I mentioned in “An Individualist Feminism” that if wealth was universal then abortion would be rare beyond medical reasons. I have no doubt that we can reduce abortions significantly without the need for statist intervention. Numbers vary but abortions for medical reasons account for 4% to up to 12% of total abortions done. Most abortions are due to being unable to afford to provide for the child or because of not being ready or something like that. Those are reasons that can be eliminated. We can make sure those reasons aren’t reasons anymore. The ideas mentioned here should reduce abortions significantly.
The first thing we must do if our goal is to get rid of abortions is to eliminate poverty. Mutual savings banks will allow the poor and middle class to launch their own startups, create jobs, increase incomes, lower prices, raise wages, and more. Women could start their own businesses and save a little each day. Then, if they get pregnant, they can have their own paid leave. Being their own bosses, they could determine their own hours and take breaks whenever they need them. They could also have their children close by and still run their business, shutting down when they need to.
There is also a case of women who work for wages. I believe that mutual banks, among others, would lead to a society where self-employment would be the majority. However, some will want to work for wages. For these women, there could be a paid family plan paid for through voluntary taxation. It would be available to any woman and would be distributed by charities, mutual aid groups, women’s organizations, churches, etc.
The second thing that is essential to reducing abortion is providing contraception and sex ed. For contraception, the competition between so many companies could make it extremely cheap. There could also be groups that provide funding for schools to provide teens with free condoms and such. Now, for sex ed, we could have community-run schools or private micro-school sole proprietorships (a one-room schoolhouse owned and operated by one person, the teacher) and they could decide how to teach sex ed. Community-run schools (run by teachers, parents, and with input from students) would keep out anyone who supports abstinence-only (as one voice alone could not alter the whole school’s curriculum) and if the micro-school is teaching it then just change schools or use online schools.
It is okay to be opposed to abortion. It is okay to think abortion is murder (as Dorothy Day did). It is not okay to want the State to intervene. Government intervention always hurts more than it helps. Statist intervention in abortion creates back-alley abortion and that hurts women and jeopardizes their lives. The State takes away individualism and replaces it with collectivism that does nothing but destroys. The solution to abortion lies in granting women their individualism and allowing them the opportunity to live their lives according to their will, which is to allow them to pursue their self-interests. Only then can we truly be pro-life.
