Scholars Claim Women Need Abortions to Make More Money
“Access to abortion may help safeguard women’s economic standing and workforce participation”
The left comes up with such creative ways to justify this.
The College Fix reports:
Women need abortions to make more money, scholars argue
Restrictions on the killing of preborn babies are harmful to women because they affect their earning potential, a new study argues.
Professor Eden King and her co-authors were motivated by the 2022 Supreme Court ruling Dobbs v. Jackson, which affirmed there is no federal right to abortion. King said she disagreed with the idea that abortion restrictions do not affect a woman’s economic situation and so wanted to study the issue.
The study, published in the Journal of Applied Psychology, argues women have lower earnings when they have kids.
“[T]his study finds that women who had an abortion or avoided pregnancy early in their careers were associated with significantly higher earnings over time compared with those who became mothers,” the authors wrote. “Reproductive decisions are not just a health issue, but an economic one.”
In addition to suggesting subsidized maternity leave and daycare, the authors also want taxpayers and companies to pay for abortion.
“Access to abortion may help safeguard women’s economic standing and workforce participation,” they write. “Because of state-level variation in access, employees may benefit from employer sponsored travel and reproductive health care support.”
One of the authors though said the paper does not argue women should have abortions or delay having kids to make more money.
“No, we don’t suggest abortion or delaying children is needed to have higher earnings, rather we looked at the association between reproductive decisions and income earning trajectories,” Professor Nicola Lawrence-Thomas told The Fix via email. She teaches at the University of Sheffield in England.
“We found women who had children later or didn’t have children early [earned] more overall,” the professor wrote.
She declined to comment on whether she would recommend women delay having kids.
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Comments
What, exactly, are the areas of specialization of the authors of this “study”?
“Expertise in one field does not carry over into other fields. But experts often think so. The narrower their field of knowledge the more likely they are to think so.” – Robert Heinlein
Who ever suggested that idea? It seems obvious that having and raising kids costs money. No one who opposes killing babies does so with the idea that letting the babies live will be an economic boon to the mothers!
This isn’t new. Progressives have been arguing this since at least 1972. It’s probably the most common argument I’ve seen, next to the “the mother will die!” arguments.
Not scholars. Satan worshipping buttholes.
Coincidence does not infer causation
Throughout human history having babies has improved the economic welfare of women who did so. Children as an investment makes perfect sense, if we take into account the benefits they eventually bring to society, and to the care and protection of their own parents in their old age. There have been exceptions of course. The PRC made it very economically damaging for women to have more than one baby, and provided (or demanded) abortions to facilitate this. Now that policy has been reversed, but not without generational consequences to come. The calculation of the return on an investment in children is apparently beyond the abilities or political sensitivities of these authors. But all they really needed to do was ask a grandmother.
Today few families live on a farm where the kids can work, and child labor is outlawed. Old age care is provided by government programs instead of your heirs. For most, children are not an economic asset.
The cohort of women who have children tend to live longer and are generally happier as compared to those that don’t. Those qualities are linked, and are independent of the economic impact. Sure, there are plenty of childless women who live long and happy lives, but biology has determined that the reward systems of mammalian brains are activated strongly by many family related activities, presumably to motivate us towards social behavior that facilitates reproduction. So there is a higher incidence of Depressive Disorders in those who don’t have such close ties, and childlessness has been identified as a risk factor for suicide.
I think you risk confusing cause and effect, as well as effects that are related only in having the same cause.
Well, Hello Captain Obvious !!
A woman can marry young and have children, or pursue a career path which usually means giving up on marriage and kids entirely. She can’t “have it all”.
Professor Eden King and her co-authors should be sterilized so their income will never be affected by tragedy of them becoming pregnant and have a child. It’s a win win all around.