One thing these anti abortion folks forget is that plenty of women had abortions BEFORE Roe v. Wade. Just because abortions are illegal doesn't mean that women won't have them--just look at the death rates from illegal procedures in other countries. One could argue that without legal abortion, we could potentially lose MORE workers--both the aborted fetuses and the dead women.

The genius of their conclusion is that when we recriminalize abortion, American women will be forced to go to Mexico to obtain abortions. So, we have a vast pool of underpaid labor from women who can't make it South and we keep wages low AND we produce jobs in Mexico to alleviate the need for immigration. Bravo, Missouri legislature.

"But maybe Emery should try thinking a little longer. One problem we're not facing in the United States? A population decline. On Oct. 17, the population hit 300,000,001. The fertility rate in the United States is 2.13 babies per mother, higher than the stable population replacement rate of 2.1 babies. Of course, many of those 2.13 babies are born to illegal immigrant mothers, but at least as of now, they still count as Americans -- and by Emery's calculations, as potential future laborers."

See, this is why I can't read Broadsheet. It's written by morons. That's exactly the point they are trying to make -- xx million aborted babies; xx million immigrants. It is a mathematically, socially, and economically sound assertion. You can argue the xenophobic tendencies behind the assertion, but the math is undeniable.

First of all, there isn't a one-to-one tradeoff between 44 million post-Roe vs. Wade abortions and 44 million additional American citizens. Before this decision, indiviual states set their own abortion policies. While many states would have forbidden abortion without Roe, others would have continued to permit it. Millions of women would have either gotten illegal abortions or gone to states and countries where it was still legal. They'd have also been more conscientious about either using contraception or avoiding vaginal sex because the stakes would be higher, resulting in fewer accidental pregnancies and thus fewer subsequent children. Also, many women who had illegal abortions would have died or become infertile and their future children would never have been born, and unwanted children would have had higher mortality due to abandonment and abuse.

Another assumption is that these millions of extra Americans would all be content to work as farm laborers, meatpackers, cleaning staff, and other badly-paying jobs -- presumably out of gratitude for being allowed to be born. This is really patronizing.

Still another is blaming social policy for lack of workers, especially given the tightening "welfare to work" requirements. There are many reasons why the kinds of jobs that illegal immigrants take aren't desirable to other Americans, including their seasonal nature and the unwillingness of businesses to pay decent wages -- conditions that would still exist if the US population was higher. It also strikes me as perverse that a group who is so concerned with the welfare of fetuses would immediately write them off as freeloading welfare parasites once they are actually born.

The United States and Mexico would still share a long, badly-secured border if Roe vs. Wade had been decided differently. The income disparity across this border would still be large. Mexico's government and business leaders would have continued to fail to address the problems that are holding back its economic prosperity. There would still be high levels of poverty elsewhere in Central America. United States immigration policy would continue to be broken. There would still be big economic incentives for illegal immigrants to cross over into the United States even given the somewhat tighter low-end labor market that the Missouri committee's Republican members hypothesize.

In short, they are full of hooey.

Illegals aren't in high demand because we need more laborers, it's because business wants cheap labor. I remember during the long, drawn out economic recession of the late 70's and early 80's low skilled jobs were very hard to come by in manufacturing areas. That's when the massive influx of illegals started. People living a paycheck away from living out of their car were turned away from jobs in favor of cheap illegal labor. Where I was living in the mid-Atlantic, hispanics had never existed as an ethnic group. They started flooding in as business' laid off the locals in order to stay viable and replaced them with mainly El Salvadorans. People who had lived here for centuries couldn't beg for a dishwashing job.

Some people buy into the myth that business' only get illegals labor because they are hard-pressed to. If this country were to go into another severe recession or even a depression, business' would still prefer cheap illegals. Politicians would still be paid off to look the other way. You would still get the race card thrown at you if you were homeless and begging for a job as a janitor and the business wasn't hiring, because illegals had already filled those jobs. You would get told, "you were an immigrant once too" if you had the audacity to point out that many US citizens were living in shelters and soup kitchens yet illegals still continued to flood in and find jobs.

Don't think it won't happen again. Myself, and many others were a paycheck away from living out of their car during the 70's. So were many coal miners from West Virginia, , and steel workers from Pennsylvania, and all around low-income or working class people. The mid-Atlantic suffered through the worst economic decline since the great depression and it lasted longer. I came from a single parent, economically depressed area and I couldn't beg for a job. But illegals from EL Salvador had no problem. Things got better of course, but don't think this country has your best interests in mind. It has the best interests of the almighty dollar in mind.

And don't think the flood of illegals will stop now or ever because business' are too addicted to cheap labor. A major economic recession wouldn't stop the flood, it didn't in the 70's or 80's. That's when it started.