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WHAT IF
  • 1/26/2024
Imagine a world, where no woman could ask for an abortion.

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00:00 ♪
00:10 Imagine a world where no woman could ask for an abortion,
00:14 even if she'd been sexually assaulted.
00:16 Even if not having an abortion means her own life would be at risk.
00:22 You may argue that life begins at conception,
00:25 and it's wrong to kill anyone, even a fetus.
00:28 After all, a fetus is a potential human being,
00:31 and by 18 weeks, is developed enough to feel pain.
00:36 But is abortion always wrong?
00:39 This is WHAT IF, and here's what would happen if abortion was illegal worldwide.
00:47 Picture this, dealers selling abortion drugs on the streets,
00:51 hospitals overflowing with women dying from having tried to induce an abortion on their own,
00:57 and millions of unwanted kids born into a horrible quality of life.
01:03 Even if you disagree with abortion, placing a global ban on it would affect everything
01:08 from a woman's basic right to decide what to do with her body,
01:11 to the well-being of our planet.
01:14 Yep, even the Earth would face more human-caused struggles,
01:17 but we'll get to that in a moment.
01:21 Governments might ban abortions, but that wouldn't mean there wouldn't be any.
01:25 Every day, 125,000 women around the world get an abortion.
01:30 If the procedure was no longer available to them,
01:33 then they may choose to have a clandestine abortion.
01:36 It'd be dangerous, and it might even kill them.
01:39 But if they didn't take that risk,
01:41 they'd have to go through with a pregnancy they didn't want,
01:44 knowing that they might not be able to care for or financially support their child.
01:49 Some women would take pills to induce an abortion at home.
01:53 In a worst-case scenario, they'd abandon their newborn babies.
01:57 Many of those trapped in a motherhood they didn't want
02:00 would suffer from anxiety and low self-esteem.
02:03 They might end up staying tethered to abusive partners,
02:06 or be left all alone in their pregnancy.
02:08 You decide what's worse.
02:11 And what about those who had an abortion and got caught?
02:15 Well, that depends on how strict the abortion laws would be.
02:19 Today, women in countries like El Salvador can be prosecuted,
02:23 and sentenced to up to eight years in prison
02:25 if the authorities suspect she might have harmed her fetus.
02:29 If a punishment like that was adopted worldwide,
02:32 prisons would be overwhelmed.
02:34 If the doctors performing the abortions,
02:36 and the partners supporting a woman's decision were imprisoned as well,
02:40 we'd need to build more prisons, and a better organized prison system.
02:45 The only industry to cash in on the abortion ban would be birth control.
02:49 With strict laws and punishments in place for getting an abortion,
02:53 people who otherwise may not have considered using birth control
02:56 would have to think things over very carefully.
02:59 Banning abortions would have a lot of implications on a social level,
03:02 and it wouldn't be so great for our planet either.
03:06 At our current population growth rate,
03:08 we'll need three Earths by 2100
03:10 to maintain the standards of how people are living today.
03:13 And that's with abortions legally performed in most countries.
03:17 With a worldwide abortion ban,
03:19 there'd be at least 1.5 billion more people
03:21 being born in the next 40 years.
03:23 At that rate, by 2060, we'd hit the breaking point.
03:29 The point at which there'd be too many humans for our planet to support.
03:34 The poorest countries would see the most population growth.
03:37 For them, adding a lot of extra people would mean increased demands
03:41 for drinking water and proper sanitation.
03:43 Things that over 2 billion people already lack access to.
03:48 Let's face it,
03:50 being forced to have a child benefits no one.
03:52 Not the mother, not the planet,
03:55 and most certainly not the baby.
03:58 Maybe all of this could be solved if humans just lost their sex drive.
04:03 But that's a story for another WHAT IF.
04:06 [MUSIC]
04:11 you

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