Why Abortion Is a Progressive Economic Issue

By BRYCE COVERT,

The Democrats’ unity tour fractured into disunity almost immediately after it began. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont refused to say whether Jon Ossoff, the Democratic candidate trying to win a typically Republican district in Georgia while being outspoken in support of abortion rights, counts as a progressive. He then went on to stump for Heath Mello in Nebraska. Mr. Mello, who is running for mayor in Omaha, has sponsored legislation aimed at restricting women’s access to abortion, including a bill in 2009 that required women to be informed that they could look at ultrasounds of their fetuses.

The Democratic National Committee chairman, Thomas E. Perez, didn’t do much to dampen the growing outrage among progressives who see reproductive rights as core to their values. “If you demand fealty on every single issue, then it’s a challenge,” he said last week.

It’s not just a misstatement from Mr. Perez or a slight from Mr. Sanders. Democrats, in their postelection soul searching, are trying to learn the lessons from Donald Trump’s jolting victory and how they might win back the presidency. And some — all men so far, it should be noted — argue that the party should move away from so-called social issues like abortion and reproductive freedom.

Instead, these men contend, the party’s focus must be on economics. The glaring mistake they all make, however, is thinking that there is any way to disentangle reproductive rights from economic issues.

Economics frequently drive women to seek an abortion in the first place. Unintended pregnancies have become increasingly concentrated among low-income women over recent decades, and by 2011 they were more than five times as likely to experience one as those with greater means. Among women getting an abortion, a 2004 survey found, the most frequently cited reasons were that a new child would interfere with education or work or that women couldn’t afford to have a baby at that time. Abortion rates rose during the recent recession, particularly among low-income women, as they and their partners lost jobs and income.

And economics reverberates throughout women’s lives when they can’t get the abortions they need. In a study of women who sought an abortion, those who were unsuccessful were three times as likely to fall into poverty over the following two years as those women who were able to get one, despite beginning in comparable financial situations. They were also more likely to wind up unemployed.

Women who can get the abortions they seek, on the other hand, are more likely to follow through on their employment or educational plans.

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