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Continuation from Part I:

Attitudes toward abortion of course play a role. A child, by definition, will not be born if aborted.

Again, using states as our laboratory, what five states have the most liberal policies regarding abortion versus those with the most restrictions?

States with the Most Liberal Abortion Policies

1. California: California has strong protections for abortion rights, with state laws enshrining the right to access abortion services.
2. New York: New York state law protects the right to abortion up to 24 weeks of pregnancy and allows it beyond that if the woman’s health is at risk or the fetus is not viable.
3. Vermont: Vermont has robust abortion protections, including a state constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right to abortion.
4. Connecticut: Connecticut has laws ensuring access to abortion services and provides protections for healthcare providers.
5. Illinois: Illinois state law protects the right to abortion and has removed many barriers to access, including waiting periods and mandatory counseling.

States with the Most Restrictive Abortion Policies

1. Texas: Texas has one of the most restrictive abortion laws, banning most abortions after six weeks with private enforcement through civil lawsuits.
2. Mississippi: Mississippi has a near-total ban on abortions, only allowing exceptions if the woman’s life is in danger or in cases of rape.
3. Alabama: Alabama has a near-total abortion ban with very limited exceptions, making it one of the most restrictive states.
4. Oklahoma: Oklahoma has enacted several laws that heavily restrict abortion access, including a near-total ban after six weeks.
5. Arkansas: Arkansas has a total abortion ban with exceptions only for cases where the woman’s life is in danger.

These rankings are based on the current legal landscape and how state laws either protect or restrict access to abortion services​ (The Fuller Project)​​ (Center for Reproductive Rights)​​ (Abortion Travel Distance)​​ (POLITICO)​.

Again, we see a pattern. The most Left-wing Democrat states promote abortion, while more conservative states have more restrictive policies. Isn’t Bernie Sanders from Vermont?

Democrat states have lower population growth and more abortions, which seems perfectly logical.

But the general attitude about life makes a difference. If you want life to come into the world, and if you value families, then Democrat policies don’t seem to favor either of those things.

Secularism seems to favor lower birth rates, while religious communities (Orthodox Jews, Mormons in Utah) tend to sacrifice material things for children.

But attitudes about life extend beyond birth rates. What about those already born? Again, we see some stark differences among states regarding euthanasia, the voluntary ending of life.

States with the Most Liberal Euthanasia Laws

1. Oregon: Oregon was the first state to legalize physician-assisted dying with its Death with Dignity Act in 1994. The law allows terminally ill patients with six months or fewer to live to request lethal medication.
2. California: The End of Life Option Act, effective since 2016, permits terminally ill adults to request and receive prescription medication to end their life.
3. Washington: Similar to Oregon, Washington passed its Death with Dignity Act in 2008, allowing physician-assisted suicide for terminally ill patients.
4. Vermont: Vermont’s Patient Choice and Control at the End of Life Act has been in place since 2013, providing terminally ill patients the option to end their life with prescribed medication.
5. Hawaii: The Our Care, Our Choice Act, enacted in 2018, allows terminally ill adults to obtain a prescription for medication to end their life under strict conditions.

States with the Most Restrictive Euthanasia Laws

1. Alabama: Euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide are entirely illegal, with no exceptions.
2. Arkansas: Both active and passive euthanasia are prohibited, and there are no laws allowing physician-assisted suicide.
3. South Dakota: The state has stringent laws against euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide, without any legal framework supporting these practices.
4. Oklahoma: The state completely bans euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide, maintaining strict legal restrictions against them.
5. Texas: Texas prohibits euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide, with the law enforcing severe penalties for those involved in these practices.

These classifications are based on current laws and policies regulating euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide in these states​ (Death With Dignity)​​ (World Population Review)​​ (World Population Review)​​ (World Population Review)​​ (World Population Review)​.

Isn’t Bernie Sanders from Vermont?

We would be remiss if we did not mention that many young couples now feel having children will destroy the environment.

Progressives are the folks pushing the apocalyptic version of “climate change”, “sustainability”, “overpopulation” and similar concepts. They see a newborn only as a drain on resources, as a destroyer of habitat, and as a consumer of things. They see a new mouth to be fed as opposed to seeing a new brain and hands that will produce more than they will consume over a lifetime and yet be aware of human impact on other species.

The environmental agenda is pounded into our children’s heads from grade school through graduate school.

According to a recent Pew Research Center survey, 26% of adults under 50 who say they are unlikely to have children cite environmental concerns as a major reason for their decision​ (Pew Research Center)​​ (Pew Research Center)​.

Many ancillary issues stop people from having children, and one is fear of loss of control.  When schools become hostile to the values of the parents, when states threaten to take their children because they may not endorse the latest transgender fads, this also makes would-be parents hesitant.  A hostile school environment and a hostile popular culture have many thinking, “Why would I want to raise a child in this kind of world.”

Besides the institution of the family, the other important institution that once worked with families was the public school system.  This has changed with teacher’s unions and universities cranking out teachers hostile to families.   Increasingly, it looks like they are producing teachers hostile to children.

It is now estimated that one in ten children will be molested by public school teachers.

In terms of maintaining parental rights, nothing can be more important than the school choice movement. Again this is opposed by Democrats and their auxiliary arm,  the teacher’s unions.

Taking away parental rights has advanced a long way in states like California and Minnesota. Democrats are the party that promotes the devaluation of family powers and the elevation of the power of the state.

Finally, we must say a little about the role of the sexes. Most men would dive off a cliff to have sex with an attractive woman.  Speaking as a man, we often don’t think of the consequences, such as a lifelong responsibility for children. That often comes later as the child appears. Sadly, many men today never embrace responsibility.

Society needs to teach men to be responsible for their sexuality and their lives in general. Do you think our popular culture, which is dominated by liberal Democrats, helps? Do you think the hatred of maleness by liberal feminists helps?

Women for millennia have understood their sexual power and usually used it with discretion to find mates that could be relied upon to support them and their children. As women have adopted more male-like casual attitudes about sex, they have lost leverage.

Modern feminism, especially third-wave feminism, seems to have destroyed much of this female control of the situation, all while promoting the “power” of women.

An uncomfortable number of women now receive payments from the government and have a string of live-in relationships that produce children, but not family stability.  The government is replacing the man in the relationship.  The man becomes an inseminator, not a father, husband, and provider.

We urge you to read our article Is It White Privilege To Be Married Part I and II.

Feminists have argued that men and women are essentially the same, in all regards, including sex drives and familial feelings.  They have promoted the demotion of women to “chest feeders”, basically caving into the demands of the radical transgenders.

In short, liberalism teaches the sexes are the same and promotes hatred of maleness, and promiscuity among women. How is that helpful to forming families and child-rearing?

The society promotes pornography, which suggests that sex is now completely separated from child-rearing and family functions.

It is surprising the number of young men whose views of women have been warped by pornography and are disappointed that women are not like those portrayed on the internet.

We recently conversed with a Catholic priest who serves a large Arizona university. We asked him what the biggest issues he was dealing with regarding the young men on campus. We thought it would be drug addiction and depression.

We were sickened but not surprised when he said porn addiction. This is a redirection of sexual energy into something that is not productive or even reproductive.

Who is it that has promoted pornography and casual sex and denigrated the role of mother and father, turning them into “birthing persons”? Who in our society erases the whole concept of womanhood so it can’t even be defined?  Who is even changing the language about sexual differences and allowing fake men with serious mental issues to push women out of their spaces?

It is exclusively liberal Democrats.  As the Presidential race stands today, the parties completely differ, with many Democrats unable to even define what a woman is.

How can women’s rights, women’s programs, and women’s spaces be preserved, if institutions can’t even define what a woman is?

One of the few advantages of advanced age is that you have not only observed but lived through societal change and its consequences over the past half-century. The nation’s view of life and family has changed quite a bit over the past 50 years, and not for the better.

Do you not think this is connected to the decline in birth rates?

From this observer’s perspective, all these movements: feminism, environmentalism, transgenderism, and secularism; have been promoted by the universities, the political Left, and, of course, the Democrat Party. The capture of our public schools, and the corruption of our entertainment industry, are all a Left-wing project.

Not surprisingly, today’s Democrat Party embraces all of these Left-wing opinions and attitudes. They reside in the Republican Party as well, but not to the extent we see with the Democrats.

Our laboratory of the states shows this pretty clearly.

At this point, we should also be clear that socialism has never liked the nuclear family. Marx and Engels both taught that the family is part of the capitalist structure and that traditional family forms should be abolished to liberate children and women. They favored communal arrangements and it is not surprising that communes in the US and kibbutzes in Israel reflected this left-wing view and this common socialist origin. And it is not surprising, that in the US, they all failed.  Kibbutzes survive today in Israel with state subsidies and most people stay in them for only a period of their lives.

Marxian analysis highlights how the family can be a site of oppression, particularly for women and children. Engels, in “The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State,” elaborates on how the patriarchal family structure subjugates women, relegating them to the private sphere and limiting their economic and social freedom. This gendered division of labor ensures the reproduction of the labor force at minimal cost to the capitalist system, as women provide unpaid domestic labor.

Sounds a lot like a contemporary class in women’s studies, doesn’t it?

However, while wishing to abolish the traditional family, early Marxists were not against children. They saw them as workers and soldiers for the revolution and wanted them raised by the state.

National Socialists like the Nazis had similar views, although they took on more racial lines.

However, when the “state” no longer sees its interests in people, but rather adheres to an abstraction like the “environment”, then modern socialists do not like children.  They are pollution.

They also did not like the family because they felt it was capitalistic and created familial loyalty that competed with the demands of the state. In a sense, they wanted to state to own the children.

You can hear this analysis ringing through our current politics. Bernie Sanders is from Vermont for a reason.

Finally, biology plays a role in smaller families. Women who delay childbearing for careers are making a trade-off, and most of them know that. By her mid-30s, a woman loses fertility at a rapid rate. There may be only time to have a child or two before fertility falls off a cliff.

A society is not a “going concern” without children. Pro-natal policies in many countries have been tried, but to date, they have shown little success in increasing the number of children per family.

A secular, Marxist material view of life and family does not seem supportive of children, even with state subsidies.

Government policy cannot change attitudes and spirituality, but it could be less hostile to those who still want to have children and families.  Beliefs that support life need to come voluntarily to people and a change in the culture would certainly be needed to support child-rearing.

Thus, if you want pro-family, pro-women, pro-Judeo-Christian morality, and pro-baby policies; you must reject Leftism as a philosophy and must reject its political manifestation…the Democrat Party.

You will have a chance to do that this election cycle.

Culture may indeed be downstream for politics, a reversal of the Breitbart axiom. If so, a wholesale rejection of Democrats is a good start to rebuilding the family.

However, the desire to have a family has been degraded in our society largely because of a collapse in Western religion and culture.  Politics and economics may play an important role but the religious/spiritual contribution may be more important.

Having children is a sacrifice and a joy at the same time. Career and children can be balanced, but it is difficult and many just don’t want the “stress”. They want an easy life, for themselves. It is material life.

To experience the full spectrum of life includes career, friends, family, and pets.  A full life of parent and career, and then being a grandparent, is difficult but rewarding.  Having religion or spirituality may not be required on an individual basis but it may be required on a societal basis.  Many today survive as “cut flowers”,  following the behavior of ancestors who did have serious belief systems that nurtured family and children.  But without new flowers, what do you cut?

It’s not the cats. It is the substitution of pets for a relationship with people. Pets don’t talk back, and they don’t hurt your feelings. Living alone with a pet and having friends is not a full-spectrum life.  Moreover, it does not support the existence of a people or nation.

Ideas and attitudes, after all, have consequences.

The consequence is our extinction by our own hands.