After 40 years of abortion virtually on demand, we’re still
looking for ways to significantly reduce the number of abortions.
New ideas are needed, and here’s an intriguing one: let’s pay
abortion-minded women to give birth.
Lack of finances is the reason women cite most often for
aborting. According to a 2004 Guttmacher Institute survey, 74% of 1,200 abortion
patients said they were aborting because having a child would
interfere with their education, work or ability to care for
dependents and 73% because they could not afford a baby.
Paying abortion-minded women to give birth is not a new idea. In
2010, Italy’s Lombardy region began providing $5,500 a year to poor
women who changed their minds about having an abortion for economic
reasons.
Texas State Senator Dan Patrick made a similar proposal in 2007.
He suggested offering women at abortion centers $500 to bring their
pregnancies to term, but with the requirement that they give up
their babies for adoption. Patrick’s bill didn’t make it out of
committee.
The conditions are ripe in America for such an
experiment. There is a surplus of families wanting to
adopt, and, because of legal abortion, a deficit of available
children.
America’s birth rate is also dropping, and some experts are
warning of an impending demographic crisis.
Genuine advocates of choice really couldn’t object. After all,
the payment option would simply offer pregnant women one more
choice, while in no way diminishing a woman’s right to abort.
In fact, such a plan might help pregnant women follow through on
the choice many say they’d prefer to make, to give birth. The
latest Pew Research Center poll finds
that just 10 percent of women find abortion “morally
acceptable.”
And as I cited above, three-quarters of women who abort identify
their finances as the main reason for their decision. If the
financial hurdle is lowered, perhaps many more women would bring
their babies to term.
Of course, there would be a danger that women could “game” the
system. Perhaps some pregnant women with no intention of aborting
would claim they want to abort simply to collect a check. The
amount paid would have to be large enough for abortion-minded women
to choose life but not so large that they’d try it again.
Other questions include: Would participating women be required
to give their babies up for adoption? How large of a payment would
be needed to save lives? Would it be a lump sum or payments over
the course of the child’s life?
If a participating woman gives up her baby for adoption, perhaps
the payment she receives could come from donations from the
adopting parents. As it is, families sometimes pay tens of
thousands of dollars to adopt children, often from overseas.
In Italy, the payouts stopped after about one year, which
doesn’t seem like much help. According to the U.S. government, the
cost of raising a child is $235,000, or about $13,000 a year for 18
years. That’s a lot of money, and a more reasonable payment might
be around $5,000. But then again, can we really put a price on
life?
Other countries support new mothers much better than we do.
Despite liberal abortion laws, Germany has an abortion rate
one-third that of the U.S. Working women there get 14 weeks of paid
maternity leave, a child allowance from the state while the child
is in school, and other benefits we don’t offer here.
Sure, we could assist poor women by giving them larger child tax
credits or doing other things through the tax code. But something
tells me the promise of a large check would have a bigger impact on
abortion rates.
We could keep the government out of it entirely. Perhaps a rich,
enterprising pro-life activist could fund a pilot study at a
pregnancy center to see if this proposal is viable.
Pro-life centers already help women financially. Unlike Planned
Parenthood, which charges for many of its services, most pro-life
centers offer all their services free of charge and give out free
diapers, baby strollers, and many other goods and services new
mothers need.
After so many abortions and shattered lives, we know a lot about
what doesn’t work in the fight to end abortion. Perhaps paying
abortion-minded women to give birth is something that would.
