Reply #3: Economic Opportunity via Abortion or Lack of Children?

[Modern School]

Many pro-choice advocates argue that abortion increases economic opportunities for women. Again, I am not arguing against abortion. It should continue to be legal, affordable and accessible for many reasons. However, this argument conflates a medical procedure with future wealth, when it is actually the absence of children and the numerous expenses associated with child rearing, not abortion itself that is the basis for this. If poor women are more likely to have an unintended pregnancy, then reducing poverty would not only improve women’s economic welfare directly, but indirectly, too, by reducing the chances that they are forced to provide materially for a child before they are ready to do so. However, even this argument is not entirely consistent with the evidence. While delaying childbearing generally improves the economic welfare of affluent women, it lowers the economic welfare of lower income women. Several studies indicate that poor women who have children early, particularly as teens, thus being freed of child-raising duties by their late-20s to pursue employment opportunities, had higher incomes than their peers who had children in their 20s and 30s, and were less likely to be living in poverty (See Mike Males). This is not to say that teens should be encouraged to have children or denied access to abortion. Lower income teen mothers are still much less likely to become affluent adults than their affluent peers. But this tendency has far more to do with their lack of privileges growing up and as young adults, than it does with motherhood or lack of access to abortion. Lower income children continue to lack privileges such as health insurance, good nutrition, clean environments, enriching summer activities like camp, vacations and summer school, while as young adults they continue to lack privileges like inheritance, business connections, and the ability to afford college. (See here for links: http://modeducation.blogspot.com/2011/07/abortion-rights-labor-and-left.html)