Conservatives Are In For A Rude Awakening If They Think Banning Abortion Will Increase Birth Rates
History suggests they’re about to crash at unprecedented levels
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To all but a handful of the most delusional and devout evangelicals, it’s pretty obvious at this point what the real intentions of abortion bans are. Between comments about the domestic supply of infants and racist dog whistles about white birth rates, the end goal is to artificially drive up the population in the United States. Increasing unwanted pregnancies will not only result in larger numbers of white babies for the adoption market, but high numbers of people of color trapped in a multigenerational poverty cycle and filling prisons and minimum wage jobs over the following decades.
But ironically, the exact opposite may happen in response to the overturning of Roe vs Wade. The US seems to be on the verge of the greatest birth rate crash we have ever seen. Here are some reasons why Republicans’ efforts at driving up the population will backfire catastrophically.
More people than ever are getting sterilized, including fencesitters and people who may have once wanted kids.
Earlier in 2022, a leaked memo suggested Roe vs Wade would be overturned by the end of summer. In a rapid response, internet searches for tubal ligation skyrocketed in the United States, suggesting many people planned to forego reproduction at all costs in the aftermath. After the official Supreme Court ruling, many people wasted no time in acting upon these plans. One Austin, Texas clinic saw requests go from about 1–2 to over 100 per week.
At another clinic in San Antonio, Ob-Gyn Michelle Muldrow described “the number of women…requesting sterilization (as) unlike anything she has seen” in her entire career.
It isn’t just women seeking out sterilization, driven by fear of losing their most essential of human rights. Many urologists have reported that vasectomy inquiries are also up, in some places by around 900%.
Some of these patients already have kids, but many do not. And while a large chunk of the latter would probably consider themselves to be childfree, such a massive increase in inquiries and surgery appointments is certainly…