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In my first post in this “Vote Pro-Life” Series, I explained that the right to life must come before liberty (“freedom to choose”) or the pursuit of happiness–thus we should vote pro-life, first and foremost.
Today, I’d like to focus in on poverty. Specifically, evidence shows that abortion increases poverty rather than reducing it. So anyone supporting abortion is working to increase poverty, rather than working to eliminate it.
Over the next few weeks leading up to the election, I’ll address a number of other reasons why (when a candidate who is against abortion is on the ballot, which is unfortunately not always the case) I believe people should make their decisions based on a candidate’s stance on abortion before considering secondary issues like the economy or health care.
“Pro-choice” politicians often have seemingly excellent stands on eliminating poverty. They seek to lift up the impoverished by offering them welfare, Medicaid, or even socialized health care. Unfortunately, they include abortion on demand in their ideal health care system (both domestically and internationally), ignoring all of the evidence showing that abortion is at the heart of the problem, rather than being the solution.
According to Dr. Thomas Strahan, in his essay “Abortion and the Feminization of Poverty,” published in Consistently Opposing Killing, “researchers have found that the socioeconomic status of women tends to deteriorate as abortion is repeated” (p. 48).
Young women are often told they “need” to have an abortion so they can stay in school, get a good job, and make better money. But half of women having abortions are repeat “customers”. So starting a woman down this path is not only dangerous for her health, it isn’t good from a perspective of decreasing poverty.
This is because women having repeat abortions are more likely than women having their first abortion–or those who never aborted–to be divorced (no husband means less family income), no longer enrolled in school (less education means less income), and more likely to be on welfare, according to a Yale Medical School study (p. 48).
So encouraging women to have an abortion likely begins a cycle that will further impoverish them.
As the passionate young woman pointed out to her opponents in this video, abortion has destroyed the black family. This has left many single mothers who cannot make ends meet on one income, forcing them to need programs like welfare. Abortion has made their problems worse, not better. (I’ll return to the topic of the destruction of the family next week.)
Additionally, a World Health Organization report found “that women who have undergone induced abortion tend to consume alcohol more than the general population” (Strahan, p. 51). Obviously alcoholism makes it hard to keep a job, damages the person’s health, and harms any future children she may become pregnant with. All of these problems will increase the welfare and medical costs that must be paid by the government.
Abortion doesn’t make a woman less likely to depend on government aid—it makes her more likely to be without a good job, without a spouse to help her pay the bills, and thus less likely to be able to make ends meet and to keep herself out of poverty.
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Nothing like a bit of embellishment to support the cause is there.
“researchers have found that the socioeconomic status of women tends to deteriorate as abortion is repeated” or is it that abortion is repeated because their status has deteriorated?
‘So encouraging women to have an abortion likely begins a cycle that will further impoverish them.’ a theory without support.
“that women who have undergone induced abortion tend to consume alcohol more than the general population” or is it that women who consume more alcohol are more likely to have an abortion.
Posted September 27, 2010 at 7:11 pm
Okay, let’s start with the fact that I’m Pro-Life, I just don’t buy THIS Pro-Life argument.
• Politicians have a long history of talking about social issues and then governing with an economic program. Since Roe v. Wade, Republicans have done nothing of substance to abolish or even restrict abortion, but they have sent our jobs overseas, hammered down wages, and ruined our financial sector. I vote economic issues because my vote might change that, but it seems to have no effect when we vote Pro-Life.
• While you show many correlations between abortion and poverty, there are just as many correlations the other way. For instance teenage abortion is more frequent among higher social classes, the more education a woman has the fewer children she will probably have, and the longer a woman delays having her first child the better that child will do in school. These facts would seem to militate against your conclusions. What both sets of arguments fail to show is CAUSALITY. Frankly, I don’t know if there is any relationship between abortion and poverty, but your argument fails to clarify this for me.
I do know that when the economy gets better, the abortion rate declines, that when young men can’t find jobs that will allow them to support a family then they don’t get married, and that most women faced with a choice of having children out of wedlock or not having children at all will have them out of wedlock. The economy of the 1950′s saw wages double in ten years and we saw crime rates and out-of-wedlock births fall to their lowest levels ever. The working class share of income peaked out in 1972; is it any wonder that we have seen social values erode right along with wages since then?
BTW, nice graphic!
Posted September 27, 2010 at 11:58 pm
While abortion has some tendancies to increase poverty, on the whole I don’t think we can conclude that it does unless it is because God judges us for it.
Posted September 29, 2010 at 12:23 pm
In the beginning, new life is a comsumer of wealth, but only for 18 years……for the next 60 years it is a generator of wealth.
The problem is the focus is ENTIRELY on the first 18 years……thus poverty! The whole picture is that new life eliminates poverty!
Posted September 29, 2010 at 1:42 pm
That’s why children are investments (wealth) for the future!
Posted September 29, 2010 at 1:55 pm
[...] So not only does abortion destroy families, but the destruction of the family further increases the poverty rate (the topic of last week’s post). [...]
Posted October 5, 2010 at 1:30 pm
Try this on for size.
Back when Social security was started, there were 16 working people for every retired person. Now, there are four working people for every retired person. This is a problem. You guys think abortion is a problem. Watch what happens when we don’t have enough tax payers to keep up with the retired people. Good bye Grandma.
Ok, another point. The states that had the least abortions had the best recovery rate in the recession in the 90′s. Why would states who have less abortions be financially more stable? Abortion does not increase the level of income. Children do create wealth, albeit secondary wealth. I mean, a kid has to have baby bottles. Then clothes. Then eventually a car. Who is selling these things to the parents or kid? Are they making any money? Yes! Answer me this question pro choice people; how can you sell your product to shrinking population? Explain how that works. You sell ten thousand cars this year and then next year there are only 9900 people. Sure, that’s only a one percent decrease in the population but, you screwed the guy down the road who is going to sell the car you made 16 years ago because the kid isn’t there to buy it. So, the inverse cannot be true. Poverty does not cause abortion, it causes it.
The estimates are that more than half of black babies are aborted. So, the black population isn’t getting any larger any faster. So, how are they going to have their voices heard in the political arena if no one is there to make the argument. Who are the black representatives that are in the Congress? Who are the pro life blacks saying they want equal representation? Who’s going to tell the pro choice people they are sick of being targeted by planned parenthood because their founder was a bigot? Well, the voice isn’t getting out there. It’s gone.
Seriously, God doesn’t directly punish people with lightening from heaven because of things they have done. But, there are consequences to our actions. If we do not seriously do a full throttle reverse on abortion, we will cause more problems in the future. We like to blame God for that but we really can’t. Thank free will and liberals. Why are they called liberals? What are we liberated from? We are chained down when we think like pro choicers. We don’t have a can do attitude. They use a solution to a problem and don’t look at what will happen in the future. They are chained to making the money now. They are short sighted.
If people say that poverty causes abortions then they would be wrong. If there were no people there would be no wealth. The inverse isn’t true though. If there was no wealth then there wouldn’t be any people. The problem is greed. It starts out as a “right” and now abortion doctors have exploited that “right” right into their pocket books.
How about not that when the economy gets better, the economy will get better. How about, when we stop killing babies as a nation, we will have to produce more products. Who is going to produce those products? Americans hopefully.
It’s been said best by one of my teachers about Abortion. A person becomes a person at conception. I can prove that too.
Posted October 6, 2010 at 8:51 pm
[...] clinic. These problems still exist after the abortion–and many of these problems, like poverty or rocky relationships, may even be compounded by the [...]
Posted October 11, 2010 at 1:42 pm