GOP America: Early Marriage, Early Divorce, Early Pregnancy, Early Abortion

Few observers have failed to notice that while the Christian Right vehemently opposes abortion, it also opposes policies which would reduce the demand for abortions. It seems incoherent to oppose something and also oppose the most effective methods for reducing it, but the apparent incoherence here stems from fundamental attitudes towards sex and ideals about family and gender which the rest of the industrialized world left behind long ago. The Christian Right position here is thus internally consistent, but externally inconsistent with modernity - not just modern political systems, but modern advances in justice, equality, and morality.

Andrew Koppelman writes

about Red Families v. Blue Families: Legal Polarization and the Creation of Culture, a book by Naomi Cahn and June Carbone:

Cahn and Carbone observe that two different family systems, presupposing different norms, now exist in the United States. The older, more traditional model demands marriage before (or very soon after) sexual activity begins, identifies responsible parenthood with marriage rather than maturity or economic self-sufficiency, aims at socialization into traditional gender roles, and embraces authoritarian models of parenting. The appropriate response to unplanned pregnancy is the shotgun marriage. Same-sex marriage seems to flout this entire complex of values, elevating the happiness of adults over the well-being of children.

This model remains prevalent in much of the United States. Where it does, the Republican party has reliable support: the political affiliation of a state correlates well with the median age of first marriage. But where it prevails, divorce rates are the highest in the country, because early marriages are the most likely to fail. Teen pregnancy, high rates of sexually transmitted diseases, and single motherhood are frequent. The problem is that, although this ethic has considerable continuing power, it is in decay. Its enforcement mechanisms have weakened. Unhappy couples can no longer be forced to stay together, and teenagers can't be prevented from having sex.

At the same time, a new sexual ethic has emerged and is now deeply entrenched in the blue states. This model, which Cahn and Carbone call the "new middle class ethic," is tolerant of premarital sexuality so long as contraception is carefully used, with abortion as the responsible fallback. It calls for postponing marriage and parenthood until the completion of higher education, and aims at more egalitarian gender roles within marriage. It produces lower rates of divorce and teenaged motherhood, but also falling fertility and more people living alone.

The "new" sexual ethic described here is one which is already well established in other industrialized nations, especially Europe. It's no coincidence that these nations are also characterized by higher rates of health and happiness than America. Just how these factors are all related hasn't been made clear yet, but there clearly are some causal relationships because this is a pattern we see consistently across the globe. One of the factors is, I think, the absence of authoritarian control over people's lives.

People are instead allowed to make their own choices and are supported in those choices by the community. Their options aren't limited to just a narrow range that has the approval of certain religious leaders and they aren't punished for failing to make choices consistent with religious tradition. Indeed, that's precisely where this "new sexual ethic" has come from. It wasn't imposed on people from any outside source; it has instead evolved from the choices people make when left free to make their own decisions about their lives.

It's the goal of the Christian Right, however, to limit those choices as much as possible - no matter what the cost:

Government support for contraception, especially contraception provided to teenage girls without their parents' knowledge or consent is anathema. Such girls should not be having sex at all. Contraceptive information is likely to encourage them to flout moral norms with impunity. Unwanted pregnancy is unfortunate but valuable as a deterrent to premarital sex.

It was this ethic that produced the move to abstinence-only sex education, which is now the predominant approach in a third of American schools. (110) But there is no evidence that such education makes abstinence until marriage more likely (96% of Americans have sex before they marry, see 175), or produces a decline in teen or nonmarital births, and some evidence that it produces an increase in both, because it is more likely that a girl will not know how to contracept at the time of her first sexual experience. (3, 111) The effect is particularly pronounced with respect to black and Latina girls, who are disproportionately exposed to abstinence-only education. Two-thirds of white women, but fewer than half of black women, have received instruction about contraception before their first sexual encounter. (111)

The misogyny of men establishing the options available to women is obvious, but the racism here of white men making decisions which create hardships for minority women should not be ignored. It's not "bad luck" or "race neutral" rules that cause minority women to suffer the most from situations like this. It is typical that people further down on the socio-economic ladder suffer from decisions made by those further up - decisions which those further up can get around if they want because of their greater economic resources. The limited access to abortion in America, for example, impacts the poor more because they can't easily take time off or travel to distant clinics; the middle and upper classes, though, can manage more easily.

I think it would be a mistake, though, to assume that nothing more is going on - that the racial disparities here are solely about class. Reduced access to family planning services has direct and unambiguous consequences on people's long-term economic power. Teen pregnancy diminishes a woman's educational prospects and thus also her lifetime career goals and earnings. Young marriage does the same for both men and women. Reduced access to contraceptives and abortion means more unintended pregnancies, higher costs for families, and further reduced earnings in the long term.

The net effect of this then is that white evangelical Christian leaders are making decisions that reduce the economic, political, and social power of everyone who starts out from reduced socio-economic circumstances but especially of blacks and Latinos. This perpetuates a system where whites hold economic and political dominance over non-whites and it's difficult to dismiss this as mere coincidence - especially given the historic attitudes of white evangelical churches towards minorities. You can't adopt policies that help hold down racial minorities then insist that racism is dead.