I don't believe you have to think women are stupid to understand that people inclined to a thing will find that distance comforting and that society can grease the wheels of the decision making process by minimizing everything short of the choice, which then becomes the truly important thing, sadly.
That "grease" can help people slide in any direction. One might easily view religion as a "grease" that helps people slide toward judgment, condemnation, and the desire to to see other people punished for their "sins", for example.
What I noted with that was that I live in an area where that sort of shaming would be most likely to occur and it simply isn't on the plate. Maybe within some families, but as a rule or concerning social stigma, no.
Well, you are fooling yourself. Because I have little doubt that your community disdains young single mothers (and their need of public support) just as much as any other community in America, does. And being in a "red state" what will be all the more true. Not to mention the religious inclination to view sex outside of wedlock as a sin, and therefor to view young single mothers as easily identifiable "sinners", being punished for their sins by having to endure the consequences.
I don't doubt it happens. But so does nearly anything that's possible. The rule is another matter.
How much the shaming "rules" is not the issue. The issue is that it does occur, regularly enough that women have died on a regular basis from back-alley abortions and killed their babies in secret births, trying to avoid it. Thus showing just how powerful that sort of shaming, is.
That's why shotgun weddings are mostly nothing more than a tale told to the next generation. There's no feeling that marriage is a requirement or that a child out of wedlock is a particularly big deal among the majority.
The truth be told; "shotgun weddings" are not the shammer's first choice in the face of the young, pregnant, female. The shame and stress and difficulty of the pregnancy, itself, is their first choice of recourse. Because they want to see the "hussy" punished, through her difficult circumstances, for her wanton behavior.
If you really listen closely to these religious conservatives when they talk about women who get pregnant out of wedlock, you will hear the essence of their reaction. And that is that she should be punished for having sex without God's permission (or their permission, it's all the same, to them). That's the real reason why many of them are so dead-set against abortion when they are so easily inclined to end the lives of other human beings in most other instances. They are really far more concerned about punishing the sinner than they are about saving human lives.
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