The pro-abortion Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR) argues that states with laws protecting preborn children from abortion are costing the nation $68 billion a year. It also claims pro-abortion states are helping the economy by allowing unlimited killing of babies. These pro-abortion assertions are not new, but they do prove that pregnancy and parenting discrimination still exist in the American workforce.
Abortion advocates have been claiming for years that babies hurt the economy. IWPR, NPR, and even businesses have complained that women need to sacrifice their babies for the good of individual businesses and the economy.
Claim #1: Abortion is necessary to improve women’s financial circumstances.
“Abortion bans reduce women’s participation in the workforce,” said IWPR, “which results in significant loss of wages and economic power for women and their families.”
Claiming women will be poor if they don’t kill their children is fear-mongering — and effective. According to the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute, most women who have abortions have said they can’t afford a child and that motherhood would interfere with work or school. Another report, from Very Well Health, found that 40% of women who had abortions said they were not financially prepared for a baby.
Randall K. O’Bannon, Ph.D., NRL-ETF Director of Educational & Research analyzed a pro-abortion report that made the claim that abortion keeps women out of poverty. He explained:
First, notice that, at least in regard to one important criteria, having the abortion did not tend to significantly improve the woman’s economic condition. Forty-five percent were on public assistance before the abortion, 44% after. Most still had income below the federal poverty level and just barely more than half had full time employment.
Second, the sudden increase seen in public assistance may have been due, theoretically, at least in some part, not so much to worsening economic conditions, but to women becoming eligible for new or additional assistance because of the birth of the child. Without more details from the official study, it is difficult to say. The fact that most women on welfare tend to move off it within two years is not mentioned (see NRL’s factsheet on the economic impact of abortion at www.nrlc.org/Factsheets/FS04_MissingPersons.pdf ).
Note as well that nearly half of these women had full time jobs after … birthing their babies; the slight difference between the aborters and non-aborters could have easily been due to some of those women choosing to stay home with the child. Again, without access to full data, we can’t know for sure.
It’s a false narrative that it’s better to spend your life working than it is to spend your life raising children. Motherhood and professional success are not mutually exclusive.
Claim #2: If women can’t kill their preborn babies, our economy will crash.
“Nationally, an estimated additional 0.8 percent of women aged 15 to 44 would have entered the labor force in the absence of reproductive health restrictions,” said the new report. If those pro-life laws are erased, it claims more than 360,000 women could kill their babies and remain in the workforce.
It continued, “For businesses, restrictions on access to reproductive health care affect their ability to build a strong workforce and make their bottom line, which also impacts state economies.”
In other words, keep killing your babies and making money for big business and the government, ladies. We’ll call you powerful to make you feel better about it. Commenting that it’s better for a business’s bottom line for female employees to abort their babies is repulsive.
It also smacks of coercion. A report like this holds the possibility of exerting pressure on businesses to further incentivize abortion and disincentivize having children and parenting.
IWPR’s report is painfully reminiscent of the Live Action Pro-Choice Bosses satire video (watch below), which showed a female employee pressured into an abortion by her boss who understood that it was cheaper for the company to pay for her abortion than to pay for maternity leave and health care for her baby. Pro-abortion policies in the workforce are marketed as pro-woman but in reality, are more about the company’s bottom line.
Moreover, as previously explained by Live Action News’ Cassy Fiano-Chesser, “[T]he economic argument is an ethical falsehood. Even if abortion is good for the economy, that doesn’t mean it should remain legal. This is, quite literally, the same argument slavers used before the Civil War in an effort to keep slavery legal. They argued that ending legalized slavery would destroy the American economy, so human beings should continue to be dehumanized and stripped of their basic rights. Even if taking a human life does make businesses more money, that doesn’t make it acceptable.”
Claim #3: Women need to be able to kill their preborn babies so they can fully participate in society.
IWPR continued (emphasis added), “We all know reproductive rights — including accessible abortion care — are essential to women’s full participation in society. Less talked about is the impact these draconian laws have on the health of the national economy, where women are half of the workforce.”
How quickly feminism shifted from ‘women are equal to men and should be allowed to work’ to ‘women can’t work or be equal members of society unless they kill their children.’ Looks like the endgame of the ‘get women into the workforce’ fight was all access, no rules abortion on demand. Men no longer have to deal with the shaming that comes with abandoning their children because women are now convinced to kill the children before men can abandon them — in the name of equality, of course.
The claim that abortion — the direct killing of preborn children — is “essential to women’s full participation in society” and that “we all know it” is an attempt to make pro-lifers feel uninformed and ashamed of their pro-life stance, and to shame women into feeling that the desire to exit the workforce to focus on motherhood is a sign of weakness. ‘We’ don’t ‘all know’ that abortion is “essential to women’s full participation in society” because it isn’t.
What IWPR, under the guise of feminism and progress, is arguing is that it sees mothers as incapable, powerless, non-contributing members of society. These are lies that everyone who cares about women knows are lies. We know mothers can fully participate in society because it’s been proven by the careers of countless women — including even the late pro-abortion Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and former Speaker of the House, Democratic Rep. Nancy Pelosi.
To state that women must have abortions to be equal to men and partake in society is to imply that women are not equal without it — that because of their fertility, they are somehow “less than.” The implication is that men can be fathers and find success in the workforce, but women can’t. This mentality causes women to look upon their own children as oppressors, keeping them from achieving equality.
The Truth: Family-friendly policies work
These pro-abortion claims ignore the glaringly obvious option that exists — that businesses support families rather than urge them to kill their littlest members.
Research shows that family-friendly workforce policies benefit employers, families, and society by increasing productivity, improving health, and increasing company loyalty and employee motivation.
The organization The Best Place for Working Parents states that 75% of the workforce are caregivers, and predicts that on-site child care, flexible work arrangements and remote work, parental leave, and child care support are the future of business in the U.S.
Companies have the power to create policies that support families and working mothers and fathers. They can implement stronger health care plans, add breastfeeding stations, offer child care on site, approve work-from-home options, and encourage both fathers and mothers to take time for their families. It’s an investment, but families are the future of America.
Killing babies has no business here.
