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Opinion
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Our View Banning abortion will have unintended consequences
Family planning is none of the government’s business. Legislation restricting one of those decisions is flooding through red states prior to a pending U.S. Supreme Court decision. Legislators should have considered all the consequences before rushing to ban abortions.
Some of the new laws will criminalize any physician or health-care provider involved in an abortion. The gray areas are staggering. So are the implications about whether health-care providers will choose to work in states already underserved.
Banning abortions forces women to bear children at a time they do not choose. It is only fair that fathers also lose any ability to walk away from these government-dictated choices.
Fathers should be required to take the same time off work and bear the financial burdens involved in prenatal care and childbirth.
Fathers should also miss work, use up leave time and maybe lose a job if there are complications for the pregnant woman. After all, getting pregnant takes two.
In the case of rape or incest, men rarely own up. Therefore, the state should be required to identify all reluctant fathers. Demanding DNA tests of every male family member or acquaintance of a pregnant woman left on her own surely isn’t any greater intrusion by the government than meddling in the privacy of doctors and female patients.
As with all other laws, the government would be accountable for enforcement and to prosecute scofflaw fathers. Enforcement would surely require higher taxes.
Abortions that are legal in some states, banned in others and somewhere in between in the rest will cause unintended economic consequences to ripple through the nation’s business landscape.
Research by the Guttmacher Institute, a progressive reproductive health research group, found that 25% of women have an abortion sometime during their childbearing years. Enforced pregnancy would thus reduce the productivity of these women, especially since childbearing and productive working years overlap.
Around 57% of American women over 16 years old participate in the workforce, according to the most recent available data by the U.S. Department of Labor. Recruiting females to jobs in states that do not allow women control over their private healthcare decisions will be tough. The same will apply to those in relationships with such women and exacerbate labor shortages.
Shifts in population would likely result in more economic growth in some states and struggles in those that lose workers.
Employers might have to turn to immigrants to make up the difference. What a conundrum for legislators who have dragged their feet on immigration reform.
Women who can afford to travel for a safe and legal abortion might boost the struggling travel industry. Black markets might thrive as anti-abortion forces target early pregnancy abortion pills and birth control pills.
Unfortunately, the unintended consequences of banning abortion will affect everyone.
Idaho breaches medical ‘border’
The U.S. has broken into two nations.
One nation uses face masks and vaccines to save lives and tamp down the coronavirus pandemic. The other doesn’t. In one nation, abortion is legal. In the other, it is not.
Washington and Idaho diverge on both counts.
Last year, Idahoans desperate for treatment unavailable in the state’s COVIDoverwhelmed hospitals sought refuge in Washington medical facilities. In accepting critically ill patients, Washington hospitals delayed less critical, but essential, treatments for state residents.
At the time, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee complained that patients from Idaho were “clogging up” his state’s hospitals. Idaho and Washington don’t agree on the numbers, but Idaho patient transfers apparently ranged from hundreds to a few thousand, according to reporting by the Idaho Capital Sun.
Now, women seeking abortions are beginning to fill up clinics in Washington and Oregon since the Idaho Legislature passed a law banning all abortions after six weeks. A judge’s ruling has prevented the law from going into effect, but the ruling is temporary.
Over the weekend, Seattle Times columnist Danny Westneat gave voice to his state’s difficulties accommodating Idaho patients forced to flee their state’s politically driven shortages of medical care.
He reported that Idahoans now are 43% of patients in an Eastern Washington reproductive care clinic. Westneat’s words should make Idahoans squirm in their seats. He wrote, “How long before we look over at Idaho and say: Why do we have to be your civilization?”
Idahoans commonly say that we take care of ourselves, our neighbors and solve our own problems. It’s not true. Our extremist political policies have become problems for other states.
How long will Washington tolerate Idaho’s political-medical refugees? How long before cries go up for states to imitate nations and erect medical “borders” to protect the health of their own people? How long, indeed.
“Our View” represents the opinion of the newspaper editorial board, which is made up of members of its board of directors. Remarks may be directed to editorialboard@mtexpress.com.
Other Views Affordable housing shouldn’t have to take a miracle
By BENJAMIN WADDELL
Writers on the Range
Residents of the Westside Mobile Home Park in Durango, in southern Colorado, called it a miracle: They now own the land their homes sit on, their rent will not go up, and they proved that the housing cooperative they’d founded had staying power.
Westside’s fate was hardly a given. The New York-based owner, Neal Kurzner, rejected their first offer, saying he had a corporate buyer who owned many trailer parks and was ready to pay $5.5 million in cash. He gave the community just seven days to come up with a cash offer.
Diaz, who grew up in Colombia and moved to Westside in 2018, knew their only hope was to organize. With a group of other determined residents, Diaz helped start the Westside Mobile Home Park Cooperative.
It launched a GoFundMe account, opened a Facebook page, and prepared tamales, posole, and empanadas to fundraise for the cause. Then Local First, which supports development initiatives in La Plata County, granted Westside $140,000 in cash plus a $395,000 zero-interest loan, while the Durango community turned out in force, helping Westside raise just over $50,000 in less than a week. Co-op’s relationship with Elevation, which advocates for housing solutions for workingclass people, provided the collateral needed to support the project.
The result: In just five days, Elevation and Westside pieced together $5.56 million in cash plus closing fees. On March 25, they submitted their offer.
For nearly a week, the community waited to hear back, with many residents saying they could hardly sleep.
Then, on March 31, Fanchi said she had news. Diaz and her fellow organizers gathered around a single computer in a neighbor’s kitchen. “It’s been a really tough week,” Fanchi began over Zoom. “And I do have an update, and that is that we are buying the Westside Mobile Home Park!”
“They accepted!” residents screamed, crying and turning to each other in joy. Diaz hugged her 2-year-old daughter, and on the screen, Fanchi and her colleagues wept.
