oldsoul
Gold Member
You are correct, I stand corrected.Out of curiosity, I ran the numbers. Your example, assuming full time (40hrs/wk) employment, would be a minimum wage earner. That number is roughly 4%. So, are you suggesting that laws be written to accommodate just 4% of the population? Keeping in mind:
"Just 4 percent of minimum-wage workers are single parents working full-time, compared to 5.6 percent of all U.S. workers." Who Earns the Minimum Wage? Suburban Teenagers, Not Single Parents
The sentence you quoted doesn't actually say what you are claiming. it doesn't say anything about what percentage of Americans (or even what percentage of workers) earn minimum wage. It tells you that 4% of minimum wage workers are single parents, and 5.6 percent of all US workers are single parents. But "single parents" is not the category I'm interested in.
I should note that I picked $15k as an example because it was about minimum wage, not because I think someone making any amount over that would have no problems with increased travel distance to various services. In any case, according to 2017 census data about 6.4% of all families had a total income below $15k/year, and a little over 9% had a total income less than $20k. Those are in fact significant numbers of people. I already said I didn't think it was necessarily the only consideration, but I do think it's an important one. It's especially relevant to abortion, because abortion patients are disproportionately poor.
(edit: I linked family income not household income, editing text to reflect that. In any case, the percentages for household income are 10.6% < 15k and 15.6% < 20k: data here. "Families" appear to be a subset of "households", i.e. because within a household a family group indicates only the occupants who are related to the head of household. This suggests that the difference between the two data sets reflects the fact that there's a lot of poor people living in households with non-family members.)
The point I was attempting (poorly) to get to is that the real issue, as I see it, is that people simply do not accept, or apply, the same level of personal responsibility that was once generally practiced. What I mean, in this context is, if you do not wish to be a parent at this time, you really should take personal responsibility for it, and take steps to reduce the likelihood of getting pregnant (or getting someone else pregnant, if you're a guy). There are things one can do to dramatically reduce said likelihood. There is also, one thing a person can do that ELIMINATES the possibility. Now, I understand that there are times when a person is forced to engage in sexual activity (it's called rape), and in these cases the situation is very different, and should be addressed as such. For the vast majority of cases, those involved know (or should reasonably know) that their actions could result in a pregnancy. So, we come back to personal responsibility.
I am not opposed to abortion. I have my beliefs that prevent me from considering it a viable option in most cases. However, that is MY life, and I have NO RIGHT to decide what is a viable option for others. Likewise, the Federal Government has NO AUTHORITY on the matter of abortion. It can neither deem it legal nor illegal, it is a RIGHT (contained in the COTUS) that is reserved to the various states and/or the people. Therefore, if one state wishes to deem it illegal in said state, that is a STATE matter, and is constitutional, on a Federal level. It may well violate that state's constitution, that I cannot say as I am not familiar with all 50.