I don’t expect closely reasoned argument from the lunatic right. If one objects to some claim of theirs, I expect their response to begin “But Obama …” followed either by word salad involving Hillary Clinton or false attribution to George Soros.
Still, these folks are human, they function in the world, they usually respect traffic lights, they change the oil in their pickups, many are kind, loving family members and neighbors. They may love their guns but I bet they don’t want to see their kids slaughtered at school any more than anyone else does. So perhaps it’s appropriate to expect a certain level of reason and arithmetic.
In particular, I have in mind the folks concerned about being replaced. Like the ones in Charlottesville, Virginia, that marched with torches proclaiming they won’t be replaced by Jews. More interesting, regarding abortion, are those concerned that whites, the “real Americans,” will be replaced by people of color, the intruders.
If I were a white worried about losing my spot to a replacer-of-color, I wouldn’t want to interfere with a woman’s right to abortion. Here’s why.
Using data from 2020, there were 3,613,647 births in the U.S., comprising 1,792,369 whites and 1,821,278 others. This results in a slight difference of 28,909 more births of color than of whites. Also, there were 310,053 whites aborted and 620,107 of color aborted.
If there were no abortions, there would be 1,792,369 + 310,053 = 2,102,422 white infants born, 46.27% of the total born. And there would be 1,821,278 + 620,107 = 2,441,385 infants of color born, 53.73% of the total born.
Without abortion the difference in number of births between white infants and infants-of-color rises from 28,909 to 338,963 more births of color than of whites.
Now things get interesting. If dumping Roe vs. Wade works against MAWA, “Make America White Again,” (as if it ever was), how does it get sold to the benighted right, and what is the actual objective?
A 2022 study by Sarah Miller, Laura Wherry, and Diana Foster published in the National Bureau of Economic Research found being denied an abortion increases the amount of debt past due by 30 days or more that a woman holds by 78% and increases negative financial records, such as bankruptcies and evictions, by 81%.
The authors concluded that “ … being denied an abortion has large and persistent negative effects on a woman’s financial well-being. Women denied an abortion experience a significant increase in financial distress during the year that they give birth (or, in some cases, would have given birth since some of them received an abortion elsewhere or miscarried), compared to their counterparts who received a wanted abortion. Unpaid debts that are 30 or more days past due more than double in size, and the number of public records, which include negative events such as evictions and bankruptcies, increases substantially.”
The study also says that “the women who were denied an abortion were significantly less likely to have a prime credit score in the two years following the birth” … and “it appears that denying a woman an abortion reduces her credit score by more than the impact of a health shock resulting in a hospitalization or being exposed to high levels of flooding following Hurricane Harvey.”
“Our study indicates that laws that impose gestational limits for abortion result in worse financial and economic outcomes for the women who are denied an abortion.”
My working assumption is that huge financial consequences of policies are not accidental, collateral damage. I assume they are intended. So I wonder who it is that wants poor women, primarily women of color, and their children, to be financially damaged, and why.
Who benefits from further impoverishing the already poor and increasing their numbers?
Is the game simply one of increasing the supply of even cheaper labor? You’d think if that were the game, the doors of the southern border would be flung wide open. Could it be bolstering the supply of military enlistees? Now I am starting to weird myself out. Am I really entertaining the notion that the defense industries are targeting abortion? To make wars more likely? To bolster sales? Is federal banning of contraception next? Mandatory child birth quotas?
That was too farfetched. I scared myself. Maybe it’s just good old party politics. Solidify the evangelical vote for the GOP? For Trump? A thank you for the long, black, lifetime robes?
Or is it, as some have it, simply the urge to put women “back in their place?”
Richard S. Bogartz is professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
