Sixty-four percent of American women who choose abortion feel pressured to do so by others. So says Richard Stith in a brief essay in the most recent issue of First things. Although sexual promiscuity and out of wedlock pregnancies are not new, until recently there was a fair amount of social pressure on friends, family, and not least of all the man involved, to take some responsibility for the surprise child. But with the invention of a constitutional right to abortion, the one who often feels the most pressure–a pressure to abort–is the women carrying the child.
Think about it. Suppose a 17 year old girl has sex with her 20 year old boyfriend. A few months later she finds out she is expecting. Now what? Well, the boyfriend doesn’t want any part of a child, so he encourages an abortion. He argues, “Hey, if I knew you were thinking of having a baby I wouldn’t have had sex in the first place.” (He probably would have–sex is a powerful desire–but he can make the argument nonetheless.) The girl’s family try to be supportive. But they know the work involved in raising a child. Plus, mom would really like her teenage daughter to finish school. Her friends are little help. They can’t imagine toting a baby around at their age. Some of the friends have had abortions themselves. All the pressure–subtle or direct–is to terminate the pregnancy.
Granted, 40 years ago there were 20 year old guys who would ditch a pregnant girlfriend. There were teenage girls who didn’t want to be pregnant. There were moms who hoped for “more” for their girls. But 40 years ago when pregnancy came a knockin, a child was a foregone conclusion. The family knew they had to rally around the young pregnant girl. Friends might be embarassed, but they had to adjust. Even the no-good guy might own up to his part of the pregnancy. The woman (and the man) might be blamed for sleeping around, but she would not be blamed for having a child. But today the child is, to use Stith’s memorable phrase, “her choice, her problem.” The baby is the woman’s fault. She was the one, after all, who decided against abortion. Everyone can point a finger at the mother for allowing an inconvenient human being into the world.
Stith writes:
Birth itself may be followed by blame rather than support. Since only the mother has the right to decide whether to let the child be born, the father may easily conclude that she bears sole responsibility for caring for the child. The baby is her fault.
He goes on to argue that although abortion is touted as a needed defense against the impoverished sinlge-mother household, the freedom to abort has produced this very thing.
Prior to the legalization of abortion in the United States, it was commonly understood that a man should offer a woman marriage in case of pregnancy, and many did so. But with the legalization of abortion men, started to feel that they were not responsible for the birth of children and consequently not under any obligation to marry. In gaining the option of abortion, many women have the lost the option of marriage. Liberal abortion lawys have thus considerably increased the number of families headed by a single mother, resulting in what some economists call the “feminization of poverty.”
This rationale makes sense. For a couple years I was a pastor in a small, very conservative, very Christian town in Iowa. There were 11 or 12 churches for 5500 people. Literally, almost everyone belonged to a church. It is the kind of town, with all is amazing blessings and unique struggles, that used to be commonplace in America. And in my two years there I met more couples in the church who had had their first child prior marriage and I did premarital counseling for more pregnant couples than in all the other places I’ve ministered combinded.
At first it didn’t make sense to me why in a place like this I should see so many out-wedlock pregnancies. But I think I finally understand. For starters, conservative Christian people still have hormones and are still sinners. So it shouldn’t suprise us that young people there would be having illicit sex like they do everywhere else. That’s a problem, but also reality. But I’m convinced most pastors in most places don’t see it as much because: (1) People who sin in big, noticeable ways often just leave our churches. They don’t feel the same cultural pressure to stick around the church like they do in smalltown America. (2) These men in the conservative corner of NW Iowa felt cultural pressure to marry the girl they got pregnant. Even the less than stellar ones I met just assumed that two people who made a child should get marriage. (3) Abortion doesn’t have the same stigma everywhere else. Of course, women still get abortions in conservative little towns, but the cultural pressure is all in the opposite direction. As a result when young couples in conservative rural settings have sex, more of them keep the baby, get married, and stick with the church.
To be sure, in these instances there may still be shame for the sex that cause the pregnancy (and sex is the sin here, not the child), but then there is also support for the child and the marriage. Restricting the choice for abortion, by societal pressure, stigma, and more limited access, actually helps the woman in the long-run. Conversely, “By granting to the pregnant woman an unrestrained choice over who will be born,” concludes Stith, “we make her alone to blame for how she exercises power. Nothing can alter the solidarity-shattering impact of the abortion option.”
