The problem with thinking like yours is that ANY public service is bound to NOT serve someone. You could take the same logic and apply it to almost anything.

I shouldn't have to pay to support my local fire district. MY house hasn't burned down! I have smoke alarms and my house is built to code. I don't need the fire district, therefore everyone who wants it should buy in.

I shouldn't have to pay to support my local library. I don't use it. I buy my own books. Posh on all those people who want books for free. Let them buy their own.

I shouldn't have to pay to support my local school district. I don't have kids! Someone, somewhere, once upon a time, paid taxes for me to attend public school, but never mind that now. All those people with kids should pay for their own.

I shouldn't have to pay for road improvements in my town. I work at home! I never drive anywhere!

And on and on.

Public services of all kinds cost money. Even the ones that don't benefit you directly, they do have an impact on you indirectly. The homebound person who was getting by living at home and using Dial-A-Ride service becomes unable to stay in her home. Now she's looking for even more public assistance in some kind of nursing facility. The low income person who was just barely making it getting to work now can't, and requires public assistance just to eat. All those public school children have to go somewhere during the day... how about loose and unsupervised in your neighborhood? If you truly want to see a world with no public services, you can take the next plane to Somalia and see how it works.

Me? I like the bus system, even when I don't use it.

There's a fantastic chapter in there about abortion. The author is an economist who takes his economic/statistical training and applies it in other domains.

In one chapter, he looked at the nationwide crime drop in the early 90s. If you read the popular press in the 70s and 80s, you see loads of alarmist rhetoric about surging crime rates, worrying that everyone would live in gated communities soon, the whole USA would have bars on the windows and security guards at every door. Then, in the early 90s, the crime rates plummeted. Everyone had different reasons for why--law enforcement, mandatory sentencing, whatever.

The author of Freakonomics had a different idea. By his math, the early 90s was just about 18 years after the passage of Roe v. Wade (1973 + 18 = 1991). All those millions of babies who would have been born into dire straits... into homes where they were unwanted, to single mothers who couldn't support them, to homes with fears of violence, to situations with little support, no money, no access to a good education--Those Babies Were Not Born. So 18 years later, they did not turn to a life of crime.

The author supports his idea with another piece of evidence. In states where abortion was already legal before 1973, there was a drop in crime a few years earlier, corresponding to when abortion became legal (plus about 18 years).

It's not a very popular viewpoint. I would agree this viewpoint is based solely on statistical analysis, not on interviews with women who had abortions. But the author makes a compelling point--that women know best when they do not have the resources to raise a child. Speaking statistically, children raised with few resources (education, care, time, and money) often end up in a life of crime. When those children who would have been born into bad circumstances aren't there, the crime rate drops.

Not a popular position, but one worth discussing.

Is lots and lots of accurate sex education and contraception. For all ages (not just junior high kids, but EVERYONE). Hell, put it in vending machines. Make it FREE from government-run clinics. Everywhere, in every community, large, small, urban, rural. Make contraception (and not just condoms, but all forms) as easy to get as a cigarette, a beer, or a quart of milk.

Because Sex Is Happening Everywhere, All The Time. Just like breathing. Just like eating. Just like drinking, be it water or alcohol. Fundies of all stripes do not want to see this. Sex only happens between godly married men and women, right? And... nice people don't have sex! They just have kids!

However, the reality is, that getting good contraception (not just condoms) is often inconvenient and sometimes expensive. The burden tends to fall on women, as most forms of contraception (patches, pills, shots, etc.) tend to be female rather than male. If a woman doesn't have insurance, doesn't have a lot of education, doesn't have access to a non-judgmental doctor or a non-judgmental pharmacy (just try getting your birth control filled in a small town when you're unmarried and the pharmacist is your Aunt Mabel's next-door neighbor) accidents can and will happen.

The root of the problem of reducing abortions comes down to ideology. Reducing unwanted pregnancies for the left means education and contraception (aka Planned Parenthood). Reducing unwanted pregnancies for the right means less (or no) sex among unmarried people (aka Abstinence Only).

I can tell you which solution makes more sense if you're talking about public policy.

We see tons of ads all the time about "drink responsibly." How about "Have Sex Responsibly?" We need to get over our collective national prudishness.