March 3, 2006
Economic, Social Consequences to Overturning Roe
By Froma
Harrop
Newspapers in South
Dakota are full of worried speculation about how the state's radical
stance on abortion will play to the world. The concern is justified.
Internet vendors are already selling bumper stickers showing a
wire hanger and the words, "South Dakota: The Back Alley
Abortion State."
There are consequences
to banning abortion, and they go beyond the obvious one of taking
away a woman's right to end an early pregnancy. The economic and
social implications are great, and states should contemplate them.
South Dakota
lawmakers did not simply tighten the rules governing abortion,
which many Americans want done. They virtually outlawed it, including
in cases of rape and incest. Their bigger ambition is to challenge
Roe v. Wade before an increasingly conservative U.S.
Supreme Court. Roe guarantees a basic right to abortion.
If it is overturned, the matter will fall to the states.
I am a pro-choice
person who has adjusted to the possibility that Roe may
go down. Let the states decide, I say, but also let the states
recognize that their decisions will have far-reaching effects.
The earliest concerns
in South Dakota center on possible boycotts by pro-choice tourists
and consumers. A former executive in the convention business told
the Sioux Falls Argus Leader that South Dakota would probably
lose some conventions and tourists because of the vote. People
are also recalling that in 1990, abortion rights groups threatened
to stop buying Idaho potatoes after Idaho's legislature passed
an extensive abortion ban. The governor subsequently declined
to sign the bill.
But the far more
compelling reasons to tread carefully around abortion policy are
social. Such considerations take us into the land of the politically
incorrect, but this is territory we dare not avoid.
Conservative
strategists who don't care about abortion often wink at women
nervous over Roe with the assurance, "Don't worry,
you can always go to states that still allow abortions."
That would certainly
be true for women with money. But women who are poor, disorganized
or otherwise dysfunctional would just stay at home and have babies
they don't want.
University
of Chicago economist Steven Levitt co-authored a famous study
that connected the sharp drop in crime during the 1990s to the
1973 Roe decision in 1973. Its thesis, covered in the
best-selling book "Freakonomics," was the following:
Unwanted children are more likely to suffer abuse and grow up
to be criminals in adolescence. Legalized abortion led to fewer
unwanted babies. Crime rates began to fall exactly 18 years after
Roe.
Conservative columnists
have called the theory morally repugnant and smelling of eugenics
-- the idea that society should improve the human stock by limiting
"undesirables." Many pro-choice liberals have given
these notions a wide berth because of their racial implications.
Levitt insists that
his intention was simply to show a correlation between the availability
of abortion and crime, and not make any judgment for or against
abortion. He further contends that race was not part of his study.
And, in any case, while blacks may have a higher abortion rate,
white have far more abortions.
Oddly, South Dakota
could find itself experimenting with a kind of eugenics in reverse.
Well-to-do women would have the option to obtain abortions in
Minneapolis, while the destitute would be forced to stay home
and have babies they can't care for.
A total ban on abortion
could accelerate South Dakota's ongoing brain drain. In recent
years, many young South Dakotans have taken advantage of their
state's fine education system, then decamped for lands of opportunity.
Support for abortion rises with education levels, and women with
prospects might not want to stay in a place that has banned abortion
even in cases of rape. There are bumper stickers about that, too.
Perhaps
most South Dakotans don't care if their state gets a reputation
for being outside the Western cultural mainstream. I suspect a
lot of them do. Despite the many victories claimed by "pro-life"
forces, polls show an unchanging two-thirds of Americans in support
of Roe v. Wade. It is sad to think this, but the anti-abortion
legislation may simply reflect the fact that there weren't enough
progressive young people left in South Dakota to stop it.
Copyright
2006 Creators Syndicate
