Abortion: A Product of Its Times

It seems that those who are most passionate about abortion have lost sight of the forces that drive women to such extremes, for all of their moral posturing and muddled rhetoric ignores a key aspect of human nature: Even the most well-intentioned ethical conviction will always be bested by human necessity. This is inevitable—it’s hardwired into our genes.

In 1859 Charles Darwin published “On the Origin of Species,” almost single-handedly creating the foundation of modern evolutionary theory. His key insight was that populations competing for limited resources change over successive generations through the mechanism of natural selection. Individuals have a vested interest in self-preservation and procreation; those with favorable traits are more likely to survive and reproduce than those with unfavorable ones. But Darwin’s theory is no less applicable now than it was more than a century ago—specifically, we can use his ideas to gain insight into why women opt for abortion, and why the choice to abort can in fact sometimes, though not always, be the more ethical and humane decision.

Generally speaking, socially successful people have better access to limited resources, both economic and otherwise. Successfully competing for these social resources often requires education, mobility, flexibility, and time; unfortunately, all of these elements become much more inaccessible after the birth of a care-intensive child. Viewed through Darwin’s prism, abortion can be seen as a tool that women use to increase their survivability, their ability to compete for limited resources, and even their ability to have greater future reproductive success. After all, if a pregnant woman does not have the economic or social resources to care for the baby, it is potentially wiser, and perhaps even morally appropriate, to conserve the resources that would go towards a meager upbringing of the first child and to save them for the creation of a more healthy child-rearing environment later. Whereas the first child might well suffer while being raised by an unprepared, overworked, unhealthy, and neglectful mother, an abortion would allow the woman to postpone pregnancy until she first attains the social resources she needs to provide a healthy upbringing for her children. This reasoning applies to 70 percent of abortion-seekers, who say that they do intend to have children in the future. In fact, the human body will often make the same choice on its own, albeit for purely physical reasons—if a woman is malnourished, the uterine lining will often reabsorb the embryo instead of letting it develop, sensing that the body does not possess the physical resources to allow it to develop to term.

This is not, of course, to argue that abortions are ideal, or that they should be had casually, as a matter of convenience; on the contrary. Unwanted pregnancies are unfortunate, no matter what the reason. Nevertheless, the mother has a moral responsibility towards both her own health (mental and physical) and that of her future offspring, that in some cases may outweigh moral considerations towards the unborn fetus. Clearly, the mother must consider, and consider carefully, which of her moral responsibilities is the heavier—it comes down to a question of how adversely the child will affect her. In some cases, having the baby will not only put the mother’s life in danger of irreparable and devastating socioeconomic harm, it will also prejudice her ability to successfully raise future children. In these situations, the moral value of ensuring the health and success of mother and future offspring can trump the moral cost of aborting the present fetus.

Let us look at a few illustrative statistics. A study by the Alan Guttmacher Institute reports that less than two percent of all abortions are performed because of rape or health issues. Most reasons given for abortion involve some sort of personal judgment on economic means or lifestyle inadequacies. The demographics of the women who seek abortions seem to reinforce this—21 percent are teenagers, and well over half of unwed pregnant women will opt for an abortion. These figures should make clear that abortions are used primarily as an instrument of socioeconomic preservation—over one fifth of abortion-seekers, after all, are mere children who cannot support themselves independently, and many others lack a partner with whom to build an ideal family environment. It seems that in these cases, the ethical choice is not, in fact, to force these women to have babies for which they are both emotionally and fiscally unprepared, but instead to abort the fetus so that they can ensure both their own preservation and the viability of future children.

Nevertheless, opponents of abortion are fond of contending that such women can always choose to put up their unwanted babies for adoption—if socioeconomic factors are the main issue, they claim, the simple solution should be giving birth and then letting someone else care for the child. This way, the parent is not tied to an unsustainable burden, and the child is given a suitable developmental environment. Though this may seem like an ideal solution, it ignores several key issues, chief among them the fact that pregnancy and childbirth themselves require significant resources—for example, to pay for hospital fees and compensate for lost wages. Not all maternity leaves are paid, and not everyone can afford an extended unpaid leave. Furthermore, certain types of work (construction, say) are not very physically accommodating towards pregnancy. More importantly, perhaps, are the emotional costs of carrying a pregnancy to term, such as suffering under the social stigma that still surround pregnant, unwed women, and the burden of parting with one’s biological child. Added together, the social costs of pregnancy alone are huge; it is not a cost that everyone can pay without significant personal injury, which may prejudice her future ability to have a healthy family. Depending on how significant this injury is, an abortion may actually be the more ethical alternative.

The tradeoff between present resources and future personal success is certainly a sad calculation to make. The solution, however, is not to eliminate abortion, which, given today’s social conditions, may sometimes be the better decision. It is to create a social environment that reduces the incidence of unwanted pregnancy, and that lessens the socioeconomic pressures that drive women to abort.



N. Kathy Lin ’08, a Crimson editorial editor, is a social studies concentrator in Winthrop House.