A Matter Of Welfare

On June 30, 1980, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down another in its long and controversial series of opinions on the subject of human abortion. This time the court concluded that federal and state governments were under no Constitutional obligation to fund abortions under the Medicaid program.

Anti-abortion groups claimed a victory, saying that taxpayers should not be forced to pay for abortions against their wishes. Abortion proponents, noting that the Congress and a majority of state legislatures have already gone on record in opposition to abortion funding, said that the ruling would drastically limit abortion access for poor women. Both responses reflected an accurate analysis of the court's action, and both were entirely predictable. What neither group noted, however, is that the welfare abortion controversy is as much a matter of welfare as it is a question of abortion.

Reasons cited in favor of funding abortions under Medicaid fall within two general headings: the equal access and economic arguments. According to the former theory, rich women are able to "choose" abortions and to finance them for themselves, so the government ought to allow indigent women the same option by subsidizing the procedure with Medicaid dollars. The second theory sees poverty itself as a compelling reason to abort, and presents "evidence" to support a conclusion that both the poor themselves and the society as a whole will benefit from a welfare abortion program.

In order to understand the error of these arguments, it is necessary to relate the welfare-abortion question to a culture of inequality which is responsible for making poverty itself an institution that can be simultaneously tolerated and condemned by reformists. The economics of poverty and the economics of abortion are inseparable.

Poverty, as a personal experience, affects all facets of an individual's existence. It limits one's lifestyle in every conceivable way--not just physically, but socially, environmentally, culturally, and politically as well. It isolates its subjects from the mainstream of society, and it instills in them a sense of irrelevance, rejection, and hopelessness.

Because our nation is founded both on the idealism of individual equality and on the practical theory of competitive economics, poverty has yet another dimension. It serves as a yardstick by which the achievements of the non-poor may be measured. While poverty may be condemned as unfair, it nonetheless serves to reinforce the belief that individual success and individual worth are identical. And so, while the system may see a need to relieve poverty, it strongly militates against the actual elimination of poverty.

It is in this respect that the equal access theory in the abortion debate most clearly illustrates the error of contemporary reformist thinking. By proposing to provide equality of "choice" to the poor with free abortions, the argument carries an implicit assumption that the poor are equal in most (if not all) other respects. The theory thus reinforces the myth that one's personal abilities and one's personal choices are the primary factors which determine one's status in society.

But the myth of "choice" in abortion is apparent not only with regard to the needy. Because abortion undeniably involves a degree of physical and emotional pain, the abortion decision cannot be viewed apart from the factors that motivate it. Those factors--personal problems, social pressure, lack of support from family, society, or friends-suggest that the choice is never a truly voluntary one. It is more likely in fact that women submit to abortions, not so much because they have the choice, but because they feel that in their own circumstances, they have no choice at all.

For indigent women the decision is even less voluntary. When one considers the fact that poor women have been effectively denied access to the basic necessities of life, that adequate housing, nutrition, jobs and job training, and daycare services are generally out of reach, the offer of a "free" abortion seems far less altruistic. Poverty itself negates the right to make choices.

A variation of the equal access argument involves the prediction that a given number of poor women will opt for abortions anyway and, denied safe, legal ones, they will be driven to the "back-alley butcher." Although government statistics from those states which ceased to provide welfare abortions following a federal payment ban in 1977 tend to discredit this approach, it is still accepted as valid by a number of public officials, service and lobbying groups, and well-intentioned private citizens.

This, too, is an argument based on a false premise; the misunderstanding here is primarily one of values. A well-known historian once commented that it is upper-middle-class couples, who have all the children they want and who fear their own teenage daughters would be "ruined" by an unplanned pregnancy, who form the backbone of pro-abortion opinion in America. Because the poor generally have not been assimilated into a culture which condemns large, woman-headed households, teenage motherhood, or so-called illegitimate births, an unintended pregnancy does not create the personal crisis that is imagined by more affluent pro-abortionists.

Furthermore, material wealth and social status mean most to those who have achieved them. And the values of low-income people are proportionately more "people-centered." Thus the attitude toward children among disadvantaged classes, particularly minority groups, has been one of unqualified acceptance. Because childbearing is never explicitly condemned, the "right" of abortion--even in cases of near-insurmountable financial hardship--has never been viewed with anything close to the urgency attributed to it by those who subscribe to the "back-alley butcher" theory.

Like the equal access arguments, the economic aspects of abortion funding are similarly based on judgments which represent the values and interests of the upper classes. It was argued by the abortion funding advocates in the Supreme Court case that indigent women, as a direct consequence of their own economic deprivation, were subject to more frequent and more serious health problems during pregnancy and delivery, and that their children likewise were at a medical disadvantage. These facts were presented to the court as evidence that induced abortions were a "medical necessity" among the welfare population.

Not only did that argument fail to note that all poor people, not just pregnant women and infants, are adversely affected by poverty, but it neglected to take into consideration the fact that health conditions generating difficulties in natural birth are also likely to present problems in abortion surgery.

Ironically, those who argued on behalf of Medicaid abortion funds were willing to identify the environmental problems associated with economic hardship, but were silent with regard to any political or economic solution to these problems. In other words, those women who lack adequate food, clothing, shelter, education, daycare, jobs, and other opportunities taken for granted by most Americans, are to be offered abortions precisely because these needs remain unmet. It is this kind of reasoning which has led a number of welfare rights advocates to conclude that human services to the poor will be diminished in direct proportion to the increased availability of abortions as a solution to human problems.

Abortion does nothing whatever to promote social and economic justice, nor does it compensate for the lack of it. But it does, indeed, undermine collective responsibility. Since abortion was made legal nationally in 1973, it has become less and less "logical" for the government (or the private sector) to respond to the needs of a mother for daycare or affordable family housing. Just as the consequence of a woman's decision to abort has become private and outside the realm of public interference, so has the consequence of her determination not to abort. More and more, she is left to fend for herself; more and more, she is blamed for her own situation.

The Medicaid abortion controversy, with all its apparent contradictions, has the unique potential to help us identify a difference between real and imagined charity. While funding abortions may seem a relatively simple way to avoid a more radical response to human needs, it can also be interpreted as an implicit denial of all those things we seek in the name of our children.

A true economic democracy cannot be created overnight, nor without considerable commitment and sacrifice on the part of many. But a positive approach to the interrelated issues of poverty and abortion might be a good place to start.

Elizabeth Moore was a working single mother of six who received supplemental assistance from AFDC when this article appeared. She wrote for The Right to Life News.