In response to recent news reports from Reuters, the Associated Press and other media outlets tying the recession to an increase in demand for abortion, the antiabortionrights community is arguing that women are “choosing their own material comfort over the life of their unborn children” an interpretation that is “wrong on several accounts” Double X contributor Anna Murphy Paul writes in an opinion piece.

“No one wants her most intimate decisions to be driven by money,” but, at the same time, “opting not to have a child you cant afford to raise can be a realistic and responsible if painful choice, one often based on taking good care of the kids you already have” Murphy Paul says. She continues, “Nor is the intrusion of economic concerns on childbearing a phenomenon of this recession, or even the loosening of sexual mores over the past halfcentury; historically, financial hardship has been an everpresent motivation for ending a pregnancy.”

Murphy Paul cites the results of a 2005 Guttmacher Institute survey that found that nearly threefourths of respondents said that the reason they decided to have an abortion was that they “could not afford a baby right now,” which was the secondmost common reason. The report found that the top reason for having an abortion was that children would interfere with womens education, work or ability to care for dependents, all “concerns that are also largely economic in nature,” Murphy Paul writes. She notes that at the time the study was published, “the Dow was still riding high, and the housing bubble seemed it would never pop.” Murphy Paul adds that a 1987 Guttmacher survey on the same subject produced results “almost identical” to the 2005 survey.

However, “to hear the prolife activists tell it, women arent really struggling with difficult choices they just dont want to give up the luxuries to which theyve become accustomed,” Murphy Paul writes. Abortionrights opponents promote offers of counseling and nocost infant supplies provided through “pregnancy resource centers” to support women who choose not to have an abortion, but such centers often provide misleading information or offer little assistance beyond the first few months after birth, she says.

“Prolife activists are surely right about one thing Its tremendously sad when a woman decides that she cant bring into the world a child whom under better circumstances she would have welcomed,” Murphy Paul continues. However, the “harsh rhetoric about selfishness and irresponsibility help far less than an acknowledgement of and lasting aid with the true costs of raising a child,” she writes. According to Murphy Paul, in “the absence of such help, the most responsible act is to face economic reality headon. For some women, that may mean abortion” (Murphy Paul, Double X, 5/15).

Reprinted with kind permission from nationalpartnership.org. You can view the entire Daily Womens Health Policy Report, search the archives, or sign up for email delivery here. The Daily Womens Health Policy Report is a free service of the National Partnership for Women & Families, published by The Advisory Board Company.

© 2009 The Advisory Board Company. All rights reserved.