not in a position to take care of a kid should be getting pregnant. Rather we should educate them not to. This is more for the mothers who can raise kids but simply refuse to.
Straight Talk Express on Sep 29, 2008 at 12:26 PM:
So...
Carrying a fetus to term is in the best financial interest of Huggees, Pampers, and Gerbers.
Babies becoming children is in the best interest of Hasbro, Mattel, etc.
Children becoming teenagers is in the best interest of ABC, NBC, FOX, Macintosh, Nintendo, Exxon, Ford, etc.
Teenagers becoming young adults is in the best interest of Halliburton, Bechtel, etc.
Straight Talk Express on Sep 29, 2008 at 12:29 PM:
...and thus, Abstinence Only education is in the best financial interests of corporate capitalism (though not necessarily our society, as we are the ones to whom these corporations externalize their costs, damages, pollution, etc.)
Johanan Raatz on Sep 29, 2008 at 01:41 PM:
...and thus, Abstinence Only education is in the best financial interests of corporate capitalism
Alright. Let me try to explain something. I'm fine with trying to reduce pregnancies even if that requires contradicting some of my allies on this who are opposed to teaching about birth control. But to be honest I really doubt increased birth control is going to reduce pregnancies all that much. People already use birth control and look how many abortions there still are.
"(though not necessarily our society, as we are the ones to whom these corporations externalize their costs, damages, pollution, etc.)"
Now you're getting it! :) You see the idea is that we can use some of those external costs to rectify democratic failures. Because corporations will not have to pay for them the public will have to adapt to these external costs instead. Which means that if we can engineer the whole system just the adaptations people will be required to make to pay for those external costs will result in achieving desirable political ends. The nice thing about using corporations to achieve these ends is that they are so powerful so they can be used as one heck of a political lever.
Johanan Raatz on Sep 29, 2008 at 01:45 PM:
"So... Carrying a fetus to term is in the best financial interest of Huggees, Pampers, and Gerbers. Babies becoming children is in the best interest of Hasbro, Mattel, etc. Children becoming teenagers is in the best interest of ABC, NBC, FOX, Macintosh, Nintendo, Exxon, Ford, etc. Teenagers becoming young adults is in the best interest of Halliburton, Bechtel, etc."
Good point. If abortions are reduced it will affect the Hasbro and Mattel in a good way not far in the future as well so it might not be a bad idea to leverage their corporate power to get what I want out of the political process as well.
Also what you point out suggests that reducing overall fetal homicides would be good for the economy as a whole in the long term.
Greg on Sep 29, 2008 at 02:17 PM:
Interesting thoughts but a far cry I'm afraid. I don't think its in any company's interest to get involved with as polorized an issue as abortion. Maybe they'll take up the cause once they've put their product on every baby's ass in the world and have nowhere else to expand.
Johanan Raatz on Sep 29, 2008 at 02:54 PM:
"Interesting thoughts but a far cry I'm afraid."
Well innovative solutions usually start out like that. I figured not much else is working politically with this so this approach might.
"I don't think its in any company's interest to get involved with as polorized an issue as abortion."
They won't care about the political aspect of it much only the profits to be had. And if they all start doing it people who will not like them for doing it will have no other choice than to buy their products anyway as they will need them for their babies.
"Maybe they'll take up the cause once they've put their product on every baby's ass in the world and have nowhere else to expand."
Well that describes the situation of Pampers and Gerbers very well. Both corporations are entrenched and probably won't be able to cut into each others consumer base very much but they will be able to expand their markets by leveraging the political process to ensure fewer abortions.
Terrence on Sep 30, 2008 at 12:36 PM:
Isn't there a name for uniting corporate interests with the state? Like um fascism? Granted I find the steamroller approach you apply to dealing with abortion "rights" be pretty amusing. Radical pro-abortion feminists no doubt richly deserve what you are suggesting for their bad behavior, but at the same time I don't like the overarching political connotations here.
Johanan on Oct 01, 2008 at 01:42 PM:
"Isn't there a name for uniting corporate interests with the state? Like um fascism?"
Well by that definition modern Japan would be fascist, but they clearly aren't. At least not in the way that people usually think of fascism.
"Granted I find the steamroller approach you apply to dealing with abortion "rights" be pretty amusing."
Why thank you. I've always found a more "authoritative" style to be much more efficient when comes to doing politics.
Adolf Hitler on Oct 04, 2008 at 08:52 AM:
That's a surprise.
Ron Paul on Oct 05, 2008 at 03:32 PM:
RON PAUL! RON PAUL! RON PAUL! RON PAUL!