Affordable Healthcare Effect on Society

    This is an exchange of emails between Bob Mansfield and me concerning the Affordable Healthcare Act and particularly its effect on young women.

Mansfield:
    The Affordable Health Care Act now provides a birth control and abortion safety net for young women. Responsibility along with the new benefit should prevent women who are financially unable to raise a child from having them. In 12 months there should no longer be a need for new aid to dependent children. Young women can chose their own destiny and avoid a pregnancy that they can not afford and the rest of society would like not to. This can save the treasury 100 of billions annually in support: Less: public housing, ADC, food stamps, Medicaid, cell phones, and other unpaid benefits I have failed to mention. Because the young woman is able body she could also get a job and pay taxes, or at the least reduce the amount of unearned income tax credit the government shells out.
    When she becomes financially strong enough or forms a financially sound family unit prior to making the conscious decision to have children, all of our society wins. She will pay taxes adding to the national collective rather than being a drain.
    As soon as possible the government should end the economic encouragement for a young woman to have children she can not afford. The Democratic party needs to harness the true power of the act. By eliminating all of this deficit spending we could balance the budget without further penalizing the most productive members of society. The only problem is that we would erode our future voting base.

Sucsy:
    I'm afraid that I have to take strong exception to what you have just written. I'm sure that the people who wrote the Affordable Health Care Act had in mind the idealistic approach, which you have elucidated, particularly with respect to young women. My reason for differing is that I anticipate it will not really work that way.
    Providing birth control and abortion funding for young women such as the professional law student Sandra Fluke will accomplish nothing other than to spend taxpayer money on birth control medication. With or without Affordable Health Care, Sandra Fluke and her group will not be requiring abortion, except under conditions of extreme neglect. The group is normally competent in most things and will continue to avoid unwanted pregnancies. The free availability of birth control medication will have little effect on their lifestyle. If free birth control medication was not available, members of that group would bear the cost themselves. The group will continue to engage in sex to its satisfaction, without obvious penalty, but with decreased personal financial expense.
    The Sandra Fluke group will be doing themselves damage by significantly reducing births, which are a normal positive emotion of women's lives. They will be substituting that for freedom of operation in careers, which can have some satisfaction, but not the fundamental emotion of childbirth. If some also wish to have children, and go the childbirth route, the likelihood is that they will be single parents, which will be disadvantageous to new children.    The additional monetary requirements of childcare coupled with reduced ability of the parent for productive employment will require access to other funding. Since husbands are no longer a part of the financial picture in raising such families, the single mother must go to Father Obama and his funding mechanism for dependent children. However, this will likely be an exception, and the majority of the group will be opting for career development with public funding of birth control medication. That will result in a reduced birthrate from this advanced intellectual group, and a general dumbing down of the population.
    Many young women do not have the intellectual skills of the Sandra Fluke group, but will still be attracted to the sexual freedom of the new society, without having to tolerate a financially supporting husband. Some may opt for career development, like the Sandra Fluke group, but more likely will follow the emotional route of childbearing. This will save public expense on birth control medication and abortion, but will lead to continued public expense for dependent children. Since the financial benefits of dependent children will be better than without dependent children, there will be encouragement of this group to have as many children as reasonably possible. In addition to the public costs, we will again be dumbing down the population but much more so in this case than with the Sandra Fluke group.
    The normal world is made up approximately of equal numbers of men and women. Children growing up only under the direction of single mothers will have an obvious disadvantage of not knowing how to deal with men coming from a traditional family, when they arrive in the adult world . However, they will be able to easily deal with other men who have been raised by single women. This will lead to a fundamental change in society, the more single men who are products of single women "families", the more our society will move to feminism. I have no feeling on whether this would be good or bad. Merely noting that there will be a distinct change.