I'm assuming that by "higher social welfare burdens" that you mean government and higher taxes. But what makes you think that it is within the purview of government in the first place, or that the government has any competence whatever to do any of these things? Even if you are correct that we have to have a "fully articulated economic and social welfare plan for dealing with about 20 million additional minors, it is a non-sequiter to simply assume that it is the job of government to "solve" these problems. The responsibilty and competency lies elsewhere. If your predictions are right, God help us if we rely on the government to do those things that were never intended by God for it to do. The end result will be even more of the problem that the government was supposed to "fix". If the present manifestations of the abject failures of the Welfare State, indeed, its exacerbation of such problems don't convince you of that proposition I don't know what else possibly could.
Cordially,
Diamond, what you are saying is unrealistic.
Latin America forbids abortion, and is devout. God doesn’t feed their poor or provide them with medical care and education. Indeed, as the Christian Bible points out in the stories of King David and of Moses, God very, very explicitly lays the DUTY of charity for orphans, widows, the poor, the sick, SQUARELY upon all other men AND upon the rulers of the state. God provides THROUGH human charity, and human charity is NOT, in the divine plan, simply an optional individual thing. King David, King Solomon, and Moses the ruling Prophet all three had the burden of providing for the poor, the weak, the sick, the orphan in their realm.
You are right: welfare is inefficient. And people who collect it are generally screw-ups, and there is not much hope for rehabilitation of adults (there’s a lot more hope for children, if we educate them properly, which costs money). It’s always going to be a bloody mess and an inefficient bureaucratic nightmare. So is the Catholic Church. So are all Churches, for that matter. So are most charities, in some fashion or other. All of the weaknesses and foibles of fallible man are on full display.
It doesn’t matter: we have to do it anyway. We have to do it anyway, because otherwise vulnerable people will die, and we ARE our brother’s keeper. Our King in heaven has said so, and even though His charge is queer, and wasteful and practically hopeless given our idiocy and inconstancy, we still have to do it. We have the save the babies from death. It’s our moral duty. And that means not just death under the knife, but death from starvation, or freezing. That means money. And money means both private charity and public taxes. We can rage against God for making us so stupid and evil that we can’t do it efficiently, and for making men so weak that they keep having illict sex and spitting out babies. We can be mighty unhappy with the whole business: abortion comes about because of moral failings of men and women.
But we still have to save the babies and provide for them, because God said so, and he didn’t make it optional for us.
The only way OUT of that obligation is to not believe in God. In which case there is no argument against abortion. There also is no argument against torturing criminals to death in public for lurid entertainment, or harvesting prisoners for their organs. If there is no God, whatever the powerful want is the law, and the moral law doesn’t exist other than as a matter of opinion.