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Comment by turrican | Hacker News Reader

I don’t believe that this would explain the bust in blue states. If they were already on birth control pre-pandemic, shouldn’t their birth rates have stayed level or even gone slightly up with all the free time stuck at home? Instead they went down.

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But if you were in a blue state, taking the first lock-down really seriously, were you less likely to want to decide that that now was a good time to try to have a kid, when the world is in crisis and the hospitals might be scary to go to? Would you feel less like having sex even if you have a partner b/c you've both been in the house together for way too much time? Or because you're stressed from the world being upside-down? Or if you already had a child, were you more exhausted from trying to do both childcare and WFH? Would you be less likely to have a whirlwind encounter with a new partner that turns into an unexpected pregnancy b/c you're sheltering in place? I'm guessing we don't have data on any of these but I think the baby bust is entirely understandable if you're in an environment that's taking a global pandemic really seriously.

In particular, there were stories about pregnant women being especially vulnerable to severe Covid. Those stories probably got a lot more attention in blue states and instilled more fear accordingly (rightly or wrongly).

This sounds like a very reasonable explanation. For fun, I explained the gist of the article to my wife and asked for her take. She attributes the rise in red states to "happy couples getting to spend more time together". We're a good example of that, our babies #4 and #5 were both born during the pandemic. In all honesty, I was WFH before covid but the time I get to spend with my family as a result is such a blessing. It's also no joke how much the healthcare "environment" changed... I make a point to go to every single prenatal and pediatric appointment. The only ultrasound I ever missed was due to hospital rules disallowing our children from accompanying us.

You're right that this can't explain the drop. It can only explain the relative rise in red, arguably, if they had less access to unplanned short term expedient contraception, as a routine form of contraception.

You can't get the packet of condoms from the machine in the hotel lobby if you aren't in the hotel.

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