“My body. My choice.” “If it’s not your body, it’s not your decision.” “Women are not livestock.” “Keep your laws off my body.” “Pro-Freedom. Pro-Justice. Pro-Choice.” Through its signage, the Women’s March of October 2, 2021, once again articulated the political message of the moment.
In Roe v. Wade (1973), the Supreme Court articulated the judicial message: An individual’s “zone” of privacy is “broad enough to encompass a woman’s decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.” At least for the time being, the ruling affirmed a woman’s fundamental right to abortion–increasingly severe restrictions notwithstanding.
Neither of these realities, however, has succeeded in creating a groundswell of support for abortion rights. According to a June 9, 2021 Gallup Poll, from 1989 to the present, opposition to Roe v. Wade has remained fairly stable, moving between a high of 36% of Americans in 2002 to a low of 28% in 2019, sitting presently at 32%. At the same time, the percent of Americans who support Roe has also remained steady, moving back and forth between 52% and 66%, and presently at 58%.
Though 58% is a majority, it hasn’t been a large enough majority to drive legislation that guarantees the right to abortion. Which is what’s needed. To help achieve that goal, the pro-choice movement should seek a different approach to messaging. A path toward that end might include reframing the issue to appeal to a broader audience and create to a sense of urgency in the matter. Below is an argument that may contribute to that end.
Our children are our future. This is both a truism and a cliché. The concept, whether articulated or not, undergirds support for many policies, including universal Pre-K, free community college, and paid family leave. It also provides a rationale for a legislatively guaranteed right to abortion. Here’s why.
In 2014–the last year when statistics are available–three quarters of the 653,000 abortion patients were poor–having an income at most twice the poverty level ($15,730 annually for a family of two). Couple that with the growing number of states passing stricter limits on abortion; the expense of the procedure (starting at about $500); and the ages of abortion patients (more than half adolescents or in their early twenties) and you have a recipe for more coat-hanger procedures and more unwanted children born into poverty.
The effects of poverty on children are widely recognized and include both immediate and long term outcomes. Hunger, illness, instability, and insecurity are among the obvious short-term effects. Low academic achievement, difficulties with social and emotional development, behavioral problems, and obesity are longer term effects. Poverty increases stress levels, which can negatively affect the immune system as well as interactions between the endocrine and nervous systems. These systems affect learning and decision-making. Poverty also increases parents’ stress levels and can negatively impact parenting practices.
Other effects of poverty are grounded in a child’s environment–housing, levels of danger in the neighborhood, the presence (or absence) of parks and libraries. Still others in the possibility of neglect. Together, and separately, these factors increase the likelihood of negative outcomes, including disciplinary problems at school and delinquency in the teen years. These, in turn, may be linked to later academic failure. Adults who grow up in poverty are also less likely to have skills needed for jobs that pay a “living wage.”
Childhood poverty levels an economic cost on the whole society as well–higher healthcare costs, lower economic productivity, and costs associated with homelessness and crime. Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis quantified the effect, determining that overall, child poverty reduced the size of the economy in 2015 by 5.4 percent, and had a dollar impact of over $1 trillion.
The qualitative costs may be less easy to measure, but are no less devastating to the health of our country. How many innovative ideas, inventions, and solutions have we, as a society, missed because people quite capable of coming up with them have been broken by childhood poverty? How many future leaders have been drowned in a sea of environmental adversities? We will never know. But what we do know is that that sea spawns an incalculable waste of human potential.
Abortion rights–protected by federal legislation–won’t eliminate poverty, but would go a long way to ensure that every child is a wanted child. That fewer children suffer the effects of growing up poor. And that more children become adults contributing to the U.S. economy as workers, innovators, leaders, and intellectuals.
Pro-choice is in the national interest.
Pro-Choice is Pro-America.