>remember that the abortion issue, as a matter of law, is about the state's interests in the body. it does not litigate religious or social mores, but most of the "debate" is of this latter type.
It seems specious to claim this when the states' interests in the body in this regard (as well as gay marriage and any other rights formerly predicated on the right to privacy asserted in Roe) are based on conservative Christian beliefs and mores.
there's a whole body of political science literature that would heartily debate that stance. at most, political discourse and religious discourse grew up together and influenced each other, but to say one is based on the other is a rhetorical diversion at best.
gay marriage shouldn't be predicated on privacy either. two people want equal protection under the law as any other two people who have enjoined their lives together. that's basically it. certainly the gender/sex of those two people isn't the state's concern, because reproduction is not a state concern, but rather a private matter.
But population growth rate (or decline) is absolutely a concern of the state, and reproduction is a significant contributor to that. In fact, one could argue that if a state has an interest in providing health care (including things like contraception) then it must have an interest in reproduction too.
no, it absolutely is not, for a democratic republic like the US. the US is designed to have a minimal federal government that doesn't interfere in the individual life and liberty of its residents. this is very unlike governments that came before it and even peer governments now, like the social democracies of europe. our federal government was not meant to be a central planner, but rather simply an interstate and international arbiter. therefore, it cannot have any interest in population control in any way. that's up to the will of the people, and only the will of the people. it's not even a state concern because it would encroach our civil liberties, which are inalienable by the constitution.
Providing free (at the point of use) health care, and making sure children don't go hungry, and even providing tax benefits to couples who raise children, are all perfectly constitutional policies that don't encroach on civil liberties.
All of those policies can be motivated by a state/federal desire to grow the population. In fact, some people believe that the federal government has a legitimate interest in providing a free (or discounted) service for healthy women to abort healthy children at any stage of their pregnancy, so if the government has an interest in preventing children then surely it can have an interest in producing them.
All of this assumes that same-sex marriage has some effect on rate of reproduction or population growth, when it doesn't.
Notwithstanding the facts that marriage isn't necessary for sexual procreation and that LGBT people can and do procreate, if the primary interest of the state in regards to marriage was to define it in terms of procreation, then the greater concern by far should be heterosexual marriages which don't produce children and rates of divorce. Yet no one is attempting to argue that heterosexual married couples should be required by law to produce a child within, say, two years.
Also, there is a difference between government providing access to services which citizens can choose to avail themselves of, and government legislating reproduction directly. The government doesn't have "an interest in preventing children" in the case of providing access to abortion clinics, rather the interest there is providing access to medical care. The government isn't forcing anyone to have abortions. So the government banning gay marriage in the interest of "producing children," aside from not making any sense as described earlier, isn't a valid countercase to the government providing abortion access.
> there is a difference between government providing access to services which citizens can choose to avail themselves of, and government legislating reproduction directly.
Yes, and between those two extremes is the more modest approach of the government providing incentives for certain outcomes, while neither mandating nor preventing any particular actions by its citizens.
> the government banning gay marriage in the interest of "producing children,"
I don't know if anyone is suggesting that the government should "ban[] gay marriage", but some people think that the government shouldn't grant extra benefits to same-sex couples who declare themselves married in some ceremony.
As you point out, such a distinction made by a government is a very ineffective way to stimulate the production of children (indirectly through encouraging people into opposite-sex relationships), just as rewarding opposite-sex marriage doesn't guarantee the production of children, but a more rational set of policies (perhaps rewarding couples of any gender combination for cohabiting during the raising of children, whether naturally conceived or adopted) is more complicated to define and balance and integrate into the culture.
In any case, my point is still that governments have a legitimate interest to legislate policies that encourage an increase in the birth rate, even if they haven't found (or aren't even looking for) an optimal way to do that.
no, healthcare and social programs are statutory, not constitutional. and individual and bodily sovereignty (inalienable rights) trumps any such potential claims the state has on population control in that regard.
those ideas are seeping in from social and religious debates, not legal and civic ones.
It seems specious to claim this when the states' interests in the body in this regard (as well as gay marriage and any other rights formerly predicated on the right to privacy asserted in Roe) are based on conservative Christian beliefs and mores.