When abortion was legalized in the United States in 1973, abortion proponents claimed it would cause a decline in the poverty rate. The theory was that if poor women could stop having babies until they were no longer poor, then there would be no more babies growing up to be poor and making more poor babies. Today, that argument continues to be used to justify the availability of abortion through all nine months of pregnancy.
The idea that killing human beings could end poverty is a grossly unethical, eugenic plan. Killing innocent children could never be the solution to poverty, and the efforts and funding that abortion proponents have shoveled into the abortion industry could instead be used to actually help women.
Economist Teresa Ghilarducci confirms that abortion advocates still target poor women and their babies for abortion. In an essay for Forbes, she revealed that she signed onto an amicus brief in support of keeping abortion legal in the case of Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which is in regard to Mississippi’s 15-week abortion restriction. Ghilarducci argues that legalized abortion is directly responsible for improvements in women’s social and economic lives. In other words, she believes it isn’t hard work and determination behind women’s successful careers — it’s the ability to kill their preborn children. Women can achieve nothing without abortion, according to the warped feminism of Ghilarducci.
Teenage motherhood and maternal mortality rates
To support her claim, Ghilarducci cites a study that shows “the expansion of abortion access … reduced teen motherhood by 34%.” Yet the federal government’s Office on Women’s Health reports that the decrease in the teen pregnancy rate — which hit a record low in 2013 — is due to lower rates of sexual activity among teens and the use of birth control for those who are sexually active.
Ghilarducci also claims that abortion has helped to decrease the maternal mortality rate among Black women, which thereby caused an increase in wages. But the maternal mortality rate actually began rising around 1990 — and by 2019, the rate had nearly tripled. In 1987, there were 7.2 maternal deaths per 100,000 women. In 2019, there were 20.1 per 100,000. The Black maternal mortality rate has experienced fluctuations over the years but is now extremely high.
Black women now have a maternal mortality rate more than twice that average with 44 deaths per 100,000 women, while white women have a maternal mortality rate of 17.9 deaths per 100,000. In all, American women have the highest rate of maternal mortality than any other developed nation — yet the U.S. has some of the most relaxed abortion laws of developed nations. Many maternal deaths occur after the child is born as the focus of care shifts from mother to baby — meaning abortion would not have saved these women’s lives (deliberately killing a child in utero is never medically necessary), but access to quality health care may have.
Ghilarducci credits this non-existent decline in maternal mortality with somehow helping women earn an “11% increase in hourly wages later in their careers.” Besides the fact that the maternal mortality rate has not declined, it’s not uncommon for a person’s income to increase over time. It’s called a raise, and it comes “later in their careers.”
READ: Abortion chain with long history of health violations tweets: ‘Abortion is good. We like abortion’
Most women who seek abortions are poor
Ghilarducci uses this false notion of abortion as the hero of women’s health to argue that reduced teen motherhood leads to more economically secure women. Yet, she also says that 49% of women who seek abortions are poor and 75% are low income. If abortion has helped reduce poverty as she claims, her own statistics say otherwise.
Besides this, being poor doesn’t mean women deserve to make the horrific choice to kill their child in order to maybe save themselves. Yet, Ghilarducci seems to believe that poor women have no other choice if they want to ever not be poor. And like abortionists looking to make a buck, she shames disadvantaged women by implying that they are irresponsible if they don’t kill their baby. That plan hasn’t worked for women since 1973, and it won’t work now.
“The feminization of poverty”
Women in the U.S. are 35% more likely than men to be poor. Single mothers face the highest risk of living in poverty; 30.6% of households headed by single mothers live in poverty compared to less than 15% of households headed by a man and about five percent of households headed by a married couple. It’s a trend called “the feminization of poverty.” Five million more women than men were poor in 2012 and it seems that since abortion was legalized, this problem has only increased.
In Poverty and Abortion: A Vicious Cycle, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops explained:
Beginning in the 1990s, groundbreaking research has found that the “technology shock” of widely available contraception and abortion has increased out-of-wedlock births. Previously, it was widely accepted that an unexpected pregnancy out-of-wedlock should lead a man to offer marriage.
Once contraception and abortion became widespread, the same pregnancy came to be seen as the woman’s responsibility – and as her problem. The man’s obligation can end with an offer to pay for abortion; if the woman refuses, she often soon finds herself to be a single mother.
If the woman does go through with the abortion — one she may not even want — it doesn’t typically save her relationship or financial status. The rate of divorce and breakup after an abortion increases by as much as 75%, according to the deVeber Institute. Since Ghilarducci states that 59% of women who are seeking abortions are already mothers (other research disputes this), a divorce will leave them and their born children at risk of the poverty that coincides with single motherhood.
And the cycle continues.
The solution
Ghilarducci’s solution to poverty is to kill. The abortion industry is currently pushing for the government to pay to ensure that job is done. Women on Medicaid have more abortions than other women in their state and if their state’s Medicaid program pays for elective abortions, the abortion rate climbs even higher.
When the government financially backs a product or service, the use of that product or service increases, and this is true for abortion. A 2017 report by the pro-abortion Reproductive Health Investors Alliance showed that the percentage of abortions paid by taxpayers in states that don’t allow Medicaid to pay for abortions was 1.5%. In states that do allow Medicaid to pay for abortions, that number is an astounding 52.2%. And women who undergo government-funded abortions tend to have more abortions.
According to research, if Medicaid funds health care for women and babies and stops funding abortion, the abortion rate among Medicaid recipients drops as much as 35%. If the government stopped funding death and started pouring that same money into actual programs to help women, lives could be saved from both death-by-abortion and poverty. Instead, pro-abortion politicians continue to funnel money into abortion — significantly through Planned Parenthood, which was founded based on the discriminatory principles of the eugenics movement in order to reduce the number of disadvantaged and minority Americans through sterilization, birth control, and now, abortion. It seems abortion proponents know very well that abortion won’t end poverty, but they continue the charade rather than actually supporting families in poverty.
The answer to ending poverty and helping women who face unplanned pregnancies isn’t killing. Private programs like those run by pregnancy resource centers can help. Establishing family housing and daycare on university campuses can help. Incentivizing companies to offer paid maternity leave, paid paternal leave, paid family leave, and health insurance for even part-time employees can all help.
But perhaps most importantly, a renewed devotion to and respect for marriage could change the fate of children more vulnerable to abuse and at risk of poverty. Children who grow up in the home of their married parents are healthier and better educated and are more likely to avoid poverty.
Abortion does not make women successful. It kicks them when they’re down.
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