Why Reproductive Freedom Is Financial Freedom for Women

It’s not every day that you read a treatise on women’s health over on the “Forbes” website. And it’s definitely not every day that the article is advocating for a women’s right to choose to have an abortion.

But after some hefty analysis, it makes perfect sense that such an issue and stance would be on a site that is dedicated to helping women be in charge of their own financial well-being. One of the biggest factors in a personal wealth, especially for women, is their own family. Each child has a distinct impact on household finance and wealth management, from career opportunities to housing to childcare expenses or insurance costs, not to mention the day to day expenses of feeding, clothing and other necessary items.

It’s those arguments that make Victoria Pynchon’s piece so powerful. ”Take away a woman’s reproductive freedoms and you plunge women back into poverty or dependence upon a working spouse. That dependence is one of the riskiest choices a woman can make in light of that statistics that nearly 44% of all mothers with custody of their minor children are either separated or divorced. In short, requiring women to carry every pregnancy to term would plunge a far greater number of women and children into poverty than are already there.”

Pynchon is advocating on the behalf of the necessity of groups like the National Network of Abortion Funds, which helps provide money for women and girls who cannot afford an abortion on their own. ”If they do not have funds for abortions, they surely are in no financial position to raise a child, or, yet another child,” she points out.

But it goes even beyond women who can’t afford an abortion if they get pregnant with a child they can’t afford. The same logic applies when it comes to birth control, which so many of our current Republican candidates seem to think is unnecessary, even supporting “personhood” amendments that would ban some forms. It applies to the ability to access Emergency Contraception at all hospitals, not just those that aren’t Catholic based, or to get it from a pharmacy without having to get approval from the pharmacist, who may not believe EC stops a pregnancy before it begins. The far right, who used to vastly accept the idea that women who have been victims of rape should not be forced to bear an attacker’s child against their will now feel that “the child shouldn’t be punished,” not considering not just the costs of raising a child but that simply delivering a baby, even one you intend to put up for adoption, costs thousands of dollars just in medical bills.

A woman who cannot control when she chooses to give birth is devoid of any ability to control her own financial future. Perhaps that is just fine to those who oppose choice in every circumstance, but to the audience of a magazine like Forbes, this is an idea that is less likely to have been discussed, and it’s wonderful to see it done openly.

Read more: abortion, forbes, NNAF, reproductive freedom, war on women

photo credit: wikimedia commons

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of
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Georga G.

6:17PM PST on Jan 21, 2012

I find it deplorable that the Republican Party is obsessed with this issue. If they are allowed to move their AGENDA FORWARD it will set Women's Rights back 50 years!

send a green star

Ann S.

1:24PM PST on Jan 21, 2012

I was just thinking how this current battle for the right to decide our reproductive rights has similarities to the women's liberation movement for our right to work competitively. There are some old-fashioned women out there who still don't believe in the latter. If we dig back enough, I'm certain that we can find speciously strong arguments against a woman's right to work, but underneath the veneer, it is always about control. The sick, sick need for control over anything people can get their hands on.

KS G.

4:35AM PST on Jan 16, 2012

Thanks for the article.

Mark S.

3:22AM PST on Jan 15, 2012

Yup. The men in the U.S. want to go back to the days when the wife was the servant. The next election may determine if women have freedom, or to be housewives doing all the housework and pumping out offspring and at the beckon call of their husbands or boyfriends.
"Scrub that floor, woman!!" "Bring me a beer, woman!!" You get my drift?

Emily M.

1:48PM PST on Jan 14, 2012

That's the point of the misogynist anti-choice movement: Keep women in poverty by forcing them to have children they don't want and can't care for.

Karla B.

2:23PM PST on Jan 13, 2012

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to educate school staff on ADHD

Ed O.

10:24AM PST on Jan 13, 2012

Elaine wrote: Women need economic freedom to enable them to have reproductive freedom. Not only to afford birth control and abortion but ALSO to move out and leave an abusive man who forbids her to use birth control.

Thom Hartmann is the nation's #1 talk show host. NY Times bestselling and Project Censored Award winning author of twenty books in print on four continents in 18 languages.

In his latest book "Threshhold, the Crisis of Western Civilization" he examines the many threats that face us including overpopulation. He explains that it's not lack of available birth control or even economics that fuels the skyrocketing birth rate.

An example he uses to prove this is the society of Saudi Arabia. Birth control is available AND economic hardship is not an issue since citizens enjoy a high standard of living. However, women still have many children, often as many as ten.

So,THE DISPARITY OF POWER BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN IS THE ROOT CAUSE.

In Italy where the difference of power held by men and women is not as extreme, birth control is available and the standard of living is high AND there is negative population growth.

An interview with Thom discussing “Threshold” can be viewed at
http://www.thomhartmann.com/2009/08/01/thom-hartmann-the-crisis-of-western-culture-interview/

Hence, on a national and local family level, women must have the money to leave abusive men who try to control their reproduction.

To hear the discussion on overp

Alisha B.

6:44AM PST on Jan 13, 2012

YES!!

Pat M.

3:26AM PST on Jan 13, 2012

THis from the party that wants smaller government. The old saying is still true, "If men got pregnant , there would be reproductive rights

2:48AM PST on Jan 13, 2012

"You cannot currently send a star to Jane because you have done so within the last week."

Exactly what I've been saying. The repubs want more babies being pumped out so they can use them as soldiers against the rest of the world as disposable combat troops to try to rule the world, or us (police state), and the rest as slaves and human experiments like the Nazis did.