formula

Goes I say X, then you say Y.

Left entirely unsaid and unremarked upon in the second article is how we might reduce heavy reliance on abortion to "make the liberal/blue state family model" work, precisely the point of the first article. In other words, the reply is not a reply at all, but simply a formulaic statement of position without reaction or commentary.

The success of family models as portrayed in "blue states" is not because the success of the family model relies upon abortion, but because those families are delayed through planning and access to birth control. Birth control of course is a much less popular line of attack than abortion for conservatives. Thus why it wasn't mentioned at all by the reply and instead the line of attack continued unabated as though it was abortion that was the principle and only means of family planning being used. Wealthier liberals (and conservatives for that matter) have legal and economic access to birth control and thus don't have abortions, certainly not at the rates that they are supposedly doing. Poor single mothers don't tend to have legal or economic access, particularly in highly conservative states which have restricted access to birth control (and abortions, as what I might call an extreme form of birth control) or where legal rights have empowered doctors to avoid prescriptions for birth control on moral grounds and there are likely fewer available doctors who would compete against this moral grounding in rural or conservative towns. The only reason such a system thus "relies on abortion" is that it has deprived the model of its first lines of defence; economic opportunity being one as it delays the onset of families or children, and access to birth control being the primary.

I suppose you could attack "yuppie sluts" on the grounds that they are running about having sex instead of the mythology that they are having abortions. But that is not a line of objection I am all that concerned with or likely to be convinced is the cause of a problem. Particularly when it doesn't show itself to be causing the doom and demise of the American family as the matter of greater concern to most people anyway than who, how, why, and how often single women privately bed others. The principle harbinger of doom is that single poor women have more children (because of lack of access to education and employment opportunities and because of lack of access to birth control), and that many such women, because of cultural and social attitudes, are compelled to marry earlier or to people that they should not get married to, for reasons such as "we have a kid". I would prefer children be raised in a biological environment on the assumption that their parents care deeply about each other and presumably their offspring as a result, but barring the likely success of such a case, I could care less who the mother and father will be, or even that a child has one of each or both.