Reclaiming Our Children: A Blog About Healing After Abortion

 With Womens Equality Day approaching I thought I would post this article by Dave Reardon:

ABORTION AND THE FEMINIZATION
OF POVERTY

David C. Reardon, Ph.D.

Abortion advocates claim that the right to abort unplanned
pregnancies empowers women. They view unplanned children as the cause of lost education
and career opportunities. Abortion, they claim, enables women to control their lives,
pursue their dreams, and ultimately improve their socio-economic status.

But this argument presupposes that the birth of an unplanned
child has a negative effect on women's lives and that abortion has a positive, or at least
neutral, effect. Recent evidence shows otherwise.

Thomas Strahan, a researcher with the Association of
Interdisciplinary Research, recently reviewed over 26 studies relating to abortion's
impact on the socio-economic status of women.⁽¹⁾

These studies show the following:

• Women who have had abortions are at greater risk of suffering
  emotional and psychological problems which may interfere with their ability to
  concentrate, make decisions, and interact with others, thereby reducing their level of job
  skills and employment opportunities.

• Post-abortion women are more likely to engage in drug and
  alcohol abuse, often as a means of "numbing" negative feelings stemming from the
  abortion. This will in turn effect their ability to function in the workplace and may
  inhibit their ability to enter into meaningful relationships.

• Women who have had abortions are more likely to become
  pregnant again and undergo additional abortions. Nearly 50% of all abortions are repeat
  abortions. These repeat abortions do not represent "satisfied customers."
  Instead, post-abortion women often seek replacement pregnancies to make up for the aborted
  child, but find themselves faced with the same social pressures which led to the first
  abortion. There is also evidence that some women undergo repeat abortions as an act of
  "self-punishment" or as attempt to "harden" themselves to negative
  feelings stemming from their first abortion.

• Compared to their peers, teenagers who have had one abortion
  are 4 times more likely to have a subsequent abortion. Almost 20% of teen aborters have a
  second abortion within a year, and 38% have a second abortion within 5 years.

• Women who have had abortions are more likely to
  subsequently require welfare assistance, and the odds of going on welfare increase with
  each subsequent abortion.

• Women who have repeat abortions tend to have an increasing
  number of health problems and greater personality disintegration, which increases the
  likelihood of their needing public assistance.

• Post-abortion women have greater difficulty establishing
  permanent relationships with a male partner. They are more likely to never marry, more
  likely to divorce, and more likely to go through a long string of "unsuccessful"
  relationships. This inability to form a "nuclear family" reduces household
  income and increases the probability that the woman and her children will require public
  assistance.

• Women who have had repeat abortions are more likely to
  desire children and are likely to carry one or more subsequent "replacement"
  pregnancies to term. This means that many repeat aborters end up becoming unmarried
  mothers, the very fate they tried to avoid when they had their first abortion. Only now,
  they also have to deal with post-abortion psychological and emotional scars.

These studies lead Strahan to conclude that "the
repeated utilization of abortion appears to lead not to economic prosperity or social
well-being, but to an increasing feminization of poverty."

In light of the evidence, it is hard to see how abortion has
served to empower women. It has not made them richer, or happier, or more successful.
Indeed, it has served mainly to achieve all of the opposite effects.

Yet abortion will continue to be defended as a "woman's
right" because it is such an important political symbol of the emancipated
woman's right to "control her own body."

Perhaps it is time to worry less about the symbolism of legal
abortion and more about its reality. Abortion does not free women. It simply enslaves them
in a new way. 

Originally published in The Post-Abortion Review 1(3),
Fall 1993.

1. Strahan, "Women Increasingly
Receive Public Assistance as Abortion is Repeated," Association for
Inter-disciplinary Research in Values and Social Change Newsletter, 4(2):3-7 1991,
available for $1 from The Storer Foundation, Att: Marie Hagan, 419 7th St. NW, Ste. 500,
Washington, DC 20004.