Yeah, on top of which, they aren’t particularly even anti-abortion, as such.
Yep. These are the same people who are against HPV vaccines for their daughters because they want the threat of sterility/death to be present to prevent premarital sexual activity. But of course the virus doesn’t care if one is married or not - everyone who does the “right” thing but still suffers the punishment is just collateral damage in maintaining that system of ownership.
And to maintain that system, some women must die. It’s a necessarily, even desirable part of the dynamics that maintains the patriarchy where women are property. It’s no different from honor killings - it’s preferable for women who violate the patriarchy-reinforcing norms to die, but others necessarily die as collateral damage.
It’s about punishing women for their sexuality, part of that Abrahamic patriarchy. Eve sinned, therefore, the belief goes, all women are - and should be - punished by pain in childbirth. Women’s sexuality is bad - they’re only “supposed” to respond to men’s desires - so anything that punishes women for having sexual agency is good. That turns into punishing women for being sexual entities in general to keep them in line.
Keeping people poor is just a side-effect, albeit one that certain conservatives are also pleased about.
It’s often struck me that the argument many of them make against abortion (“think of what would have happened if your mother had an abortion instead of giving birth to you!”) applies equally to any other hypothetical where one’s parents didn’t meet and have children (or specifically, the one particular child who is “you”), which ignores the almost infinite number of other hypothetical children who could have been born instead of oneself…
