I live in an American living in a city where illegal guns, illegal drugs, drive-by shootings, and deaths of high school students caught in the middle of deadly domestic abuse situations was a normal occurrence during COVID lockdown.
Elderly people, especially those who looked Asian, were routinely harassed, beaten, and on one occasion left for dead in the street. Children of working class couples and single moms suffered incredible food insecurity.
In my own neighborhood, prostitutes did their business in my back yard and in the back of SUVs with hip-hop music blasting so loud it could be heard four blocks away.
In my corner of the United States, abortion as a right or a privilege or whatever you want to call it overshadowed–and still overshadows–the debate about how to keep marginalized populations from starving to death and being callously and randomly killed.
Interestingly, very few of the people in my neighborhood are interested in abortion as a tool for family well-being. They are poor or working-class. They come from Africa, Asia, South America, the Middle East. They are all highly intelligent, well-read people from different religious backgrounds. Their focus is on: feed my kids, care for my elders; pay for my house; send my kids to college.
Food, clothes, education, good job. That’s what they think will make life better for everyone, but they get very little help from the government in those areas.
Abortion is the way to have a better shot at a good life according to some, but according to others, the money and time spent on promoting abortion would be better used to keep people safer in their homes and well-fed.
The question under discussion (“Why do you think women are hated this much?”) should actually be: “Why do you think people who are anti-abortion hate women so much that they would deny them the ability to get one?”
In the United States there are many so-called conservatives who are pro-abortion and many so called liberals who are not. But my view is, wherever they stand on the issue, people arguing about it are not keeping anyone from starving or making it possible for them to live in decent housing or send their kids to school.
In a hierarchy of needs, I always put food and shelter and public safety right at the top. Because women who’ve died of a drug overdose or been stabbed to death or starved to death don’t need abortions.