Opinion Piece Examines Abortion-Rights Opponents' Response To Connection Between Recession, Abortion

Main Category: Abortion
Also Included In: Public Health
Article Date: 19 May 2009 - 6:00 PDT

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In response to recent news reports from Reuters, the Associated Press and other media outlets tying the recession to an increase in demand for abortion, the antiabortion-rights community is arguing that women are "choosing their own material comfort over the life of their unborn children" -- an interpretation that is "wrong on several accounts" -- Double X contributor Anna Murphy Paul writes in an opinion piece.

"No one wants her most intimate decisions to be driven by money," but, at the same time, "opting not to have a child you can't afford to raise can be a realistic and responsible -- if painful -- choice, one often based on taking good care of the kids you already have" Murphy Paul says. She continues, "Nor is the intrusion of economic concerns on childbearing a phenomenon of this recession, or even the loosening of sexual mores over the past half-century; historically, financial hardship has been an ever-present motivation for ending a pregnancy."

Murphy Paul cites the results of a 2005 Guttmacher Institute survey that found that nearly three-fourths of respondents said that the reason they decided to have an abortion was that they "could not afford a baby right now," which was the second-most common reason. The report found that the top reason for having an abortion was that children would interfere with women's education, work or ability to care for dependents, all "concerns that are also largely economic in nature," Murphy Paul writes. She notes that at the time the study was published, "the Dow was still riding high, and the housing bubble seemed it would never pop." Murphy Paul adds that a 1987 Guttmacher survey on the same subject produced results "almost identical" to the 2005 survey.

However, "to hear the pro-life activists tell it, women aren't really struggling with difficult choices -- they just don't want to give up the luxuries to which they've become accustomed," Murphy Paul writes. Abortion-rights opponents promote offers of counseling and no-cost infant supplies provided through "pregnancy resource centers" to support women who choose not to have an abortion, but such centers often provide misleading information or offer little assistance beyond the first few months after birth, she says.

"Pro-life activists are surely right about one thing: It's tremendously sad when a woman decides that she can't bring into the world a child whom under better circumstances she would have welcomed," Murphy Paul continues. However, the "harsh rhetoric about selfishness and irresponsibility help far less than an acknowledgement of -- and lasting aid with -- the true costs of raising a child," she writes. According to Murphy Paul, in "the absence of such help, the most responsible act is to face economic reality head-on. For some women, that may mean abortion" (Murphy Paul, Double X, 5/15).

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