Of Course

Abortion-funding battle to heat up again this week:

After months of focusing on economic rather than social issues, the House this week is poised to take up a measure that will bring the abortion-rights debate back to the floor for the first time since May.

On Friday, the House will consider H.R. 358, the "Protect Life Act." The measure, introduced by Rep. Joe Pitts (R-Pa.), would prohibit federal funds from going toward any health care plan that covers abortion services; it also would block funding from being withheld from institutions that are opposed to providing abortions.

...Friday's vote on H.R. 358 will likely mark the beginning of a new round in the abortion-rights fight on Capitol Hill: when both parties do battle over the next two months on the budget for the remainder of the 2012 fiscal year, social issues will again be in the spotlight.

Since there is virtually nothing I can say that I haven't already said nine thousand time before about how gross and contemptible and misogynist and body policing the Republicans and their inherently violent anti-choice ideology are, I will just note that, while it is correct to say that reproductive rights is a "social issue," it is incorrect to say that reproductive rights are not also an economic issue.

According to this Guttmacher study (pdf), "Can't afford a baby now" was cited by 73% of women who terminated pregnancies as a reason for seeking an abortion.

In the qualitative sample, of women who stated that they could not afford to have a child now, the majority had children already. Financial difficulties included the absence of support from the father of either the current pregnancy or the woman's other children, anticipating not being able to continue working or to find work while pregnant or caring for a newborn, not having the resources to support a child whose conception was not planned and lacking health insurance.

Additionally, Guttmacher has found that "almost one out of every three American women will have an abortion by age 45," and, of those women, "three out of four [of them] describe themselves as religiously affiliated." Which means that abortion is, in fact, not as much a "social issue" to the women seeking abortions as it is to the people trying to prevent them from getting abortions.

To continue to define abortion as a social issue primarily, and mutually exclusive from economic issues, is to define the reproductive rights debate on the terms of anti-choicers.

Abortion is a social issue and an economic issue. Indeed, it is a very important economic issue to most of the people who get abortions.

Of course, most social justice issues are.

[H/T to LaFeminista, via Ann Rose.]