I've been plowing through a book entitled American Grace: How Religion Unites and Divides Us by Robert D. Putnam and David E. Campbell. It's an interesting read, although I find their optimism about how knowing and liking someone of a different faith can increase positive feelings about their faith. But they do raise an interesting question about why people born after 1965 are less likely to approve of abortion under all circumstances than older voters.
They offer a good deal of statistical evidence that approval (which is NOT the same thing as wanting to keep it safe and legal) of among Americans aged 18-29 abortion has fallen from its highest approval rating in 1973, when around 63% of younger Americans approved of abortion to about 43% in 2008. (p. 128). While approval of premarital sex has remained pretty constant, ans approval of homosexuality has risen from 40% to around 55% and the number of respondents with no religious preference has doubled from around 11% to 22%--approval of abortion in all circumstances has fallen.
In a more detailed look at thrre circumstances under which Americans, they asked respondents to choose under which which scenarios they approved of a woamn having an abortion. These circumstances were:
- If there is a strong chance of serious defect in the baby
- If the woman is married and does not want any more children
- If the woman's own health is seriously endangered by the pregnancy
- If the family has a very low income and cannot afford any more children.
- If the woman became pregnant as a result of rape
6.If the woman is not married and does not want to marry the man
p. 407
I'm not exactly thrilled with the way they phrased their questions. I think a more realistic circumstance would read "If the woman is young and needs to get an education in order to support future children" or "If the woman is single and knows her child will likely ber aised in poverty if she drops out of school to be a mother". Both are closer to reality than merely not wanting to marry the father (and where's a mention of the father wanting nothing to do with her and the child?). Phrasing matters. The survey then gave the average number of circumstances under which they approved of abortion on a scale from 0 to 6. ALl of the three age cohorts ( pre-1946 birth, post 1946 Boomers, and post 1965).
At any rate, the Baby Boomers are the most approving of abortion, with a score of around 43.7 today, down from a high of 4,3 in 1973 ( it went back up to nearly 4.0 in the early 90s, then dropped again)). Pre-boomers were the msot disapproving ,though in 73, they had a score of 8.9, down to 3.2 in 2008. The post-boomers,t he youngest began at 3.6 in the mid-80s, peaked at 3.8 in the 90s, then plunged to 3.4. today.
The plunge in approval ratings among the younger voters scares the bejeebus out of me, because we need every vote right now to prevent the Republicans from screwing women on this issue.
I've seen the attitude firsthand in a discussion with my neighbor. He's a good guy, works as a chef, fallen-away Catholic, who doesn't want abortion banned but maintains he has a right to disapprove of women who have abortion for reasons he considers frivolous or selfish. His attitude is probably somewhat influenced by the fact that his wife got pregnant with their first child before they got married, and carried to term. They were married afterward. She used welfare to finish college. He's the only guy I know who think the film Knocked Up is wildly romantic, because he identified her with Katherine Heigl, someone so terrific and beautiful as to be out of his reach and he can't figure out how he won her (I can; he's a sweet, kind-hearted, utterly decent guy who'd give you the shirt off his back). He also proposed to her right after she had their child.
I was nice. I didn't tell him that I would support a woman's right to call him a judgmental asshole if he felt the need to express his disapproval of her actions. I was at a party at his house, and you just don't diss your host when he's had two too many, especially when you know he's way too polite to actually tell a woman this to her face if he knew she'd had an abortion.
Why this discrepancy? The book suggests that maybe it's because the younger voters have never known a world where abortion isn't safe and legal, and where contraception is widely available. The authors think that perhaps they see women who have unplanned pregnancies as acting irresponsibly since birth control is everywhere.
Myself, I think it has more to do with being young and inexperienced. The need for abortion hasn't touched them personally. They know facts--but they don't necessarily understand the implications of those facts. Let's look at just one of these: the woman doesn't amrry the child's father. I'd toss in that's mostly likely when the mother is young.
Two thirds of families begun by a young unmarried mother are poor.
Approximately 1/4 of teen mothers go on welfare within three years of the child's birth.
Only 38% of women who have a child before age 18 get a high school diploma.
Less than 2% of women who have a child before age 18 finish college by age 30.
Virtually all of the increase in child poverty between 1980 and 1996 was the result of nonmarital pregnancies--and half of non-married mothers begint heir child-bearing as teens.
80% of teen mothers do NOT marry the father of their child. These fathers, usually poor themselves, pay around $800 annually in child support.
http://www.thenationalcampaign.org/...
Having an abortion may be the best thing you can do for the children you choose to bear alter on--because it means there's a much better chance you won't be condemning them to a life in poverty.
Another thing they may not truly understand is that reliable birth control can be expensive--and ponying up for the Pill or the insertion of an IUD (not recommended for women who haven't already born a child) by a gynecologist. Not every woman has that money, especially if she's without health insurance or her insurance doesn't cover contraception. That leaves women with diaphragms and condoms and foam both of which have high failure rates.
And yes, even the Pill has a failure rate. The one time I got pregnant and miscarried, I was on the Pill. WHat they also often don't realize is that drug interaction can render the Pill less effective. My best friend overheard her college-age daughter's friend mention she was taking antibiotics. My pal casually said, "Better use back-up birth control then. Some antibiotics screw up the Pill." They were shocked. No one had ever told them this. Sure it's in the package insert, but many people don't read the whole long package insert. Weight gain can also render the Pill less helpful.
The most interesting thing in the book on this topic is that while younger voters may not approve of abortion-when it comes to their own interests or something that could have affected them when they were younger--something that hits home. When they were forced to vote on a Proposition that would have required parental notification before a teen could have an abortion, the voted hands down against it.
I don't know what's behind this lack of approval of abortion for social or economic reasons. I suspect it's because they can't see how it could affect them directly, when they get out int he real world and don't have health insurance. We can see that when they do see a correlation between keeping abortion legal and their own lives, they don't care for restrictions. I also blame the recent rash of films which make getting pregnant (Knocked Up, Juno, and several otehrs) sound kinda fun and romantic--get pregnant and the guy will realize what a gem you are and want to marry you. In reality of course, single young motherhood tends to mean poverty and being doomed to a minimum wage job.
How do we reach these voters? Because we have to reach them. They need to take over from us aging Boomer feminists who've carried the load for a long time. We need their enthusiastic support as well as their grudging votes. I wish I had an easy answer. But we must find one, becasue with state legislatures as well as fundy Republicans doing their damnedest to make abortion unavailable if not completely illegal, we need all the help we can get.