I’d like to apologize for the last few posts. They have been quite negative. I believe that its much easier to complain about things than to offer solutions. So, I decided to think about how to solve some of the problems that will be encountered if the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade. There will be many issues that arise as a result of overturning 50 years of legal precedent and although most Republicans believe strongly in smaller government and States rights, I think the magnitude of these issues, some known and some unknown, will best be addressed at the Federal level. After all, Mitch McConnell, the top-ranking Republican in the Senate, alluded to a national ban on abortion should the Republicans retake control of the House and Senate. Therefore, I propose the creation of the U.S. Department of Uterine and Maternal Benefits (DUMB).
The purpose of DUMB will be to: 1) address the current disparity between the roughly 600,000 abortions performed every year and the number of adoptions, roughly 150,000 plus or minus; 2) enforce all of the abortion laws across the nation; 3) set up a special task force to deal with the inevitable rise in black markets (abortion pills, for example); 4) develop U.S. policies designed to prohibit the traveling of expectant mothers out of the country to obtain abortions; and 5) develop metrics and issue an annual report on the effectiveness of the measures taken.
The new DUMB department will require a budget and I think perhaps $300 billion should do the trick. The budget for the Department of Veterans Affairs is about $300 billion and the level of effort would seem to be on par with that so $300 billion seems like a reasonable number. The conservatives have spent so much time and money over the last 50 years attempting to overturn Roe v. Wade, that it would seem only logical that they would get behind the necessary funding for DUMB.
I personally see the large difference between the number of abortions performed and the number of adoptions as an opportunity. There will be an initial effort to dramatically increase the number of adoptions in this country although even with a well-funded advertising and media campaign it is unlikely that such a dramatic increase will take place quickly and be sustainable year after year.
Therein lies the opportunity. The United States could become a major exporter of babies for adoption. Now, many American families adopt children from abroad. However, that will have to be outlawed in order to help take up the slack here and with the excess ‘crop’ we can start to become a world resource for babies. Even if the domestic adoption rate is doubled that will still leave between 200,000 and 300,000 babies to deal with. Conservatively, if we could export 200,000 babies a year at say $10,000/baby that would bring in $20 billion. As you see, this whole thing of overturning Roe v. Wade could be quite lucrative.
There are other economic benefits. Since existing hospitals will be overwhelmed by expectant mothers, it will be necessary to build dedicated DUMB hospitals to facilitate this huge increase in births. There would be the initial boom in the construction industry to build these hospitals, a huge demand for additional nurses, midwives, OB/GYN doctors and support staff for all of these facilities. These regional hospitals could be a real economic boom to virtually every part of the country. A win-win!
The revenue brought in by adoption fees for babies sent abroad can be used to set up the enforcement arm of DUMB. This unit would be akin to the ATF section of the Department of the Treasury. This enforcement unit would set up a hotline where citizens could turn in their neighbors which would then trigger a response by a DUMB SWAT team to arrest the offending party. The woman would be forced to carry the fetus to term at one of the regional DUMB hospitals or they would be prosecuted and imprisoned. (Never mind that the US already incarcerates more of its citizens than any other country in the world.)
Further, in the spirit of certain governors of ‘red’ states who are busy passing laws to prosecute women who travel across state lines to obtain abortions, the Federal government, through the DUMB agency would enact legislation that would require all female passengers travelling out of the United States to take a pregnancy test at the airport to ensure no woman could bypass the abortion ban by travelling to another country. (Given the already long lines at the TSA checkpoints and the often-long lines outside of women’s restrooms, they will have to work out the logistics of this to ensure flights could actually leave on time – perhaps getting to the airport 4 hours ahead of your flight will become the new norm!)
Whereas the United States used to be viewed by the world as the beacon of democracy and innovative thinking, the United States would strive to set an example for the world in hopes that others would establish their own DUMB agencies when they witness how successful the program is in this country.
Lastly, as an incentive to ensure that the DUMB agency works as efficiently and as effectively as the proponents of overturning Roe v. Wade hope, the agency would agree that for every woman who dies due to an illegal abortion, a conservative politician at the local, state or Federal level who supported the overturning of Roe v. Wade, would be selected in a random drawing and that person would be castrated, if male, or given a hysterectomy if female. I mean, since all of the proponents of overturning Roe v. Wade are absolutely convinced that controlling the reproductive health of all citizens is in the best interests of the country, I would think they would be perfectly willing to put their own reproductive health on the line. Government accountability after all.
And they all lived happily ever after. The End.