My Commentary:
This is not the way to go about doing this. I'm for the overall goal of reducing abortions, but the bill has its faults. If we do manage to fix everything in the following ways, however, I would be for the passage of this bill.
The overall scheme of Section 1 is good; I'm for giving grants to parents who adopt children and thank Leinad for coming up with this idea. However, I support it for different reasons. I don't really see how adopting children reduces the amount of abortions, so this section is irrelevant to the actual point of the bill, but once more I support the concept of giving grants to parents who adopt for different reasons. Adoption should be encouraged by the government because it (a) gives better lives to children who would otherwise be stuck in orphanages until they turn eighteen and (b) decreases overpopulation by encouraging parents to take kids who already exist instead of making their own. In conclusion, I support this section, but not really for the same reasons as Leinad does. I would also recommend increasing the grant size from $500 to $2,500 (or something along those lines); the concept of adopting in order to give better lives to orphaned children and reduce overpopulation is vital and should be encouraged greatly by the government.
Section 2 is, to be honest, horrible. We shouldn't be handing out money to people just because they're having children; that's essentially what this section does. Anyone who is planning on carrying out their pregnancy would sign this agreement; it's pretty much just a free $4,500 for having a baby. The government already has plenty of ways to support mothers who have children - this should not be one of them. Also, any reasonable person would realize that it costs much more than $4,500 to raise a child, meaning that it would be more cost-effective to have the abortion than have the child and sign the agreement.
Section 3 has a good overall gist (promoting comprehensive sex ed), but the way that this bill goes about doing so is wrong. Reducing the funding of abstinence-only schools would hurt the children who go to those schools, and they don't deserve to be punished for what isn't up to them. Instead, we could meet the goal of promoting comprehensive sex ed in schools by simply making it mandatory.
So overall, I think Sections 1 and 3 would be good with a few changes, while 2 should be thrown out. If Leinad and Spiral agree, I will propose amendments to the bill in order to (a) increase the size of the grant in Section 1, (b) throw out Section 2, and (c) change Section 3 from increasing/decreasing the funding of schools based off of their sex ed programs to simply making comprehensive sex ed mandatory.
Thanks!
