You just described steps that would actually reduce abortion by quite a lot, without making it illegal at all. The sex ed and contraception stuff is basically exactly how it’s done in other western countries that don’t have nearly the issue with teen pregnancies we do. What you’re proposing is practical and effective.

And in the eyes of the MAGA crowd, you’re not just a leftist, you’re a baby-murdering, Satan-worshipping communist America-hater.

You are detailing exactly what would reduce abortion. Republicans/conservatives would probably call you a socialist (while meaning it negatively) and say that you are encouraging teens to have sex by offering contraceptives and encouraging people to be lazy by offering free child care. These are the things that would really help. It feels to me like they don’t care about actually helping, just punishing people and creating wedge issues.

There’s nothing wrong with what you’re saying on a vacuum. The problem is deciding what is actually a problem, and once it’s been decided, which one solution out of many possible ones we’re actually going to pick.

Is unequality a problem? If it is, up to which degree? Is it a problem that the richest person has four times as much wealth as the poorest person? Is it a problem that the richest person has x100000 times as much wealth as the poorest person? Are we going to solve that through redistribution? Through better public, accessible education? By empowering worker unions? By socializing the means of production in order to prevent capital accumulation?

Once you’re perfectly aware of what values you’re defending, you can find the most efficient way to let society advance forward according to them. But since not everyone shares the same values, even if everyone was perfectly rational and had access to all information, different people would still defend different solutions. Of course, people’s values evolve all the time and everyone is irrational up to some degree, even if we put effort into perfecting our epistemology and use the scientific method to approach as many issues as possibles (which we should nonetheless do), so even that ideal state of things is very, very far away.

Problem solving should be every politician’s goal. The only difference is what “problems” they are trying to solve. That’s what separates left and right, the problems. And frankly, they are radically different problems to the same situations.

Yes. That makes you a leftist. Center-leftist, but in this political climate…good enough.

Would you mind clarifying your standpoint on what should be done in case a woman is raped and becomes pregnant? You kind of glossed over that part of it. I understand that you want to prevent the number of pregnancies due to rape, but what exactly do you propose when that happens? Same for pregnancies due to incest.

It seems you already know most of what will actually help this issue, and it does include social programs. Does this make you a leftist? No, it makes you a realist. That is, unless you ask this question to most conservatives who will instantly label you as one. How dare you actually suggest something progressive!

What is your answer to a scenario in which a woman using birth control properly in a loving monogamous relationship becomes pregnant when neither party wants a child? The most common form of birth control (the pill), when taken properly only has a 97% effective rate. Pair that with a second form of birth control (i.e. the pullout method) and it will go up but it will never be 100% effective.

Lol you just glaringly leave off the option of having an abortion for a woman who just plain old doesn’t want to have a kid. If she just doesn’t want to have a kid (no medical issue going on for either the mother or fetus), and it’s been say, 3 months since inception, can she have an abortion? You seem to really only be mentioning abortion when it comes to threatening the life of the mother or if the fetus is deformed. What about just a purely elective abortion, less than 12 weeks let’s say? Would you want to see that illegal?

Edit: Nevermind, read your response below to a similar question.

We shall call in Huckleberryism. Subscribed!

You missed one thing: Some women just want to abort regardless, and also have all through history, including prehistory. All those policies you listed there are in place in Germany as the constitutional court ruled that the state has a duty to protect life (also the unborn) and thus has to take steps to minimise the number of abortions, and social means are to be preferred over prison sentences because a) more effective and b) proportionality, but: You don’t catch every case with those social means.

Now, if you penalise abortions that fall through those cracks you get backstreet abortions – which you have no control over. You can’t convince people at the last moment, you can’t drown them in flyers explaining all the social services they’re going to receive and smother them with support. That’s why at-will abortion in Germany is decriminalised if you’re willing to sit through what’s called pregnancy conflict counselling, there’s no notes taken or result given in those you get a piece of paper that says that you were there, then there’s a three-day cooldown and you can bring the notice to a doctor who now can perform the abortion legally. If you’re poor, the state is going to cover the costs (not your health insurance because pregnancy is not an illness).

In a nutshell: For the state to be maximally effective at minimising the number of abortions it has to tolerate abortions being carried out legally, and even pay for them to be performed.

And this, btw, to many an American’s surprise, comes from a rather firm “human dignity starts with insemination, the right to live starts with nidation as that’s when nature decides to bring a particular life to fruit” type of doctrine. (The human dignity stuff comes into play e.g. during preimplantation diagnostics: You can be tossed out of the pool for carrying a genetic disease, but not for your sex, hair colour, or whatnot).

Don’t tell me what to do.

They don’t care if you’re a leftist or not, they care that you’re telling them what to do, precisely because they don’t want to be told what to do, even if it’s good for them, because if they’re being told what to do, it means they aren’t in power, and they want power at any cost. In the pursuit of the ‘right’ people telling the ‘wrong’ people what to do, and in the pursuit of keeping the ‘wrong’ people from telling the ‘right’ people what to do, anything goes. Hypocrisy, lies, crime, election fraud, subverting courts, coups, false patriotism, false piety, terrorism, even outright murder… anything goes.

Know the enemy, spread the word to your friends and family (and maybe further).

I like your thinking.

I think unwanted children are the worst. lets put aside that the family won’t be happy. It’s these children that will cause trouble, populate prisons. They’ll be an absolute drag on society. It’s not even they’re fault. Growing up without love is tough

Does that make me a leftist?

Though I assume this is but one part of your political convictions, I would say yes. That being said I think your hot take is wrong and suggest thinking about it this way: Theory and applications are two incredibly important components of any discipline, ranging from mathematics to politics. In this case the theoretical part means more or less ideology (or the isms you refer to) while applications are the more pragmatic approach of thinking implementations and effects. Both are important to navigate and propose solutions to ever evolving problems in our societies.

Now, as to why this makes you more left is that the leftist parties are usually (but not always) more culturally progressive as opposed to being conservative/reactionary when faced with questions like gay marriage, abortion etc… I think the most coherent political view is that of being both culturally and economically leftist, though that is of course subject to debate. If you are both I think you should say you are leftist as well.

You also just listed all the reasons that rape is allowed in most countries (rape, death risk, severe deformation, etc). You didn’t touch on the “abort for any reason at any time” issue which is the flagship of leftist movement

You are not a leftist, just a centrist living in the US

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stAhp tUrLIng mE wAt tUr dOO!

Reforms are great, but ultimately a doomed bandaid over real problems. Quoth Lenin:

"Reformism is bourgeois deception of the workers, who, despite individual improvements, will always remain wage-slaves, as long as there is the domination of capital.

The liberal bourgeoisie grant reforms with one hand, and with the other always take them back, reduce them to nought, use them to enslave the workers, to divide them into separate groups and perpetuate wage-slavery. For that reason reformism, even when quite sincere, in practice becomes a weapon by means of which the bourgeoisie corrupt and weaken the workers. The experience of all countries shows that the workers who put their trust in the reformists are always fooled.

And conversely, workers who have assimilated Marx’s theory, i.e., realised the inevitability of wage-slavery so long as capitalist rule remains, will not be fooled by any bourgeois reforms. Understanding that where capitalism continued to exist reforms cannot be either enduring or far-reaching, the workers fight for better conditions and use them to intensify the fight against wage-slavery. The reformists try to divide and deceive the workers, to divert them from the class struggle by petty concessions. But the workers, having seen through the falsity of reformism, utilise reforms to develop and broaden their class struggle."

https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1913/sep/12b.htm