If We Oppose Abortion *and* Social Safety Nets

…we don’t really oppose abortion:
Women with incomes at less than 100 percent of the federal poverty level accounted for 42.4 percent of abortions between 2000 and 2008, while only roughly 15 percent of people total live under the federal poverty line.
It is challenging to say how many of these women would not have elected to have abortions had their financial circumstances been different, but a 2011 Gallup poll suggests pro-life sentiment is far more common among poorer people, with a majority of both Republicans and Democrats making under $30,000 a year identifying as “pro-life.” Couple the data with anecdotal reports like those cited in “The Only Moral Abortion is My Abortion,” and it seems fair to conclude that financial privation pushes a considerable number of women into electing abortion who would, in different economic arrangements, decide instead to give birth.
With this in mind, it’s unclear why so much of pro-life policy seems to center on bans and fines and scans and threats. If a woman considers herself too destitute to care for a child, there is no transvaginal ultrasound demoralizing enough and no accompanying narration excoriating enough to make her decision seem any less plausible. The specter of criminalization in some pro-life discourse is equally disturbing: surely the penal carceral system is the very last structure we would relegate poor mothers to. Even pro-life picketers seem to recognize as much. Fortunately, if the goal really is reducing abortion and supporting the ability of mothers to care for their infants, the data directs us to a very intuitive solution: give would-be moms, especially the poorest, the financial boost they need to give birth while maintaining financial security. A child allowance program fits the bill neatly.
It’s good to see an essay like this showing up in The American Conservative–and to see it coming from the rising generation.  The strange disconnect between being opposed to abortion