Roe: The economic impact of unwanted births
Outlawing abortion would impose a profound economic burden on women who are forced to carry unwanted pregnancies, said Julianna Goldman in Bloomberg. That’s almost undeniable, yet Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen drew the wrath of the anti-abortion right last week after asserting that overturning Roe v. Wade would set working women “back decades.” Research backs her up, said Sarah Jones in New York magazine. The University of California, San Francisco’s “Turnaway Study” of 1,000 women who sought abortions found that those who were denied one were “much more likely to carry debt, to be evicted, and to declare bankruptcy.” Their health suffered, they were more likely to stay with abusive partners, and their children “were over three times as likely to live below the federal poverty level compared with the children of women who were able to receive abortions.” Of women who did receive abortions, 95 percent later said they’d made the right decision.
Arguing in favor of a “great evil” because it saves money is grotesque, said Matthew Walther in The New York Times. It’s true: Banning abortion, research indicates, would “mean more single mothers,” more teenage mothers, added strain on Medicaid, higher crime rates, and “goodness knows what else.” But does our society really want to embrace the idea that “only happy lives are worth saving”? Celebrating abortion’s costsaving upside, said Tiana Lowe in the Washington Examiner, evokes “the Confederates who settled on an economic argument to defend slavery.” But the termination of an estimated 63 million pregnancies since Roe hurt our overall economy by artificially constricting “the growth of the workforce.” Fewer young workers reduced economic output and made it much harder to cover entitlements for seniors.
“In a post-Roe world,” abortion will be transformed from a right into “a privilege,” said Melissa Jeltsen in The Atlantic. Affluent women will travel out of state to abortion providers or be able to secure abortion pills. The poor, especially Black and Hispanic women, will be more likely to carry unwanted pregnancies to term. Struggling mothers—some with other children—will tumble deeper into poverty. “The most common reason women give for wanting an abortion is that they are not financially prepared to raise the child.” As the Turnaway Study demonstrated, “they’re usually right.”