A recent New York Times article focused on classifying who the “typical” abortion-vulnerable women are has accidentally revealed how to help women avoid abortion. According to the NYT, the women who most commonly undergo abortions are already mothers, have attended some college, are low income, and are unmarried. Removing or alleviating the concerns that convince women to abort should be society’s focus, instead of on making abortion more easily accessible.
Already Mothers
“Six in 10 women who have abortions are already mothers…” reported the NYT. And one of the reasons they reportedly have abortions is because they want to be a better parent to the child or children that are already born, according to pro-abortion Dr. Ushma Upadhyay of the Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health at the University of California, San Francisco.
In a 2015 study, Upadhyay found that women’s reasons included feeling unable to afford another baby, feeling unprepared for another child, or experiencing problems in their relationship. Sometimes finances were a factor, and many of these women are single mothers. But reasons also revolved around simply not wanting to have a second or third child. Some women associate being a good mother with having fewer children, regardless of the fact that they are financially secure and in stable marriages.
READ: Abortion affects sibling survivors: ‘I miss them although I never knew them’
Single mothers fearful of having another baby due to a lack of money or support, financial support and moral support could be provided instead of offering death as a solution. Whether that comes through the government or through non-profit organizations is yet to be determined. As Live Action News previously reported, one single mother faced an unplanned pregnancy and received help she received from CareNet (a pregnancy resource center) and a local church. She was provided with so much support during her pregnancy that she chose to keep her baby even after the baby was diagnosed with a life-limiting chromosomal condition. But church members continued to support her and her other children by tutoring her older children, finding in-home care for her younger children so that she could work, and even buying car seats for their own cars so they could help provide this mother with respite. They helped rid her home of mold and have continued to care for her family long after that decision for life was made.
It was because of this support that this single mother was able to freely choose life for her child instead of feeling trapped into an abortion by her circumstances.
Have attended some college
Women are delaying having children in favor of earning degrees and establishing their careers first. Many have become convinced that they are incapable of earning a degree while simultaneously being pregnant or raising a child. That false notion is largely thanks to the abortion lobby’s insistence that women need abortion in order to achieve their goals.
But states are funding abortion pill access on college campuses instead of family-friendly housing, daycare, or opportunities for mothers and women to succeed in the college environment.
Feminists for Life suggests Best Practices at Colleges and Universities for Servicing Pregnant and Parenting Students, which include allowing up to a year’s leave for students without suffering the loss of credits, ensuring that staff is properly trained to deal with such situations, and establishing a department as the central point on campus where pregnant students can receive assistance. An on-campus parenting group, telecommuting options, rescheduling of exams, extended deadlines due to pregnancy as well as labor and delivery, and the ability to stay in the dorms during pregnancy are all ways to assist women in freely choosing life for their babies.
Feeling as though you have to choose between your baby and your education is not freedom. It’s oppression. With more and more women entering the world of higher education, it’s time that higher education made room for mothers.
READ: Why women have late-term abortions, according to the abortion industry
Have a low income
According to the NYT, low-income women are a growing share of the women seeking abortions.
“It’s people who don’t have access to health care, access to contraception, who, when facing an unintended pregnancy, don’t have the resources to have another child,” said Rachel Jones, a principal research scientist at Guttmacher. The NYT reports that there is a growing number of charities that pay for the abortions of underprivileged women who can’t afford to pay for abortions themselves. But instead of shifting their focus to help women successfully parent and to assist them financially, they fund the deaths of children who would potentially be born into poverty.
According to a study in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, nearly 75% of women with a history of abortion who sought post-abortion care admitted that they felt at least subtle forms of pressure to have an abortion. The study notes:
Future efforts to implement woman-centered individual counseling should incorporate the well-known risk factors described above. However, doing so will not necessarily guarantee that women will have the personal strength and the social and material resources to follow their desires. As a society that values freedom and choice, we have a moral obligation to provide the social structures necessary to make choosing motherhood as easy as choosing abortion. In the U.S. we have clearly failed in this regard, as Madeira notes:
Abortion has a number of ugly truths. One of them is that many abortions are prompted by social conditions, social scripts, and social pressures that have removed a robust safety net of formal and informal supports that should exist and, in fact, do exist in other, primarily European, countries. Abortions are disproportionately higher among low income women and women of color. This is a good indicator that at least some women are electing abortion because they feel they cannot materially provide for the child they would bear.
Charities and government programs such as Medicaid could be offering services to help women freely give birth to their babies and raise them instead of paying for their children to be killed. Understanding why women have abortions means creating solutions to their concerns without resorting to killing human beings. No mother should believe she has to choose between her child’s life and her goals, income, or education.
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