While there’s been a steady reduction in unwanted pregnancies since contraception and abortion were legalized, in the US alone around 35-40% of pregnancies are still unintended. That means in 2019 approximately 943,000 people came into this world as an “oops”.
I’m actually the result of an unplanned teen pregnancy and was adopted out (not the love of their lives however, more of an object upon which to heap their violence and rage). When I finally met my bio mom, who’s rad, after we’d gotten to know each other a bit she admitted she tried to abort me but was past the cutoff date by the time she realized. Some people don’t create children but become wonderful parents, some people don’t want kids but end up with them and make the choice to be good parents, some people desperately want to be parents but have selfish purposes.
I’m 100% with you that access to contraception and abortion should be human rights, but even if state limitations didn’t exist sex for fun and with full precautions would still sometimes result in the creation of a new human. 2019 was 40yrs into the US allowing access to contraceptives and abortion and still 1/3 of new people came into existence unintentionally.
It’s great that numbers are down, but 1/3 of humanity coming into existence when contraceptives, abortion, and a basic understanding of how babies are made are accessible seems like more than an outlier. Whether 2.2 million or 900k, these aren’t just numbers, each one born is a human being, subject to all that entails and subjecting the world to all that comes with another human existing.
I was being generous. 1/3 is average in most countries where birth control, abortion, and sex ed are available. The number increases in countries where that isn’t the case and I’m guessing will increase in the US as the Christofascists are allowed to retain power.
Source: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/series/sr_02/sr02-201.pdf
While there’s been a steady reduction in unwanted pregnancies since contraception and abortion were legalized, in the US alone around 35-40% of pregnancies are still unintended. That means in 2019 approximately 943,000 people came into this world as an “oops”.
I’m actually the result of an unplanned teen pregnancy and was adopted out (not the love of their lives however, more of an object upon which to heap their violence and rage). When I finally met my bio mom, who’s rad, after we’d gotten to know each other a bit she admitted she tried to abort me but was past the cutoff date by the time she realized. Some people don’t create children but become wonderful parents, some people don’t want kids but end up with them and make the choice to be good parents, some people desperately want to be parents but have selfish purposes.
A problem easily solved with expansion of access to contraception and abortion services.
These pregnancies are not the result of people fucking. They are the result of state and federal policy denying them access to baby-free sex.
I’m 100% with you that access to contraception and abortion should be human rights, but even if state limitations didn’t exist sex for fun and with full precautions would still sometimes result in the creation of a new human. 2019 was 40yrs into the US allowing access to contraceptives and abortion and still 1/3 of new people came into existence unintentionally.
It goes from a routine occurrence to an outlayer concern.
Unintentional pregnancies in the early 1970s accounted for 2.2-2.7M births per year.
We’ve reduced that incidence by 60% over the intervening period.
It’s great that numbers are down, but 1/3 of humanity coming into existence when contraceptives, abortion, and a basic understanding of how babies are made are accessible seems like more than an outlier. Whether 2.2 million or 900k, these aren’t just numbers, each one born is a human being, subject to all that entails and subjecting the world to all that comes with another human existing.
It’s not 1/3rd of humanity, it’s 1/3rd of Americans - a community of people who are exceptionally reactionary around contraception and abortion
https://www.who.int/data/gho/data/indicators/indicator-details/GHO/SRH_PREGNANCY_UNINTENDED_RATE
I was being generous. 1/3 is average in most countries where birth control, abortion, and sex ed are available. The number increases in countries where that isn’t the case and I’m guessing will increase in the US as the Christofascists are allowed to retain power.