[lbo-talk] Re: I'm not sorry

[Liza Featherstone]

Thanks Yoshie, for (mostly) confirming my inchoate impressions with real
statistics! It would indeed be very interesting to know the incomes of the
women who could not afford to. Given how many extremely poor people have
children, and how many times I've heard middle-class people say they
couldn't afford them, my guess is that for many - sure, not all - of those
who picked that answer, money was a proxy for desire. That is, having a
child was a financial burden they did not WANT to shoulder.
Fascinating too that not wanting to disrupt job or education was so much
more acceptable in Finland.

Liza


> From: YOSHIE FURUHASHI <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu>
> Reply-To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 19:56:45 -0500
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Subject: [lbo-talk] Re: I'm not sorry
> 
> Liza Featherstone lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org, Wed, 14 Jan 2004 17:23:08 -0500:
> 
> <<<<<It also depends what you mean by "have to" get an abortion, or "reasons".
> My guess is that most women don't "have to" in the sense that many people
> would understand that phrasing: they are not thirteen years old, pregnant by
> incest or rape, sleeping on the sidewalk or mentally incapable of raising a
> child.  I think by framing it as an unfortunate necessity, something people
> "have to" do, we're missing the experience of most people, and making it sound
> as if abortion is shameful and requires a "reason," some sort of extenuating
> circumstance. I don't think it should.>>>>>
> 
> *****   Volume 24, No. 3, August 1998
> Reasons Why Women Have Induced Abortions: Evidence from 27 Countries
> By Akinrinola Bankole, Susheela Singh and Taylor Haas. . .
> 
> Table 2. Percentage distribution of women who had an abortion, by main reason
> given for seeking abortion, various countries and years
> 
> Country  Wants to     Wants no   Cannot
> and      postpone     (more)     afford
> year   childbearing children   a baby
> 
> United     25.5         7.9       21.3
> States,
> 1987­1988   
> 
> 
> Country  Having    Has relationship   Too young;
> and      a child   problem or         parent(s)
> year     will      partner does not   or other(s)
> disrupt   want pregnancy     object to
> education                    pregnancy
> or job
> 
> United     10.8   14.1           12.2
> States,
> 1987-1988
> 
> 
> Country  Risk to    Risk to    Other   Total
> and      maternal   fetal
> year     health     health
> 
> United      2.8       3.3       2.1    100.0
> States
> 1987-1988
> 
> © copyright 1998, The Alan Guttmacher Institute.
> 
> <http://www.agi-usa.org/pubs/journals/2411798.html>   *****
> 
> About 44.2% of American women who had abortions say they had them not because
> they "had to" due to ill health, dire poverty, etc. but because they wanted
> to, in order to postpone child-bearing, to have no (or no more) children, or
> to avoid disrupting their work or education.
> 
> 21% of American women say that they had abortions because they could not
> afford a baby.  It would be interesting if data about the incomes and wealth
> of women who chose this answer were available.
> 
> In Finland, in contrast to the United States, 85.5% of women who had abortions
> say they had them because "[h]aving a child will disrupt education or job."
> 
> Yoshie
> 
> 
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk