How abortion can reduce the number of poor and under educated.

A contradiction liberals and conservatives seem to run into when it comes to abortion is that conservatives do not want to pay for welfare and complain poor people have children on purpose to collect more welfare, but do not believe in abortions that would lower the population of poor people, because this would be immoral. Liberals on the other hand do want to pay for each extra child a poor person has, and also believe in abortion because these are both seen as moral. Conservatives want to take away the incentive to have kids but will then complain if more people have abortions, and liberals will complain if we stop paying for poor people’s babies, but will not give people the incentive to change habits.

The problem with both arguments is where they place morality, and on top of this there is an emphasis on deontology versus utility. The conservative puts moral priority on procreation regardless of circumstance, and sees the utility in taking away the financial incentive to have more kids. The liberal puts moral priority on paying for a child regardless of situation after birth, and sees the utility in allowing abortions to help reduce the poor population. Both believe that the outcome will create the greatest happiness for society. I believe that it is not till we put happiness above morality that morality is gained, because true morality exists in proper ethics, and proper ethics are practiced when we create the most satisfactory outcome. On the issue of abortion I am a utilitarian more often than not. This means we need to take the utility of both arguments to create the most happiness for society. Poor people are not naturally stupid, but it is because they lack resources that they cannot live well and be educated well. Having fewer kids will leave more resources available for fewer children to live a better life. I believe there are a number of incentives that need to be put in place to make people change behavior for the better, but the focus here is on family size as a method of helping the poor.

The first utility is education, and in this case the liberal dominates the conservative, because they believe teaching youth about contraceptives, responsibility, abortion and abstinence. The conservative only wants to teach abstinence and act is if young people do not have strong sex drives or the desire to try sex out of curiosity, but if an accident does occur the child must be born for the conservative, which means paying more welfare. Education will keep more people from getting pregnant to begin with, and if they do get pregnant abortion can be an option without guilt.

The second utility goes to the conservative, and that is not paying extra money to people because they have more kids. Having fewer children the poorer people are will allow them to divert that many more resources to just one child or two both emotionally and financially. This can be done through tax incentives. The first child could allow a family a tax credit to better raise that child. Everyone should have incentive to have one child. The second child however would not get an increase in that tax credit, so the credit would have to be split between two children. The third child would result in a removal of the credit completely, and the forth child would actually cost more in taxes. This makes it less appealing to have more and more kids.

The third utility is my own idea and it can only be possible with universal health care. This would be free or very cheap vasectomies and tube ties. That way it becomes much easier for the poor to keep accidents from happening after one of two children if they do not want to pay more money. It also helps people of any income bracket that do not want to pay more extra kids.

The focus is to let people remain free to choose whatever life they desire, but give them incentive to change the bell curve of the actions society performs for future benefit. Someone highly devoted to wanting many kids will also have to be determined to become wealthier. If more wealthy people have children compared to poor people the resources available to both will become closer to equal. One more point to add is that since some people have a problem with abortion this would not be supplied by the universal health care system with other people’s taxes. Planned parenthood would remain a private business where individuals with their individual money could choose to have an abortion if they so desired without using the money of others. These incentives would lower the population and create more equality in general without infringing on the freedom of members of society. In fact it would probably create greater freedom when both society and poor individuals are paying less for the poor and give greater social mobility to the poor at the same time.