Today, Ron DeSantis signed a Florida bill banning abortion after 15 weeks, without exceptions for incest, rape, or abuse. He said as he signed it:
"We are viewing this in terms of protecting life as something that we see through really, if you look at what we've done this week, we're promoting fatherhood in Florida."
He is not wrong. Any measure to prevent women from getting abortions is de facto a measure that ensures an increase in the number of fathers. But that cannot have been what he meant. It was not. He goes on to explain that the bill is more than an attempt to create more dads.
"We want our kids to have dads in the home! We want the fathers present. Take responsibility. It’s the most important thing you can do, is to take responsibility for the upbringing of your kids. And if you looked, number … and probably the worst, one of the worst social trends that we have. If you go back, to like the mid-1950s you didn’t have many broken families. Now, um, it’s increased dramatically. And it is in every, ah, racial and ethnic group. You know there are some more acute than others, but it has increased across the board so it is a society-wide problem.”
Few would disagree that two parents in the home are generally better than one. And in the majority of households, that would be a mother and a father. (Note: I think it likely that the rate of two-parent same-sex families is higher than two-parent, opposite-sex families — so they should get a shout-out) But what DeSantis does not explain is how forced births lead to greater paternal involvement in families.
It does not, of course. It does the opposite. Preventing abortions is going to lead to more mother-only households. Let’s do a thought experiment. Abortion occurs because the pregnancy is unwanted. One reason for unwanted pregnancies is that the father will not be present. So how forcing the pregnancy to term magically ‘appears’ a father is anyone’s guess. And not a question a conservative could answer.
So let’s ask what would increase a father’s involvement with his family. Banning divorce would be a far better solution. And Jesus would approve. In his only direct comment on marriage, he said,
“Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning. I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.” — Matthew 18: 8-9
And there it is. Biblical conservatives should ban divorce in all cases except where the woman cheats. (I do not hear a lot of religious support for that idea — but that is your cafeteria Christians for you. Picking and choosing which parts of the Bible they will use to hurt others, while not restricting their own behavior)
DeSantis also uses the conservative standard ‘go-to’, the 1950s. To conservatives, that was when Americans lived in a period of idyllic perfection. Let’s, for argument's sake, say they did — at least the white folk — and ask why that was? Could it have been that strong unions led to high pay which made single-earner families the norm? Could it have been that college was affordable and medical bills did not break the bank? Could it have been that companies felt loyalty to their employees, and believed that executive pay was best set at no more than say 30 times the average worker? Could it have been that the wealth gap was at its lowest?
Is DeSantis lobbying for policies that would recreate that Garden of Eden? No, he is not. Because conservatives will pass any law to ‘solve’ a problem — no matter how hard it is on the regular person — as long as it does not inconvenience the wealthy or corporations. But any measure that takes a dollar out of a rich person’s pocket, or a cent away from a corporate bottom line, is a complete non-starter.
And being a right-wing zealot, DeSantis cannot pass up any opportunity to blow a racial dog whistle. His actual words might have been “And it is in every, ah, racial and ethnic group. You know there are some more acute than others”, but the subtext was clear. White people aren’t doing a great job, but even so, they are better than the Blacks.
And finally, there is the one fact that conservatives will not admit about anti-choice bills. They do little to stop abortions. They only prevent safe, legal abortions. In 1967, when abortion was mostly illegal in the US, a study by the Guttmacher Institute estimated that c.829,000 illegal abortions were performed. And you can believe that many of those women were spared the stress of single-parenting.