I agree with you on all the points you raised in your post.
>I am interested why Yoshie or Kelley have not commented on this study.
I've commented on it on pen-l. Allow me to repost here my pen-l posts on the threads started by Michael Keaney, in case you or others are interested.
>Ann Li & Michael Keaney:
>>There's more than a family(sic) resemblance to eugenic and genocidal
>>arguments of earlier historical periods here and hopefully an equally
>>stronger response by social scientists in areas like looking carefully at
>>the full range of microdata on demographics, specific region, income etc.
>>And of course one can already hear ditto-head radio/television on this
>>issue...slippery slopes and all. Should we support a Protestant Reformation
>>among "wiseguys"?
>
>Many leftists, especially feminists, have countered this familiar eugenic
>discourse by forcefully asserting that what we must defend is reproductive
>rights--which encompass both abortion rights and what may be called
>birthing rights--of *individual women* and that we are *against population
>control*. Here Foucault and his thoughts upon the simultaneous emergence of
>the concepts of "population" and "governability" may come in handy.
>
>Yoshie
>Michael Keaney wrote:
>>Does the wider community have a legitimate interest in the fate of the
>>unborn child? Is it an adequate defence of a woman's ability to choose
>>freely to insist upon a conception of her body as private property with
>>which she may do as she pleases? If so, how do we deal with prostitution,
>>pornography, euthanasia, self-mutilation, "irresponsible" behaviour of
>>pregnant mothers (e.g. smoking, substance abuse)? Where do rights come from?
>>How are they divined, or are they constructed, and in either case, who by?
>
>The USA has gone in a direction of punishing with imprisonement what you
>call "'irresponsible' behaviors of pregnant mothers,'" and this policy
>trend is likely to continue. 'Socialist' Romania (the surreally
>'pronatalist' state) banned abortions, made contraceptives unavailable, and
>imposed mandatory pregnancy tests upon the female population. 'Socialist'
>China took an opposite tack and has enforced its one-child policy. Japan
>imported Viagra but damned male conservatives have made the pill
>unavailable. Sterilization abuses, overuse of C-section, etc. have been
>well publicized. In sexist societies, an 'interest in the fate of the unborn
>child' comes in the form of punishment, surveillance, and psychological &
>behavioral control of women. Reproductive capacity of women has been made
>a medium of dehumanization & subordination of women by men and the State,
>often in the name of 'protection' of fetuses, of women themselves, of
>moralisty, of society, and indeed in some cases tragically of 'socialism.'
>And I am opposed to population control or political demography for this
>reason. To rewrite Foucault, both bodies and souls are prisons of
>womanhood.
>
>I add that such punishment, surveillance, and control of women has never
>led to the well-being of children who are already born.
>
>Yoshie
>Michael Keaney:
>>The wider community also has an interest in the
>>born child, as evidenced by the provision (or lack thereof, again on
>>whatever grounds) of health, education, social services, etc. What is the
>>basis of this interest? Why should the wider community, which is essentially
>>being told to mind its own business with regard to a woman's right to
>>choose, then be expected to provide that which it is not clear it supports
>>entirely? Is this a case of having one's cake and eating it?
>
>This is the philosophy ("Is this a case of having one's cake and eating
>it?") that underpins the abolition of AFDC and the institution of workfare
>(and in fact informed the reproductive politics of 'socialist' Romania
>too). If you are to be helped, you must 'earn' that help. If you receive
>public assistance, you must prove you 'deserve' it. No free lunch under
>capitalism. Social welfare then becomes a medium of social control, and I
>think that leftists should oppose an idea that helping women provides an
>excuse for controlling us. If leftists don't, their idea of social
>'protection' is the same as patriarchal paternalism.
>
>Yoshie
>>The main point is that both excessive 'socialization' and excessive
>>'privatization' of reproductive health can be detrimental to women.
>>wojtek
>
>From the themes and arguments of my numerous posts on the subject, it must
>be obvious that I am not advocating the 'privatization' of the kind you are
>implying here. Otherwise, why should I be concerned with the decline of
>abortion providers? To quote myself from one of the recent posts:
><<To sum up, Petchesky argues for the use of the concept of self-ownership
>in a qualified sense: "owning our bodies depends integrally on having
>access to the social resources for assuring our bodies' health and
>well-being..." (Petchesky 403). In this sense, the idea of body as
>self-property may belong to a great political vocabulary fit for the
>Leftist use.>>
>
>I encourage the socialization of health *services*, but only in the sense
>of creating an environment which allows individual women to make decisions
>with ease and comfort. Instead of the punishment of 'bad pregnant women'
>(which is mostly self-defeating anyway), legislations and programs can be
>of enabling character.
>
>Marx & Engels wrote:
>***** In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class
>antagonisms, we shall have an association in which the free development of
>each is the condition for the free development of all. *****
>
>I'm glad that they aspired to have an association in which the *free
>development of each* is the *condition* for the free development of all.
>
>Yoshie
Adding to the above, I would also argue that emphasizing subsidiary reasons (regarding what good for society women's right & access to abortion may achieve) too much tends to _obscure_ the central point of feminist reproductive politics: women's own desire for our own emancipation. The right and access to abortion would be necessary, desirable, and in the rational individual & collective interests of women _even if_ their effects upon society were neutral (e.g. no quantifiable decrease in child abuse). Abortion is a necessary good for women, for without it biology becomes our destiny.
And last but not the least, for leftists to combine a reproductive rights argument with population control discourse is injurious and alienating to poor women, esp. poor women of color. (Remember Sanger?) Leftists must consult the lead taken by feminist black women & other feminist women of color who first pointed out the necessity of opposing *both population control and the denial of reproductive rights (including abortion)*.
Yoshie