i had an enlightening (Translation: squirmingly uncomfortable reminder of upper-middle class white male privilege) conversation with my wife about contraception and abortion. I was making the point that conservative thinking in recent years has become very superficial, reacting with knee-jerk sentiment to immediate events: Heavily-armed lunatic shoots up a school? Armed guards at the school!! There's nothing like heavily armed police officers to keep those kids safe! Unwanted pregnancy? Abortion is wrong!! See? There's a simple, clear, very certain answer to all your problems, no matter how complex or ambiguous....(see also, not at all coincdentally, fundamentalist evangelical Christianity)
My comment was that the best solution to the problem is to avoid having the problem in the first place. De-stigmatize and make mental health care more widely available. Reduce the availability of high-powered weaponry; increase the rigor of screening for those allowed access to firearms. Likewise for abortion: Better and widely available contraceptive education and contraceptives can reduce the number of unintended pregnancies.
That's where things got interesting.
My wife is from a (very) small town in central Pennsylvania, the "Alabama in the middle" part of the state, and they're not fooling about that. Before she graduated high school, perhaps 10 out of 60 girls in her high school class were pregnant (this was in the late '80's). "Do you know why they got pregnant?" she asked me.
"It wasn't rape or abuse; it wasn't lack of contraception or information about it. They didn't think they had anything else they could do."
She went on. "That's the conversation we ought to be having - urban girls, rural ones -- especially rural ones! -- need to know that they have a choice about what their life can be like. If they don't see that, if they don't believe it, all the information about contraception won't do a damn bit of good! The internet helps, but it's not enough. Those girls need to know they can do and be something besides a baby-factory."
It is not often my wife renders me speechless. What am I saying, she frequently renders me speechless, but not often in awed respect.