Pro-Baby, Pro-Family, Pro-Choice
Jill of Feministe mentions a new study by the Guttmacher Institute discussing why women actually get abortions. It turns out that it’s not a desire to destroy The Family, make baby Jesus cry or anything like that, instead, it’s because they want to do better for their current and future children, and that an unwanted pregnancy would interfere with better parenting and family conditions.
“We found that consideration of motherhood issues in abortion decision-making falls into two broad areas: responsibilities for existing children and the ‘ideal’ conditions of motherhood,” says Rachel K. Jones, senior researcher with the Guttmacher Institute. “Among those women with children, the most commonly cited reason for choosing to have an abortion was the concern that having another child would compromise the care given to existing children. Women felt that they were already stretched thin financially, emotionally and physically—and they wanted to put the children they already had front and center. Two-thirds of women who gave this answer were at or below the poverty line and received little help from their partners.”
In addition, many of the women surveyed made direct and indirect references to the “ideal” conditions of motherhood, expressing the view that children are entitled to stable and loving families, financial security, and a high level of care and attention. Because the women were unable to provide those conditions at the time, they did not feel they were in a position to have a child or, if they were already mothers, an additional child.
“Many of these women were already raising children in situations that were less than ideal, and when faced with the possibility of bringing another child into this environment, they preferred to wait until they were in a better situation to be good parents,” says Jones. “These women believed that it was more responsible to terminate a pregnancy than to have a child whose health and welfare could be in question.”
What’s really weird is that when abortion is debated, it’s often framed in the most extreme ways. On one hand, we have discussion of abortion as a “species of homicide” or as “exploitation”, while on the other side, we have a type of autonomy uber alles argumentation that leaves many people cold when discussing methods of abortion that pull at the emotional and sub-rational instincts of people, such as late term abortions. The Guttmacher article says that many women get abortions because they’re financially stretched thin, yet we rarely hear of these women or decision making processes when discussing abortion. Instead, in so much as abortion and poverty have intersected in the national discourse, it’s been to prevent women and families who would most benefit from an open abortion access regime — i.e. poor women — from getting government funding through Medicaid.
But let’s get back to the framing issue. The truth is that not very many people are abortion ideologues, on either side; instead most people seem to be basically uncomfortable with abortion but think that an abortion regime that allows a reasonable amount of access to most people is better than the alternatives. And, in people’s personal experience, they see why people get abortions and the conditions in which abortion occurs. But this personal experience is never reflected in the debate, largely because the words “pro-family” or “family values” have been so corrupted and owned by Republicans. Republicans can appeal to voters who think that, for whatever reason, our culture has gone too far. Now, they don’t do this by enacting any actual policies to prevent or arrest this process, instead they try to treat the symptoms of this general feeling of cultural decline and uneasiness by mandating abstinence only sex-ed, parental notification laws, and occasionally putting stickers on video games or movies. But Democrats have children too and also worry about cultural decline and the environment in which their kids are raised. The problem comes because Democrats, and I think this is a good thing, are the party of cultural dynamism and advancement, and can’t really be the party of “wasn’t the culture better before?” And so the pro-family issue and family values gets trapped in a GOP that isn’t really concerned with actual needs of working families.
Getting back to abortion — it’s no surprise that abortion is discussed in a rights-based, autonomy frame. After all, Roe vs Wade was something of the last triumph of rights-based liberalism, and many, correctly, view abortion qua abortion has a pure autonomy issue. But in case you haven’t noticed, rights-based liberalism isn’t exactly a hot commodity these days. William Saletan suggested this alternate way of framing abortion rights:
Maybe there is. The purists have to accept the pragmatists’ means, and the pragmatists have to focus on the purists’ ends. Together, they need a message that is conservative but can undermine the restrictions countenanced by the pro-family, antigovernment argument. Look at the women left out in the cold by that argument: teenagers, poor women of childbearing age, and women with late-term complications. What do these women have in common? They’re all in lousy situations for bearing and raising children. And they’re all likely—or in the case of late-term complications, virtually certain—to want children later, when they’re old enough, healthy enough, or financially stable enough. They don’t want abortions. They want to be moms—when they’re ready.
Now, many abortion rights advocates have been making this argument that more access to abortion means healthier mothers, children and families, but it still hasn’t really resonated. I imagine there are two reasons for this. One, activists see themselves as countering other activists, and in the case of abortion, that means people who think abortion is murder. The abortion-on-demand for healthier families argument will not convince those who view abortion as a species of homicide, and so its best to stick with your guns. The second reason, and this is much more of a guess, is that many abortion rights people are genuinely conflicted as to the value of the two-parent, husband-wife nuclear family as the basis for how we make decisions about social policy, or at least see the political advocacy of “the family” as having been irretrievably tainted by the right.
But the need to emphasize the synergy between abortion and healthy families will only grow. As Saletan points out, America is basically pro-choice, but we have put limits on how pro-choice we can, “choice” and “autonomy” rhetoric can only get us so far. After all, parental notification and the Hyde amendment don’t restrict the negative rights of free adults, the “choice” of teens and poor women is still protected, in a narrow sense.
A thicker explanation of how abortion makes families better and healthier would help people who have general uneasiness about social and cultural decline still see the availability of abortion to teens and the poor as a public good to provide, not just a “choice” to narrowly and inconsistently protect.
