Loury and McWhorter have a mature discussion on this on Bloggingheads this week:

http://bloggingheads.tv/videos/24638

I'ma going to fall over from the shock...

Realizing that for most people there are simply better times to have kids, and not good times to have kids....

It's still about trying to make a choice about when it will work...

and MAYBE thinking about WHY you wanna HAVE children. Sure, instinct. But doncha want to pick a mate to do it with, like you know... because you 'wuv that mate, you want to have their babies?

At the risk of a really bad image, don't you want to get the horse pulling the cart... rather than not having a horse?

Sure, it CAN be done... millions of women are doing it right now, but it isn't the easiest thing, now, is it?

If you proceed from the idea that you want to find a mate, and raise children with them... this fits the bill, even evolutionarily.
But proceeding from the idea that you "want to have babies, puts you in a mindset that is you pushing a handcart throughout your life, with more and more piled up.

I'll bite: I do believe that the poor should not have kids they can't support. Not only is having them irresponsible because it puts a burden on everybody else's shoulders, more importantly it dooms the kids (or the vast majority of them) to being so uneducated they'll be useless, and thus compelled to live on welfare and/or crime, their whole lives.

Of course, the reason poor women (and especially teenagers) have these kids is to collect welfare. Both AFDC/TANF and the child support enforcement system have the effect of making the harmful practice of having these kids pay. That's a bad idea. It is also the biggest cause of our present political situation.

I recommend two major changes as the solution. One is political: take away AFDC/TANF and child support, and instead place into foster care any children that their mother had in order to collect either or both. This will hurt no one except the mothers, who deserve it. The kids will come out self-sufficient and have a far better future. And we will have halted the growth of the "marching morons" problem, which threatens all of us.

The other change is a proposal for the religious among us. Replace the old injunction against having sex out of wedlock (an obsolete idea that only gets laughed at today, and justifiably so) with an injunction against having children without the means to support them (secured by marriage if you will need the father's support). For those who don't practice a religion per se, make the new injunction part of your social mores, however you label them.

Of course, the reason poor women (and especially teenagers) have these kids is to collect welfare.
________________________________

Or, as many have pointed out, maybe they have children because the odds are often against them when it comes to education and careers, so they figure that parenthood is one thing they might succeed at?

Two very good books on this subject:

"When Children Want Children" by Washington Post journalist Leon Dash (1989)
(Dash mentions that teenage boys want babies as well, if only because "with her on the Pill, I couldn't feel like a man")

"Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood Before Marriage" by Kathryn Edin and Maria J. Kefalas (2005)
(the authors claim, IIRC, that many poor women simply feel that it's better to be a single mother on welfare than never to be a mother at all, and given the lack of job opportunities and shortage of men with non-criminal records, they don't feel they have a choice)

And, from the introduction to Katha Pollitt's "Reasonable Creatures":

".......To say that unwed mothers cause poverty is like saying hungry people cause famine, or sick people cause disease........

"........It would be closer to the truth to say that poverty causes early and unplanned childbearing. Across the income spectrum, after all-and to an extent that would horrify their parents if they knew about it-young people are having sex and young girls are getting pregnant. Strangely enough, however, you don't find many 15-year-olds dropping out of exclusive private schools to have babies. Girls with bright futures - college, jobs, travel-have abortions. It's the ones who have nothing to postpone who become mothers.

"What none of (those) who have dominated the welfare discussion betray any sign of understanding is that babies are a centuries-old way that women have put meaning, love, pleasure, hope and self-respect into their lives. If society is serious about cutting down on teenage motherhood, it will have to offer girls another way of obtaining these things. I'm not saying teenage motherhood is a great idea. It isn't, either for women or for children, and whether or not marriage is involved. But if impoverishing women were a deterrent, it surely would have worked by now....."

If you want kids you can't afford, you're selfish, plain and simple. You're willing to subject an innocent child to a life of poverty and want, merely to gratify your desire to have kids.

"Girls with bright futures - college, jobs, travel-have abortions." Pollitt via lenona

contrast with:
• Forty-two percent of women obtaining abortions have incomes below 100% of the federal poverty level ($10,830 for a single woman with no children).[6]

• Twenty-seven percent of women obtaining abortions have incomes between 100–199% of the federal poverty level.* [6] From Guttmacher

Which would be 42% of women up to the poverty line and a total of 69% up to 200% of Poverty level

OTOH, In 2008, 1.21 million abortions were performed vs. 4,055,000 [2008] {3,953,590 2010} live births the same year. And of THAT number only: Number of live births to 15-19 year olds: 329,772 [From CDC] and that number is falling 6% year on year...

so 3,953,590 - 329,772 = 3,623,818 live births to 20-44 year olds.

Teens are a LOT less of an issue... as you would expect, women at the peak of fertility in their 20's are having the most kids...

This doesn't change the central issue argued: "What none of (those) who have dominated the welfare discussion betray any sign of understanding is that babies are a centuries-old way that women have put meaning, love, pleasure, hope and self-respect into their lives." Pollitt

And so we have adult women who are making a choice to do something that is counterintuitive: Thinking that bringing a dependent life into the world will provide "meaning, love, pleasure, hope and self-respect into their lives" without concern over HOW that will effect the CHILD in question.

It's demonstrable that this is the harder way, with worse outcomes, and yet generationally it goes forward. Almost as if no-one cares about the downside.

'Course you aren't nearly as likely to starve in the bush with a baby in tow in the US... there are plenty of government handouts to soften the blow.

Which comes first, the chicken or the egg, though? Are the programs allowing this to happen, or are they cleaning up after the innate messiness of the human condition?

You get more of what you reward.

If the first kid is and issue, WHY would you have another? Because it makes YOU feel good? Why isn't the community up in arms? Even if you are very low income, they will certainly tie your tubes after the first kid [with a great deal of resistance].

As much as I have no interest in returning to the shotgun wedding, currently there isn't much downside to being the guy impregnating, as long as you are not conscientious, and have no job. Making the semi feral Tom-cat the most likely to reproduce. how you gonna make THEM stop? And why would any woman want to breed with one, unless she JUST. DOESN'T. CARE.

Yes, having a kid this way DOES cause poverty, because it keeps you from exiting it. Even IF it was only a possibility, rather than a given... starting to have kids, keeps you from doing other things that could possibly be good for your life. That might potentially move you OUT of that poverty.

This is NOT a teenager problem. These are adults making Choices, 40+% is to have a kid outside of marriage/coupledom.

I'll have to split the links across 3 entries:
Guttmacher first:
http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_induced_abortion.html

Facts about cats, I mean birth:
http://www.babycenter.com/0_surprising-facts-about-birth-in-the-united-states_1372273.bc?page=1

Taxes at work: Births and Natality from the CDC:
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/births.htm

here are some facts about real cats:
"To this day the population of domestic cats is maintained in a semiferal state by the practice of neutering. About the only males available for domestic female cats to breed with are the wildest and least people-friendly tomcats who have escaped into the feral cat population. Some 85 percent of all cat matings, Dr. Bradshaw writes, are arranged by cats themselves, meaning with feral cats."

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/07/science/cat-sense-explains-what-theyre-really-thinking.html?_r=0

Certainly, you can't compare humans and cats, and yet there were many who saw the parallels when this article came out...

IFF there is no downside to solo parenthood... who is most interesting and available to mate with? The worker drone that trundles off to work everyday... or the badboy that sets your panties on fire? The fact that he wouldn't be a good longterm mate, is irrelevant in this equation, because you don't actually want/need a long term mate.

And the next generation of boys born into fatherless families... why would they do anything else?

So, when I hear anyone suggest that this is a guy problem too? Yes... and no. If no-one holds them accountable... they won't be. If women hook up with them, and don't care? Why should they?

We talk a lot on this blog about evolutionary psychology, I can't imagine a trait that evolution selects for more than wanting to have kids.

It's an innate human condition Swiss. Men have learned to rein in on their biological urges/faults in modern Western society but women have not been asked to do the same. We look down on men who sexually harass women but we DO NOT look down on women who have kids without fathers.

(I've traveled in Latin America enough to know that even if you are poor-and don't have welfare-women still do the exact same thing when society doesn't look down on you).

I had a friend-who gave me the perspective and understanding on this biological urge that women are not taught or told control. She had a kid to give meaning to her life. No matter what type of argument you made, why this was a bad idea, no matter the money issues she endured, no matter the elders in her life who gave her platitudes about waiting for kids, you could not get it through her head.

Because a child was put in her belly to give meaning to her life, and she was such a loser without the kid. Things will be different for her. Her loneliness will be eased. She doesn't need a man. She will prove her success in life via the child.

(Little did she realize that the only thing increasing would be loneliness)

I have this situation with another friend-who at least picked a guy who stuck around. She insists that children give her meaning and that the rest of the friends in the group MUST want the same thing. It doesn't matter that she picked the first guy to have a kid with, it doesn't matter that she is miserable---because the kid is the end all be all.

It's like telling people you don't believe in God. They refuse to entertain the thought.

• Forty-two percent of women obtaining abortions have incomes below 100% of the federal poverty level ($10,830 for a single woman with no children).[6]

I don't think this disproves leona's point. There could be multiple reasons why poor women have abortions. Perhaps these women already have kids and don't want more.

I think having babies for women is like what fucking is for men. Society must be teach you to rein in your urges and shame you into it.

Oh and when I have asked women of all the suffering the child will endure by not having a father.

The answer has been:

*Shrug*

Leon Dash's book is very good, but it's not a popular message. Does Pollitt think that the government should just indulge women's desire for babies? I think that's crazy, frankly, and just results in generational poverty.

Purp thrills me.

Posts like this, where I enjoy Amy's clarity, make disagreeing with her about other stuff even better.

I was talking with a friend who is a police officer awhile back. He has a lot of interactions with young women with several kids from several baby daddies. He opined that these women had all these kids because they tied much of their self worth to the men in their lives, and the way they demonstrated their value to these men was to have sex with them.

When you don't have an education or a good job or any reasonable hope of doing better, finding meaning in relationships is a quick, dirty fix.

so MonicaP... isn't that kinda like saying that you will stay in a burning house... because it's warm in there?

Education is free, condoms are damn close, and you'd think after a generation... someone would learn from the mistakes their own mothers made.

Are we saying they are TOO STUPID to figure this out?

"We look down on men who sexually harass women but we DO NOT look down on women who have kids without fathers."

Ppen, who is this "we" you refer to? Having a kid without a husband (or for the more radical, a "life partner") is frowned upon. Best case scenario you'd be an object of pity. Worst case, an object of scorn.

There was one couple in my high school who had a kid. Of course we were all kind to them, we cuddled the baby, etc. but it was a condescending kindness. Because we knew they'd messed up in pretty much the biggest way you could.

Because having a baby as a teen was just not done. I'd say we absolutely DO expect women to rein it in and not have babies out of wedlock (perhaps with exceptions for the rich and famous, but aren't they always exceptions in these matters, male or female?), certainly not in high school.

I graduated HS in '95 for cultural reference.

Rich girls could be more likely to have abortions AND most abortions could be obtained by poor girls, they aren't mutually exclusive.

Perhaps rich girls are less likely to get pregnant out of wedlock to begin with (less sex, more birth control) or as a population segment or smaller, or any number of reasons

I graduated HS in 90 my HS had a daycare.

I have this principle that seems to apply almost everywhere, and it goes like this: People who wanna be pregnant are pregnant, and those who don't aren't.

Some people get really pissed off when they hear it said out loud, so I save it for times when they can't argue about it unless they make deep, sustained eye contact and can finish their sentences without distraction. Many a petulant challenge has wilted under that promise of a serious, patient hearing.

I recall a girl in high school, she wanted to get pregnant because she had a horrible relationship with her mother, cause she wanst around enough(ie working all the time), and when she was around she was always telling her what to do.

So a baby would love her unconditionally.

So I asked her how was she going to pay for it, how was she going to get a job that didnt require her to work the same hours as her mother, why did she think that one day her baby would view her the same way as she viewed her own mother.

I think she still got pregnant, what a waste.

WOULD'NT view her . . .

"Ppen, who is this "we" you refer to? Having a kid without a husband (or for the more radical, a "life partner") is frowned upon."

NicoleK I think what we currently have is what I like to call "two second shame". There is one thing I admire in Asian culture-(Japanese, Koreans, Chinese take your pick) women just don't accidentally have kids because it's really shameful--like really really embarrassing to the point where they wont attempt it to fill some "spiritual" need. (It happens but not in the way it happens in my own culture).

My grandmother was a teenage mother, my mother and all her sisters (all of them!) became single teenage mothers, and I have two step sisters-who also had *unplanned* pregnancies. I know this phenomena well. And whatever you may tell me-there are only the grumblings of shame and platitudes, god so many fucking platitudes by the adults, relatives, and friends in their lives.

But these girls aren't or weren't expected to do better. And they are lonely and they need unconditional love from something. It wont be mom or dad.

I know exactly what my parents reaction would be if I got pregnant as a single broad. Platitudes and admonishments completed with "Oh well it's here what can you do? I'll be here for you no matter what" If anyone dared question my decision I could just muster up that generally good (but sometimes oh so obnoxious) Western philosophy of "It doesn't matter what you think"

But it does matter what others think....

And finally I'll never ever forget this experience that convinced me there is no real shame in brining a kid into this world without a dad.

I had a friend who was prettier, more successful academically than I. She had a career and was good at it. We were the same age, and the same family background. But she had an "unplanned" pregnancy. I know that with her ego she would have never had the kid if she thought being a single mother was truly a failure in life. She didn't think that. If anything it was a challenge to shape the child into what she always wanted to accomplish.

While certainly she felt the grumblings of shame from relatives and colleges in the end they did exactly what my parents would do it that situation.

They didn't expect any better. Even I wasn't surprised.

The thing I find funny is, most single parents grew up despising their single parent for tying to micro manage them. And yet they think somehow they can do the same to their kids and be loved for it.

"But these girls aren't or weren't expected to do better. And they are lonely and they need unconditional love from something. It wont be mom or dad."

Posted by: Ppen at January 28, 2014 5:45 PM

That's it in a nutshell. We are wired for connection, as well as reproduction. Hook those into a crisis-centered upbringing (short term thinking) or a fear of dying alone and unfulfilled (panic) and even with a harsh light it's a hard haze to clear from someone's head and heart.

When I worked as an abortion rights organizer, I sat in the waiting room of a clinic that adorned its walls with messages women wrote to their child before having an abortion.

Most of them expressed the desire to keep their child safe from the harm they had known, sadness that they could not give the the child a better life, reassurance that the child was better off being held by g*d than being born. I did not realize until now how much love and courage was being expressed by the women who wrote those notes.

Lujlp you and your use of logic. I've asked this question to them and the resounding answer is no plan needed, they'll do better because they are magically better experienced mothers than what the rest of the world tells they'll be.

(All that happens is they resent the hell outta the kid and they have another one to make up for the first one.)

Michelle,

My mom told me if she had any brains then she would have never had kids because she wasn't able to provide anything, including maternal love. She just did it to do something. I liked her admission and honesty.

Leon Dash's book is very good, but it's not a popular message. Does Pollitt think that the government should just indulge women's desire for babies? I think that's crazy, frankly, and just results in generational poverty.

Posted by: KateC at January 27, 2014 6:49 PM
__________________________________

Re Pollitt, to my knowledge, no. As she implied in what I posted above, she doesn't believe in passively accepting teen pregnancy in society - or, for that matter, deliberately having babies without including the fathers in their upbringing - she just says that we're approaching the problems in the wrong way.

It's sort of like what former ACLU lawyer Wendy Kaminer said in the introduction to one of her books (she was talking to someone from the National Review at the time):

"But you don't understand," I explained. "I believe in the welfare state. People think I'm conservative because there are messages about self-reliance in my work, and I value self-reliance, but I don't expect it of children."

On to another subject.....

While the following may NOT have been written tongue-in-cheek (and I, for one, don't go for conspiracy theories - at least not official conspiracies) it's still thought-provoking and worth reading.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/03/05/1191940/-Why-Do-Rich-Conservatives-Want-to-Control-our-Sex-Lives#

I mean, it's possible, at least, that aside from jealousy, those politicians who oppose women's access to birth control as well as opposing the childfree lifestyle, do so in part because a shortage of babies in the upper classes means that politicians will have to pay more and more attention to the needs of the children of the poor - and not just the "deserving" poor. Heaven forbid that ALL voters should eventually be well-fed, well-educated AND politically active!

BTW, Gail Collins recently wrote an op-ed in the NY Times about Mike Huckabee's remarks - she said:

"Once upon a time, Republicans took the lead when it came to helping women get access to birth control."

Someone said she was referring to the 1960s and 1970s.

Ppen, I respect your mother's self-effacing candor.

Lenona, you keep harping that conspiracy that women in the United States are being tied down and forcibly impregnated. You do realize that the whole "war against women" was a Democratic Party fabulism that their media syncophants ran with in 2012, right? There is no serious opposition among any faction in America to birth control, and hasn't been since about 1975. There is a whole lot of opposition, however, to the idea that "cost > $0" equals "denied access". (Even though there are in fact millions of women who are getting free birth control, from either government or private sources.)

I will repeat the challenge I've made here before: prove to me that there exists one single woman, anywhere in the United States, who got pregnant and carried a baby to term solely because she wasn't able to get access to birth control or family planning resources. Not because she didn't bother -- because she made attempts to obtain these things and all her attemps were denied. My contention is that there is no woman in the U.S. today, regardless of race, creed, color, or economic status, who needs be pregnant if she truly does not want to be.

As I've implied in previous posts, there have been plenty of recorded cases of rural teens, especially, whose efforts to get abortions failed due to lack of transportation funds and/or laws that forced judges, before giving them permission, to grill them as to why they couldn't talk to their parents first. (Ms. Magazine did a cover story on that, years ago.) Any doctor will tell you that teen pregnancy is dangerous - and even physically bad for any baby that is born to a teen mother. Not to mention that most(?) teens who give birth don't give up their babies for adoption anymore, so why NOT make it easier for them to have abortions?

I also predict plenty of horror stories coming out of Texas soon, from what's been in the news lately. Not to mention other Midwest states.

Where exactly are YOUR statistics that prove what you're saying? You didn't give any that last few times.

And what was wrong with the facts in Russell Shorto's cover story for the NY Times Magazine, regarding contraception?

Also, I find it interesting that you seem to be the ONLY one here who makes the argument you made in your second paragraph.

And regarding the first paragraph, one commentator at Gail Collins' op-ed said:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/25/opinion/collins-huckabee-spills-the-beans.html?_r=1

Andy G
"I agree with Huckabee that on the basis of right vs. wrong, it seems wrong for the government to should force taxpayers to subsidize the sexual habits or birth control of other people. The idea itself sounds ridiculous. On the other hand, I suppose the reasoning is that if we don't subsidize birth control there will be millions of additional unwanted babies and then we will be forced to subsidize millions of additional abortions. That thought is so repugnant, free contraception programs are by far is the best of the available bad solutions."

And, I'll add, both Nebraska and Idaho (for starters) ban abortions after 20 weeks, so a woman who wants to give birth but finds out too late that it would be medically bad to do so won't have access to an abortion without leaving the state.

http://www.statesman.com/news/news/study-22286-texas-women-could-be-denied-abortions/nbDjH/

"A University of Texas study indicates that more than 22,200 Texas women would be prevented from obtaining an abortion in the next year if stricter regulations go into effect later this month, a court filing shows.

"The study results, submitted to federal court this week by abortion providers seeking to block the regulations, was conducted by UT’s Texas Policy Evaluation Project, a three-year collaboration that measures the impact of state laws affecting reproductive health.

"A hearing on the providers’ request for a preliminary injunction will be Oct. 21 before U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel in Austin. The rules — requiring abortion doctors to get admitting privileges in a nearby hospital and further regulating drug-induced abortions — take effect Oct. 29.

"According to UT sociology professor Joseph Potter, the inability of many abortion doctors to gain admitting privileges will force more than one-third of the state’s abortion clinics to close or stop offering the procedure. Several other clinics will have to “severely” cut services because some participating doctors have been unable to get admitting privileges, Potter said in a sworn declaration submitted to the court Tuesday....."

And, from the NAF:

"The Supreme Court confirmed women's right to choose abortion in 1973, and the courts have upheld that finding in subsequent cases. But access to abortion has been severely eroded. The most recent survey found that 87% of all U.S. counties have no identifiable abortion provider. In non-metropolitan areas, the figure rises to 97%. As a result, many women must travel long distances to reach the nearest abortion provider.

"But distance is not the only barrier women face. Many other factors have contributed to the current crisis in abortion access, including a shortage of trained abortion providers; state laws that make getting an abortion more complicated than is medically necessary; continued threats of violence and harassment at abortion clinics; state and federal Medicaid restrictions; and fewer hospitals providing abortion services."

And:

"Medical professionals who provide abortion services do so at a tremendous risk to their safety. Since 1993, three doctors who provided abortions have been murdered, and five others have been shot at by anti-abortion zealots in the U.S. and Canada. A clinic escort and three clinic employees have been murdered, and several other clinic staff have been shot. Violence against providers also includes bombings, arson, vandalism, burglary, illegal blockades, threats, and harassment.

"Frivolous malpractice lawsuits against abortion providers are also generated by anti-abortion extremists who want to keep providers from offering abortion services. These lawsuits are rarely justified, but they are used unfairly to discredit the reputations of providers and frighten patients.

"The cost of a first trimester abortion has increased only slightly since 1973 (see Abortion Facts: Economics of Abortion), but many women still cannot afford the fee. The Hyde Amendment denies federal Medicaid funding for abortions except in specific, rare circumstances, and most states have similar laws restricting financial help to women who need abortions. More than 2/3 of women must initially pay for their abortions themselves - only 13% of abortions are paid for with a state's public funds,2 and only 13% are covered by a woman's private insurance at the time of her abortion.3 A small number of women may be reimbursed by insurance after their abortion.

"The result is that too many women who need abortions must wait while they raise funds, postponing their abortions until later in their pregnancies, when the costs of these more complicated abortion procedures are higher. For the women who are struggling to make ends meet and who do not have insurance that covers abortion, the legal right to have an abortion does not guarantee that they will have access to it."

So, Lenona, just so we are clear... 20 weeks is 5 MONTHS.

Somewhere around 5 months the fetus looks thus:
http://3dpregnancy.parentsconnect.com/calendar/20-weeks-pregnant/

In this whole argument, eventually there will have to be a time picked, when we call it a human versus when we call it a non-human, but don't act like this decision doesn't carry the weight of a tombstone.

They executed a guy that raped and murdered a mother a week or two ago, and there were those that worried if he suffered.

How does anyone present the idea that this is a choice, and there should BE NO WORRY about the kid or how it suffers... as if because it has no rights, the question is immaterial?

The balancing act of all of this, the laws and constraints, how much it costs and where, and WHY, exist because this ISN'T supposed to be simple...

AND it NEVER is.

And the sooner we scare hell out of everyone that MIGHT make a rational decision, rather than telling them, "eh, it happens" on either side of the issue, the better.

There will be those that don't make a decision about it regardless, or decide not to decide. We can't effect that much directly. We can skip the nihilistic crap, where it doesn't matter, and it's all just a theory. For we, the living, it is not a theory. We are here and it is fact.

If "Lovelysoul" was still her, we'd be bickering right now.

Lenona, thanks for the data.

In the brief time I worked in the social services office of the local Catholic hospital, a nine year old girl was brought to the ER because she was made pregnant by her adult cousin. How hellish that she had to go to yet another hospital and be examined and invaded by yet another adult before getting the abortion.

The one small mercy is that she didn't live in the Pennsylvania county where not only is there no abortion provider, but incest is so common it is not prosecuted as such, because no jury of one's peers would convict someone of the crime.

No prosecution, no official record of the cultural problem.

More: http://rachelheldevans.com/blog/privilege-and-the-pill

So, Lenona, just so we are clear... 20 weeks is 5 MONTHS.

SwissArmyD
____________________________

It is not. It's four and a half. Learn to count. (Hint: No matter how you look at it, it takes 13 weeks to make a quarter of a year - i.e., three months.) Besides, in that post, I was talking about women who WANTED to get pregnant and give birth - but found very sad medical reasons not to. For those who don't know, BTW, 90% of all abortions take place in the first trimester - which is why editorial cartoonists should not be drawing visibly pregnant women when referring to abortion, as a rule. (Sometimes a woman doesn't start to show until the beginning of the fifth month - or later.)

On to other subjects.

You're welcome, Michelle.

Something I forgot: I've heard more than once that half of all women who seek abortion were using artificial birth control. Yes, it may be shocking that that many WEREN'T using it, but it's also a bit shocking that that many women WERE using it and it failed - though of course that statistic does not say anything about how often BC works.

And I'll add that I can't, offhand, remember any conservative politician implying what Dave did - that poor American adult females never face huge obstacles in getting an abortion. (I don't even remember those like Bachmann or Santorum claiming that - and if they did, I would hope most conservatives would have the sense to stop listening to them by now.) To put it another way, maybe any rich woman in the U.S. has little or no trouble getting an abortion despite the dozen or so obstacles she might face - such as traveling hundreds of miles and/or having to stay in a hotel for the 24-hour waiting period - but why should those obstacles be there in the first place? I.e., what good is "access" without access?