Alongside the growing anti-abortion movement has come more mainstream media coverage highlighting the achievements of single mothers as they earn college degrees and higher-paying employment opportunities. These real-life triumphs are worthy of celebration. However, the underlying anti-abortion message suggests that having a child in a disadvantaged situation does not destroy a future (as pro-abortion advocates may claim), but rather, the adversity of having a child always becomes the driving force and main motivator of life purpose and achievement.
Although this sounds refreshing and empowering on the surface, it actually represents a small minority, not the majority. It is therefore a claim that could be categorized as propaganda aiming to market a pro-life idea built on wishful thinking, not a claim sitting on a solid foundation of truth.
Abolitionists spend a lot of time addressing and refuting compromising exceptions to abortion. When people bring up rape and incest in abortion discussions, abolitionists emphasize how exceptions shouldn’t make the rules, but this notion that babies don’t hinder women does just that.
There is overwhelming data and life testimonials to suggest that babies do indeed hinder young women, mostly due to lack of support, education, job experience and resources. Our society is not a pro-baby society.
In 2020, just over 158,000 babies were born to females ages 15-19 when abortion was on the rise.1 With this, only about 50% of teen mothers received a high school diploma by 22 years of age, whereas approximately 90% of women who did not give birth during adolescence graduated from high school,2 suggesting that motherhood delayed and hindered teens from obtaining basic education. A delay does not mean that education and life goals will be impossible, but moving forward with a child does greatly limit possible avenues, especially for the majority of mothers of any age or life stage who have no village of support.
Overall, 1 in 4 women experience domestic violence in their lifetime and the potential for violence rises significantly during pregnancy. Teen girls in physically abusive relationships are 3.5x more likely to become pregnant than non-abused girls and homicide is the leading cause of death for pregnant women overall.3,4 Young women who experienced trauma as a child are the most susceptible to abusive relationships. Perpetrators of abuse prey on their wounds by offering a false sense of love, using fornication to create an emotional and psychological trauma bond that becomes extremely difficult to break free from. These same perpetrators tend to become violent in response to a pregnancy while others try to intentionally cause pregnancy as a means to hinder and control their victim.5 Pregnant women who end up in domestic violence, especially at a young age, often get left with no education, minimal job options, and no support.
Parents are plagued with rising childcare costs, hostile anti-family education systems and work environments, high living costs, overloaded government assistance programs, and long hours at low-paying jobs, which along with rising rates of fatherlessness, lead to emotional neglect and the continued cycle of generational issues of young motherhood and poverty onto their children. Mothers often fight against this cycle by encouraging or supporting abortion when their children begin to walk a similar path.5,6
When abolitionists claim that babies don’t hinder women, it makes the rare exception the rule. The reason this matters so much is because living in a delusion doesn’t solve problems. Acknowledging and dealing with reality is the only way for these problems parents face to truly get solved.
Focusing on the motivation a child may bring to a woman’s life or dangling the possibilities of worldly achievements despite becoming a mother may deter some from choosing abortion, but it does not help the majority of women experiencing the real life hardship of unexpected pregnancy. When glamorizing motherhood becomes the standard, it can actually make abortion more enticing to those who won’t experience these paths.
For many women, motherhood is an uphill battle. It’s a challenge. It’s extremely hard, but having to settle for less life achievement does not make a woman unsuccessful. Embracing a difficult situation is brave. Success is the simple yet courageous act of choosing her child over herself.
Having an unexpected child will not destroy a woman’s future, but the life transition may severely disrupt or delay personal ventures and inhibit growth in several facets of life. However, choosing abortion always destroys a child’s future. Hindrance or difficult life circumstances are never justifiable reasons to murder a child via abortion. Motherhood requires a certain amount of selfless sacrifice. At the same time, omitting real issues and using partial truths to sell an agenda makes abolitionists no different than their adversaries.
If it’s time to abolish abortion, it also has to be time to stop denying the reality of so many women in this nation and rise up to become sources of not only the truth of the gospel, but also of their education, resources and support.
In 2023, there were an estimated 1,025,690 abortions in the formal United States healthcare system, the highest in over a decade.7 Fighting abortion means that these babies will come into the world.
Let it be a world where they get to witness their fathers and mothers being fostered and equipped for success, where they get to be held and nurtured in a healthy village, and where they get the support to overcome the generational bondage of poverty.
Let it be a world where instead of becoming another casualty of a delusion, these precious gifts from God get to live out a better future while watching their parents courageously thrive.
Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.
1 John 3:18
References:
2. https://youth.gov/youth-topics/pregnancy-prevention/adverse-effects-teen-pregnancy
6. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6533138
7. US abortions reached record high in 2023 despite legal restrictions, though access varies | The BMJ
