It’s no secret that anti-choice activists love to scream “baby-killer” at people who get abortions, but one Illinois woman is blaming those who get the procedure for killing corporations.
Yeah, you read that right. In a letter to the editor that should have never been published by the Champaign-Urbana News-Gazette, Mahomet resident Mandy Alman explains how the legalization of abortion has led to the downfall of everyone’s nobody’s favorite toy store, Toys R Us.
Women in their 20s accounted for nearly 60 percent of all abortions performed in the U.S. in 2014, according to a CDC report.
These are children who otherwise would have been born and whose families could have contributed to the customer base of companies such as Toys R Us.
Dammit, people, THINK OF THE CORPORATIONS before you terminate your unwanted pregnancies. Think of the highly-paid executives, and the underpaid warehouse workers! Think of their overhead before you go making huge personal life choices, would ya?
Alman goes on to gush about how successful Texas’ ridiculously oppressive abortion laws have been in forcing childbirth upon thousands of Americans.
In Texas alone, data show that, when abortion was restricted, the birth rate increased. Abortions in Texas decreased by 20 percent and births rose 3 percent in counties that no longer had an abortion provider.
This led to 3,000 additional births, the majority of which were attributed to abortion clinic restrictions.
Alman’s not wrong. Texas is (and has been) doing everything it can to keep women barefoot and pregnant, and it’s working.
Effects of state policies targeting reproductive services in Texas starting in 2011 have been rippling across the state: In-state abortions decreased by 20% and births rose 3% in counties that no longer had an abortion provider within 50 miles between 2011 and 2015, the study found. Contraceptive purchases also rose by 8% during that period. This amounts to more than 3,000 additional births, including 2,562 caused by abortion clinic restrictions and 668 linked to lack of funding for non-abortion reproductive resources like centers that distribute birth control pills and condoms.
Reduced abortion access also leads to increased maternal death. Once again, we need look no further than Alman’s favorite anti-choice state for jarring statistics.
Texas, for example, saw its maternal mortality rate more than double between 2010 and 2014, as the state closed more than half of its abortion clinics and severely cut funding for Planned Parenthood. Thanks to Texas and a few other states with strong “pro-life” lobbies, mostly in the south, the US now bears the ghastly distinction of having the highest maternal mortality rate of all the world’s wealthy democracies.
But Alman doesn’t seem to concerned about maternal deaths, or unprepared people being compelled into parenthood against their will, or how, once born, American children and their parents face ever-shrinking resources that might ensure not only their survival, but a chance to thrive. The current administration keeps proposing massive cuts to programs that provide housing, food, and financial assistance to America’s poorest people, while slashes to education and healthcare round out the endless GOP war on those of us who struggle the most.
But Mandy, bless her heart, seems oblivious to all those basic necessities that so many families are unable to provide; she’d rather focus on how many overpriced toys could have been purchased if only abortion was never legalized in the first place.
Since abortion has been legal for 45 years, this has become a multigenerational problem. The children who would have otherwise been born in the 1970s and 1980s would be having children now who could also potentially be shopping at Toys R Us (in addition to enjoying a right to life).
Abortion has an enormous impact on untold numbers of people. Which other companies will fail because their future customers are being aborted?
Never mind that Toys R Us failed to innovate and position stores as worthy of a visit through events or other one-of-a-kind experiences. Or that it took on more debt than it should have when private equity firms stepped in back in 2005. Or that they didn’t update their stores for decades. Or that they still tried to pay millions in executive bonuses, even after declaring bankruptcy. Or even the obvious threats posed by Amazon and Walmart.
Nah. Let’s ignore all that and just blame it on abortion, like Mandy sez.
For their part, the News-Gazette has already published a local rebuttal to Alman’s mind-bending letter, courtesy of Champaign resident Stephen Badger:
Should abortion also be blamed for the failures of Sears, Kmart, Kodak or other former titans of industry that also did not adapt to new technology quickly enough?
Alman is simply skewing facts to fit the narrative that she is trying to make. Furthermore, is she suggesting that more babies should be born simply so that more people will buy toys? That argument is so unbelievably asinine and irresponsible that I can hardly believe I even read it.
To be abundantly clear, of all of the potential reasons that one may be against abortion, this easily is one of the most reprehensible.
Nailed it, Steve-O.