Reasons for Abortions: An "Unreachable Demand"

By Randall K. O'Bannon, Ph.D.

According to the AGI report, among those women who cited at least two reasons for their abortions, one of the most common pairings was completed childbearing (or concerns about other dependent children) with a perceived inability to afford the child.

Compared to the 1987 survey, a significantly higher percentage of women in this survey reported that they had "completed my childbearing" or had "other people depending on me." Only 8% identified this as the primary factor in 1987, but nearly 1 in 5 (19%) called this the most important reason in 2004. Nearly two in five (38%) indicated that this was at least a contributing factor in their abortions in the more recent survey. Some of this may be due to the different way reasons were combined in each study, but it is a significant number nonetheless.

A closer look at these responses suggests they may be part of a larger, troubling social trend. Implicit in this determination is some sort of idea about the economic or social effects of additional children and possibly some thought regarding appropriate or ideal family size. The assumption, stated or not, is that for a given amount of financial or personal resources (time, emotional energy, etc.), only a certain number of children can be adequately cared for.

It is not that these women do not see motherhood as an important responsibility--they wouldn't agonize over their obligations if they didn't--but that they see its demands as unreachable, at least in regards to any additional child, or at the mercy of external factors beyond their control.

Perhaps the biggest help would be a renewal of a mother's confidence in her natural ability to cope with, adapt to, and manage her situation. That confidence will further enable her to ignore the social and material expectations imposed on her by the larger culture and discover that she can make do and do quite well with much less than she might have thought, as generations before her did.