In post-Roe America, who is looking out for the mother?
Many Americans offered prayers of thanksgiving yesterday for the demise of the January 22, 1973 Roe v. Wade decision after 50 years. But we should also note that much of American society remains structurally committed to the support of abortion.
Decisions to abort unborn children are personal, but they emerge within particular social structures. Women with unintended pregnancies, especially when they are single, face cultural and economic pressures. They often face a catastrophic loss of relationships, as boyfriends desert them and parents sometimes shut them out. Many have immediate economic difficulties and can foresee long-term problems, as structures built on abortion availability do not accommodate those who continue their pregnancies.
Although in the long run corporations depend on more births to deliver future customers, in the short run pregnancies can reduce profits. The three Supreme dissenters from the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe—Justices Breyer, Kagan, and Sotomayor—followed previous Court language about “safeguarding each woman’s reproductive freedom” so each can “participate equally in [American] economic and social life.” Amy Matsui, Director of Income Security at the National Women’s Law Center, has emphasized how increases in the Gross National Product depend on abortion: “Unplanned births make it harder for women to work.”
From a business standpoint, the goal is to avoid loss of work time: It’s less expensive to facilitate abortions than to allow work at home, or to set aside office space for nursing rooms and baby care. Within days of the Dobbs decision, new wave corporations such as Microsoft, Meta, Netflix, Starbucks, Nike, and Zillow said they would pay travel costs for employees (and even family members or partners) in pro-life states who decided to head to abortion havens. Uber offered not only travel expenses but reimbursement for any driver who (hypothetically) faces a lawsuit for transporting women to abortion centers.
Traditional companies also hopped onto the bandwagon. JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs apparently decided capitalism needs abortion. Kroger and Levi Strauss said they would pay to eliminate future customers for Sugar Pops or denim. Warner Brothers Discovery, which owns CNN, announced it would pay for abortion travel. Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch in an internal memo called the Supreme Court decision a “crushing blow to reproductive rights” and said the company would respond powerfully through its content and journalism.
The federal government now stands firmly on the side of abortion. For example, the Food and Drug Administration had a longstanding requirement that abortionists giving women the abortion drug mifepristone had to do it in person. The reasons: to ensure that women did not have an ectopic pregnancy or were taking it too late in pregnancy. Possible coercion by men was another concern. But early this month the FDA said the in-person requirement is now gone, as are guidelines that prohibited retail pharmacies like Walgreens and CVS from dispensing the drug. Those two pharmacy companies have announced plans to pursue certification.
It was no surprise that numerous college presidents and professors quickly issued statements attacking the Dobbs decision. Numerous university social work programs make abortion advocacy part of their teaching, and in June the National Association of Social Workers quickly announced that it “condemns today’s U.S. Supreme Court decision.” The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists recommends that medical schools include abortion training in their curricula.
In several books I’ve documented newspaper and magazine abortion advocacy. A new development is the increase in television plotlines on abortion. “Abortion Onscreen in 2022” counted sixty shows, more than in any previous years, with at least twenty portraying “barriers to access,” compared to only two in 2021.
Director of Income Security Matsui, in “Abortion Access is Critical to Economic Security,” says avoidance of abortion “increases the amount of debt 30 days or more past due by 78% [and] increases the rate of negative public records, such as bankruptcies and evictions, by 81%.” Matsui does not suggest that a lender or landlord looking at a very pregnant woman might try a little tenderness.
Marvin Olasky, now affiliated with two institutes, Discovery and Acton, is an elder in the Presbyterian Church of America and the author or co-author of more than 30 books, including The Story of Abortion in America.