r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • Jan 06 '25

Health After the US overturned Roe v Wade, permanent contraception surged among young adults living in states likely to ban abortion, new research found. Compared to May 2022, August 2022 saw 95% more vasectomies and 70% more tubal sterilizations performed on people between the ages of 19 and 26.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/06/permanent-contraception-abortion-roe-v-wade
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u/[deleted] Jan 07 '25

They will just see this and think, good, less liberals having kids. Unfortunately, they might be right.

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u/DemiserofD Jan 07 '25

As far as I can tell, that's the fundamental problem with all things that reduce the birth rate. They are ultimately self-defeating on a social level. It doesn't matter how well you enshrine protections, it reduces birth rates by definition, and if you're having less kids but they aren't, then in a few generations you lose the majority and all those protections go the way of the dodo.

All that they really need to do is make sure there's no societal unity in that timeframe, and they win by default. Not really sure what the answer is though. Maybe encourage everyone else to have like 5 kids instead of 2?

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u/Pretend-Marsupial258 Jan 07 '25

You're not considering that you can't reliably pass on political beliefs. A kid can be raised a certain way and end up rejecting those beliefs when they grow up. There would be no social progress if all generations kept the same unchanging opinions and beliefs. It appears to me that a lot of people go against the beliefs of the last generation - that's why the US flips between liberal eras and conservative eras.

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u/robo-puppy Jan 07 '25

Trouble is the child who rejects the religious beliefs statistically has less children than the sibling who embraces them. You still have the same problem at the end of the day.

Even if 3/4 kids reject the conservative religious ideology the 4th who keeps them will have enough kids to cancel them out.

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u/Pretend-Marsupial258 Jan 07 '25

Trends can change. Go back to the 70s and 80s and everyone was freaking out about over population. Now they're worried about people not having enough kids. Parenting trends can shift wildly between generations.

For example, what happens if the religious people start becoming even more antivax to the point that deadly childhood diseases take off again? Sure, they had more kids, but more of them died early. Or what if more secular people start having just as many kids? Most people say that they want around 2 kids, it's just that economic worries and worries about the future makes them less likely to actually have those kids.

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u/robo-puppy Jan 07 '25

You are more than welcome to speculate about future survivability rates but I'm just discussing the fertility statistics as we understand them now. Your scenario may come true but Im not aware of any research that can validate your suppositions.

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u/MavenBrodie Jan 07 '25

Some generations have to learn lessons the hard way.

We're going to ruin a lot of lives and kill a lot of women, children, and even the fetuses they're supposedly trying to save before the newer generations get it.