Despite identifying abortion as an important issue, most suburban white women have little if any experience with it and, provided that no seismic socio-political changes take place in the U.S., can reasonably expect that their daughters will never undergo the procedure either. Contemporary America is not the late stage USSR where, according to official data, women terminated pregnancies 6.7 times in the course of their lives and on top of it there was one estimated illegal feticide for every 2.7 legal ones.

Being relatively rare, pregnancy termination remains a largely abstract matter for affluent suburbanites. So much so that feminist activists resorted to urging women to come forward and “shout” their abortions to make the subject personal and relevant. Nobody “shouted” about that sort of exploit in the USSR where I was born and raised—women whispered about them, a lot, and not because they had to remind each other about the existence of the procedure.

The markets have provided American women with a multitude of options to prevent pregnancy, and white suburbanites are using them prodigiously. As a matter of fact, this key demographic is so good at delaying childbearing that many require help when they finally decide to start a family.

Some women say that they need abortion just in case—as a guarantee that an unplanned baby will never get in the way of their daughters’ dreams. But the chances of such a child being conceived are already low. Sure, they are not zero, but the expectation that nothing will ever disrupt anyone’s life plans is unreasonable—one can be struck by lightning, or it may happen that UCLA admissions won’t like your personal essay. It’s strange for suburban white women abortion “rights” overshadow what they ought to see happening right before their eyes—American decline.  

Feminist leadership did a number on American women. The mainstream “pro-choice” argument is that the decision about the unborn is between a woman and her doctor. The ever-gentlemanly Democrat vice presidential candidate Tim Walz—the man who, during the COVID closures, established a snitch hotline in his home state of Minnesota—admonished the electorate to “mind your own damn business.”

Because we all have a stake in future generations, no civilized society treats pregnancy termination as a private matter. In Walz’s Minnesota it might be impolite to notice that a doctor killed a baby born alive, but abortion is subject to tight regulations around the world with gestational age limits, waiting periods, and family notifications. The American framing of the question in terms of rights preempts any discussion of morality and legality. How convenient!

Killing a child in utero can’t be viewed as a matter of liberty, however, because it’s not an inalienable right given by God. This is the case not only because Judeo-Christian morality is clear about the life of the unborn but because abortion cannot be considered a right because it’s a procedure that must be performed by trained “professionals,” if it’s appropriate to use that term in this context. In the U.S., we created conditions that make it safe, legal, and relatively rare. Suburban women are mostly concerned about keeping it legal, but given the direction their politics are taking us the safety of the procedure should worry them more.

What makes abortions safe for mothers? Clean hospitals, experienced doctors, professionally run facilities manufacturing products like RU-486. Comfortable people may take such things for granted, but such niceties don’t simply exist; they are products of our civilization, and they exist only so long as we defend that civilization with all our might. Suburban women don’t know what it was like in the USSR, to have a baby vacuumed out of your uterus in a dirty, overcrowded abortarium where the (nearly always) female nurses yell at their patients for being stupid sluts—because what other woman could possibly find herself in this situation? Whether or not they are legal, the reality of most pregnancy terminations in this world is not how feminists would have you imagine it.

There is no reason to expect legalized American abortion to avoid the same fate if our civilization continues to slip away. First, contemporary America is in the midst of a competency crisis. A logical culmination of decades of educational failure coupled with generally low expectations resulting from the current diversity, equity, and inclusion trends. As a result, our professionals are increasingly incompetent. Even formerly respected institutions like Boeing and the Secret Service are tarnished by scandals. So far, the medical profession has shown fewer signs of decline, but it’s probably just around the corner—the nation’s top medical schools are now implementing DEI admission standards and teaching wokeness. It’s time to give some thought to what kind of hospital staff will be overseeing miscarriage management—or doing c-sections for that matter.

Material conditions that enable safe abortions, to say nothing of safe pregnancies and deliveries, are not something to be taken for granted. American families have been hurting financially throughout the Biden-Harris presidency and inflation has emerged as the top priority. But Kamala’s idea for reducing inflation is price controls on groceries. If implemented, this policy would quickly send our economy into a tailspin, leading to social collapse, black markets, violence, and widespread starvation. If that’s not enough, she has some dubious ideas for reinflating the housing market, just like we did in the 1990s, which eventually resulted in the subprime mortgage crash of 2008. Hard to imagine an economy like that generating wealth that can be directed to IVF treatments.

Kamala’s supporters argue that her campaign’s more extreme ideas will never come to reality because the presidency will be tempered by the Congress. But since Barack Obama’s rise the Democratic strategy has been to ram changes and expect the constituents to readjust. There is no guarantee that both the House and the Senate won’t go blue and the Democrats are already talking about killing the filibuster  and packing the Supreme Court, which will remove the last restraint on their agenda.

We know what happens when a nation institutes price controls—it’s been tried many times, most recently in Venezuela, but here is something too dark to consider: what will the world be like when American power crumbles? President Biden was long believed to be suffering from age-related cognitive decline. He has since given up any pretense of performing presidential duties and his calendar is blank. Regular Americans might be confused about what’s happening to our country’s leadership, but the Chinese likely have pretty good information. And so on Aug. 26, for instance, the Chinese Air Force penetrated Japanese airspace “for the first time in history.” A war is brewing in the Pacific and the U.S. is about to lose our dominance in that theater. Once that happens, our way of life and the prosperity we take for granted may become a thing of history. Yet suburban white women want to fret over unlimited access to abortions their daughters are never going to need.

There is no political party in the United States today that stands for both unlimited abortion access and peace and prosperity. Unless suburban women are content with giving their children a future of poverty and chaos, they should compromise on the idea that killing the unborn is a right and start talking about how to best regulate it. Otherwise, they might just find out what it’s like to live in a society where abortions are unsafe, but women pay for the service anyway because they can’t fathom bringing another life into this world.