u/L11mbm

I'm specifically talking about medical interventions designed to help people conceive. If there is a justified other use (such as hormone-related illness) then that is separate and I take no issue, even if this leads to a "well it just happened to also make me get pregnant" loophole.

I also know many people who have used many various forms of treatment and have been successful in conceiving. This is not necessarily a morality or ethical judgment.

This view is based on 3 criteria and I am open to changing it if any of these can be addressed. I won't bother responding to anyone who doesn't address any of these 3 specifically.

1 - infertility, broadly speaking, tends to be due to some sort of biological issue that the parents-to-be should think twice about giving to their kids. For example, endometriosis can make it hard to conceive if the mother is older and has uterine scarring, but this condition is likely to be passed on to her children. This means they will suffer this, too, or pass it to their kids. I don't want to think of this as a form of eugenics, but it really should be something considered heavily before rushing to have kids in the same way any other genetic condition or predisposition would affect the thought process. Long-term, this puts more financial strain on the medical system.

2 - the money for treatments should subsidize adoption. We have plenty of kids who need good families, already. I am actually a very firm believer that nature overrides nurture in young children and that this can lead to issues in adoptive families, but anyone who wants to be a parent should be incentivized to adopt rather than conceive, especially if insurance funds are being used.

3 - the net cost of infertility treatment from insurance coverage is driving up the cost of insurance premiums for everyone, which then turns into a spiral of increasing costs.

My view here is not that IVF is evil (I do not believe it is immoral or unethical at all) or that our bodies shouldn't be tampered with or anything along those lines. My interest is solely in the fact that fertility issues are a huge driver of insurance premium costs for everyone else.

So...CMV!

If the GOP decides to carve up all of "their" states to extreme gerrymanders and dilute their voting populations on assumptions about turnout, they run the risk of dramatically shrinking their margins in many districts. This could turn a bunch of "safe R" seats into "toss-up" territory. Given that midterms are pretty much a given to swing against the sitting president's party, the economy is not doing well, the current administration is seen very unfavorably, generic ballot polls show a D+6-10 margin, and all of the special elections over the last 6-12 months have been more +D than we've seen in decades....

Does this mean extreme gerrymanders of red states will spectacularly backfire? Does anyone have data on this, like what the average +R% is likely to be once the southern states redraw their lines?