That is, if they are really sincere about their beliefs about society and family. The measures they claim to care about have gotten better as society has gotten more liberal.

From: https://frenchpress.thedispatch.com/p/a-civilizational-challenge-beyond

Multiple vitally important indicators of family health have been improving, and many of those indicators have been improving for some time. The divorce rate has hit a 50 year low. Abortion is way down. Teenage pregnancy is down. Despite a hopefully temporary increase in 2020, violent crime is way down. Young adults have fewer sex partners. The percentage of children living with both parents has stabilized and even slightly increased.

It turns out that, say, thirty years ago—when our memories tell us America was more culturally conservative politically—many social indicators that social conservatives value the most were substantially worse than they are today. Yes, on a number of fronts Americans have more culturally progressive beliefs than they did, say, in 1990, yet by the tens of millions, they have more culturally conservative lifestyles than the generation before.

On Wednesday, September 15, 2021 at 3:50:12 PM UTC-5, xyzzy wrote:
> That is, if they are really sincere about their beliefs about society and family. The measures they claim to care about have gotten better as society has gotten more liberal.
>
> From: https://frenchpress.thedispatch.com/p/a-civilizational-challenge-beyond
>
> Multiple vitally important indicators of family health have been improving, and many of those indicators have been improving for some time. The divorce rate has hit a 50 year low. Abortion is way down. Teenage pregnancy is down. Despite a hopefully temporary increase in 2020, violent crime is way down. Young adults have fewer sex partners. The percentage of children living with both parents has stabilized and even slightly increased.
>
> It turns out that, say, thirty years ago—when our memories tell us America was more culturally conservative politically—many social indicators that social conservatives value the most were substantially worse than they are today. Yes, on a number of fronts Americans have more culturally progressive beliefs than they did, say, in 1990, yet by the tens of millions, they have more culturally conservative lifestyles than the generation before.

this is really an oversimplification, but another problem with it is that who is to say that these decreases aren't due in part to all the gop legislatures state by state? (not saying they are of course)

Also, the bottom line is that liberals/democrats are pro-choice and republicans(while certainly not in lock step on the issue) are the far more conservative party on abortion. Which is a defining issue for us christian
conservatives. You say that abortion is way down, and we could argue for books about the reasons for that and who credit should go to, but perhaps restricting access to abortions like is recently done in Texas
is part of that. Perhaps all the hoops you have to jump through in many states due to GOP lawmakers is a partial reason. It's probably multifactorial.

This abortion law in texas is a big win for us christian conservatives. It is going to make abortion in many cases simply not an option in Texas. And texas is a big state.....there are certainly women who are ~8 weeks pregnant in the southern or middle or western parts of the state who say "well I wanted an abortion but I can't get one here now and I don't have the money or way to get from brownsville, Texas to New orleans. Thats an 11 hr drive....sure I could go down to mexico, but that scares me".

I think trying to restrict access to safe and legal abortions is similar to our strategy to restrict access to voting by requiring ID. If you keep pounding around the edges and doing every little thing you can to make it
harder and restrict access, that will have *some* effect.....in both how many women kill their babies and how many democratic types vote.