On October 26th, the Associated Press published a story entitled, “Low-wage workers bear financial brunt of denied abortions.” It suggests that women who cannot afford to raise children should be able to kill them instead via legalized abortion. Citing “research” from the Turnaway Study, which has been thoroughly debunked multiple times by a variety of sources, including Live Action News, they claim that denying women abortions “often leads to increased rates of unpaid debt, poverty, evictions, and bankruptcies over the next five years” and that “[c]arrying an unwanted pregnancy quadruples the odds that a woman and her child will live below the federal poverty line[.]”
The problem with this argument is that it relies entirely on “evidence” obtained from a fatally flawed study conducted by deeply biased researchers/pro-abortion activists who make their livings from – you guessed it – abortion.
Adoption is never mentioned as an alternative for women who cannot afford to raise the children they conceive, even though there are an estimated two million couples in the United States who are waiting to adopt a child. These couples are ready, willing, and able to provide for a child, even if the biological mother cannot. This is not to suggest that adoption is an easy option – it can be emotionally complicated and difficult, to say the least – but it is certainly better to take a difficult path that gives a child a chance at life than to make a hasty decision that results in the death of a helpless, innocent human being.
If the AP and other abortion advocates really cared about low-income women, they would do better to advocate for policy changes that provide parents with meaningful material assistance and services – things like increased paid family leave and other pro-family policies. But large employers have actually been cutting these benefits recently, even as they increase abortion-related benefits like coverage for travel expenses – but pro-abortion media outlets like the AP have been largely silent about this trend.
Meaningful assistance to low-income families can also be found at pregnancy resource centers (PRCs), which have been under heavy attack by the pro-abortion media and politicians in recent months. They have also been the targets of acts of vandalism and violence since the leak of the draft opinion in the Supreme Court Case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade. But PRCs provide tangible support to families, including diapers, clothing, baby food and formula, car seats, and strollers. They also provide services like parenting classes and assistance in applying for government programs and benefits, and some provide medical care like ultrasounds, STD/STI testing, and even prenatal care. The vast majority of this is donor-supported and is provided to clients free of charge.
Killing the impoverished will never be an acceptable “solution” to poverty. Not only does it not actually solve the problem, it discriminates against those who are suffering the consequences of a social ill. The real solution is to eliminate the source of the suffering, not the sufferer. Abortion merely perpetuates a cycle of suffering by offering violence, rather than compassion, as a false solution to society’s problems.
