Sorry to go radio-silent for so long there—had a couple heavy weeks at work. And also, honestly, I was kind of dreading writing this one, because one of the things I needed to do for it was research the various reasons why women get abortions, and I knew that was going to make me very sad, no matter what they were, or whether they were what I expected or not. (They in fact were, so being sort of prepared softened the blow, I guess.)
In my last, we went over the raw numbers of abortions, administration by administration. These numbers showed increases almost exclusively during Republican presidencies, and dropped just as consistently when Democrats held the White House. I am cautious about drawing any firm conclusions from that, but it does seem to fit into a larger picture.
The narrative I grew up with among evangelicals was that pro-choice policies are supported by those who consider children personally or professionally inconvenient, and that the feminists are so hell-bent on achieving equality with men that they want the right to have consequence-free sex and/or abandon their children just like men can. This is obviously a tendentious, not to say slanderous and cartoonish, way of framing things. Doubtless there are some people who think this way—Michelle Wolf’s ghastly joking on the subject may indicate something like that—but I mean, come up with a horrible view point and you’re sure to find one person who unironically supports it (probably in the comments section of a BreadTube video (1) they didn’t watch). The point is, this is not a fair or correct way of describing why most women who have abortions get them and not a good place from which to make decisions about voting, political rhetoric, or public policy. It’s an unjust, dishonest caricature of the nastiest imagined versions of pro-choice beliefs, and its injustice and dishonesty are a good enough reason to dismiss this narrative from a serious discussion of abortion.
In 2004, the Guttmacher Institute (2) conducted a study of women’s own self-reported reasons for having an abortion. The majority gave multiple reasons; interfering with school or work, being unable to afford a baby, and being unable to afford another baby because they already had one or more dependents, were among the commonest. Reasons often overlapped: for example, the women cited the financial demands of education, inability to afford child care, risk of losing a job due to parental duties, being unemployed or underemployed, lack of support from a partner (either for personal reasons or due to the partner’s own financial difficulties), or being forced to find a new place to live if they did have the baby. Other prominent reasons included relationship problems or instability, concern about being unready for motherhood, particularly single motherhood, and not wanting people to know they had sex (thanks for that one, purity culture, your philosophy of using shame to control people’s behavior definitely didn’t backfire in any way). The National Center for Biotechnology Information, a sub-sub-branch of the National Institutes of Health, found similar reasons given in a more recent study: 40% of the women they surveyed who sought an abortion said that financial reasons contributed to their decision, and 29% cited the need to care for their other children—really pulling out the stops for hedonistic sexual liberation, that.
These are largely economic or social reasons, rooted in the concrete ability to care for a child—not political reasons rooted in feminist ideology, still less mere moral irresponsibility. And they are reasons that standard Republican policies don’t actually do anything to alleviate. Since the party is ostensibly all about reducing government power in order to protect individual freedoms (3), they routinely reduce or outright gut welfare programs like Section 8 housing, food stamps, and Medicaid. And since they consider the rights of individuals to run their businesses as they please so sacred, things like federally mandated maternity leave—as opposed to allowing employers to compel new mothers to either use sick leave or vacation hours (if they even have them), or else lose their jobs (4)—are often anathema to the GOP. All of that would certainly appear to align pretty neatly with the idea that abortions tend to go up under Republican administrations, their pro-life views notwithstanding.
Now, speaking as an avowed leftist, the Democrats do suck absolute ass on all of these points. However, since we don’t at present have a (politically viable) leftist party in the US, (6) what’s relevant for this discussion is that they reliably suck much less. With important exceptions (5), Democrats since the Reagan administration have generally reduced welfare programs far less dramatically, and have been much more open to gender-equality legislation that would allow working women far more financial security. Democrats have also been the party that is at least open to universal health care, and just having a baby is expensive, even apart from actual childrearing.
I’m not saying abortion would just go away if people had the money to bear and raise children. But … that’s not exacly an argument to prevent people from having the money to bear and raise children, is it? Yes, there are other factors at work here. But considering the huge impact of economics on the decision to abort, isn’t the obviously pro-life thing to do to try and remedy the economic factor? Why be so comfortable with legislating against the act itself, and yet so resistant to legislating against the circumstances that drive people to the act? If we prefer to ignore human needs, can we really address human morals with any kind of credibility? And if we say we want to save the unborn, but refuse to take action that in fact helps protect the unborn—where do our priorities really lie?
(1) BreadTube, or LeftTube, is the name of a loose collection of left-wing YouTubers who make content on politics and culture. Notable “members” include: ContraPoints (Natalie Wynn), a trans woman who vlogs on gender issues, socialism, internet culture, and fingernails; Lindsay Ellis, whose content is mostly about film, TV, and web videos (she’s also friends with Dan Olson of the Folding Ideas channel, who makes similar material); Philosophy Tube (Olly Thorn), whose vlogs discuss both ideas in themselves and current political and cultural points of contact with broader philosophical topics; Hbomberguy (Harris Brewer), who mostly vlogs about video games but also does vlogs about some leftist ideas and has a whole series of takedowns of (mostly right-wing) conspiracy theories; and Innuendo Studios (Ian Danskin), who has an excellent series analyzing typical radicalization tactics of the alt-right. The name “BreadTube” is apparently an allusion to Pyotr Kropotkin’s anti-capitalist book The Conquest of Bread, a classic of anarchist thought.
(2) Before someone seizes on this with the “exposé” that the Guttmacher Institute is pro-choice, I would point back to my last post: I found the Guttmacher Institute in the first place through pro-life literature citing their studies, which I take it means the GI are objective enough for their direct political opponents to trust their research. Looking at the methodological care and clarity shown by the report I’m working from here, I’d say the said opponents have good reason to trust it.
(3) Except when it comes to surveilling private citizens, ignoring due process, allowing the liberty to immigrate, and conducting foreign wars and “police actions” with or without the consent of Congress. Eh, it’s probably fine.
(4) No, of course not all employers behave this way; even middle managers are human, and even capitalist multimillionaires were probably human once. The point is that it is a real, non-trivial danger to a lot of people.
(5) Such as the president who signed the ghastly Welfare Reform Act into law, the appallingly right-wing *checks notes* Bill Clinton. This act hit single mothers and the homeless particularly hard, with its lifetime cap of five years on eligibility for government assistance and its requirement that welfare recipients be or seek to be employed, irrespective of whether employment outside the home was in fact desirable (e.g. for mothers trying to raise children) or even an achievable goal (e.g. for many homeless who lack references or, um, addresses).
(6) Yes, I’m serious. By global standards, someone like Bernie Sanders, far from being a left-wing extremist, is more or less dead center. People like the Clintons or Joe Biden are solidly on the right, and people like Mike Pence are the far-out fringe of the right. The very fact that “leftist” and “liberal” are usually synonyms in American political discourse would be deeply confusing to anyone not raised here, but we can’t stop for that now.
Images via Pixabay
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