On an arch-conservative Catholic blog, Popcak makes the claim that the argument that socio-economic conditions directly impact abortion rates is false

WHY THERE AREN'T OTHER ISSUES BESIDES ABORTION... [Gregory
Popcak]

9/20/2004

Many Catholic Kerry supporters will argue that the best way to beat abortion is to address the issues that have historically been important to the Dems (but are of questionable importance now) such as aid to the poor, health care, increased minimum wage, etc.

The idea is, with more aid to the poor abortion rates will go down. This is not the case. Most of the people who have abortions are white middle class women who do not abort for economic reasons.
~38% are women with family incomes between $30,000 and $59,999. (This income bracket represents the largest segment of women having abortions)
14.1% say their partner doesn't want the baby
25.5% of women deciding to have an abortion simply want to postpone childbearing.
10.8% say it will disrupt their career.
47% of abortions are repeat procedures.
41% are married.
63% are white.
13.8% are women with family incomes over $60,000.
ONLY 21.3% of women state they must abort because cannot afford a baby.

Therefore almost 80% of abortions have little to do with serious economic problems.

As you can see, the majority of women receiving abortions are not eligible for poverty programs and will never be. I didn't include the 19.5% of women with incomes between 15,999 and 29,999, most of whom would also be ineligible for poverty interventions. As income INCREASES so do abortion rates.

[snip]

http://abortionno.org/Resources/fastfacts.html

The problem is that he is wrong (but why would that surprise fair minded truth seekers?)

I checked again at The Alan Gutmacher Institute's website, where you get the best abortion statistics. I would suggest checking just about everyone of his facts and you'll see that they are wrong or at best, misleading.

Here are a couple of facts:

% of Federal Poverty Level (who has abortions)
26.6% of women <100% Federal poverty table:

Notice how disingenuous these archcons are, the try to turn the focus from the needy to those who they deem have no excuse. In an article I wrote for the National Catholics Reporter I make an argument for the demand side approach to the abortion issue. An approach that says that human life is precious in or out of the womb.

The difference between Kerry Catholics and the archcon Bush Catholics is that they claim they care about the unborn, but that's where the "care" ends. We care about human beings, the unborn, the two week old baby, toddlers, teenagers, women, men, the elderly, the infirm, etc. So the slash and burn mentality is unacceptable. They say, "make sure every conceived child is born" but could care less about that life when it is born. We say, "We will not rest until ALL humans received their full dignity, both unborn and born." This is much harder; it entails juggling many interests, but it's the path to true dignity for human beings. How like Prez Bush! "Let's legislate this problem away!" (Remember the marriage-as-a-legislative-priority fiasco?) Human problems cannot be legislated away, they have to solved structurally.

Back to the abortion issue. The stats I show earlier point to 26% of abortion cases in which the woman was under 100% poverty. That's three hundred and twenty five thousand women/families! 50% of abortion cases is over six hundred and fifty thousand women/families.

Under 100% poverty is for single woman and income of approx $9,000; for a single mother with two kids, it's $15,000. Again, notice he did not mention this class of people, because they are the ones that we target when we say that socio-economic conditions would make a difference. he dismisses them as those that receive poverty assistance. I ask, what assistance, food stamps? . . .what?

When we go up to 200% of poverty, where 30.8% of abortions occur, for a single woman, that's an income level of $18,000/yr

For a single mother with two kids, it's $30,000/year. (Let's do the math)
$12,000 for rent
$3,000 for utilities
$4,200 for groceries
$3,000 for car payment
$8,000 for car insurance
$1,000 for gas
$500 for car repairs
$2,000 Payroll taxes and deductions
$1,500 for clothes and shoes ($125/month for clothes for 3 including shoes)
Total so far $35,200 (Wrong answer: she only makes $30,000/yr, unless Popcak wants to gladly offer her $5,000+ in government poverty assistance and I'm not talking healthcare here at all). And of course the compassionate archconservative screams at her: "You lazy bum, get off your butt and work a second job! You vermin!"

Dutifully she goes off and gets another job, but then she has to pay for child care, and care expenses increase; she is not present for her kids leaving them to fend for themselves foodwise-they then eat unhealthily, but of course, the archcon says that she and they should be lucky to be alive; . . . her horrible life goes on and on and on. She has no time for love, for family, for life, for recreation, in other words, to be human. Can she ever have more kids? "No!" the archcon screams at her, she swears he wants her sterilized but he can't say it because he is "pro-life."

"What shoud I do?" She asks, "I have no hope. I can't get ahead enough to take time to upgrade my skills and try for a better job; besides my $30,000 a year job pays $15/hr. Where can I find a job like that in this economy?"

Listening to this presentation is why many well-meaning Catholics think arch-conservatives are not human. They go with an inhumanely narrow definition and forget that human beings are actually involved on the other end.

ONLY 21.3% of women state they must abort because cannot afford a baby. Therefore almost 80% of abortions have little to do with serious economic problems.

This is a statement that shot through with any lack of common sense, much less human/catholic comapssion, that it bears ignoring. Furthermore, it shows that these archcons have no clue what we are talking about. The issue is not about who can afford a "baby," the issue is the socio-economic pressures of a baby who grows into a toddler, who then grows into a young child, who then grows into an adolescent, who then grows into a teenager, who then grows into a young adult, etc.

Why would any well-meaning compassionate Catholic dismiss the hundreds of thousands of these women so flippantly? In fact why would they dismiss the plight of millions of working class families so easily?

A family of four living on an annual salary of $55,000 is extremely tough and we can do the math. With health care costs, prescriptions, and premiums rising, what are families to do? With workplaces scaling back on benefits such as healthcare, what are families to do? At what income level are people safe? I note that at a certain income level, you can kiss educational state and financial aid goodbye.

The disingenuousness of the archcons is manifest in their desire to ignore the burdens of the middle class, the burdens of regular people, by the millions, who find themselves in tough financial straits, and throw up irrelevant statistics (Who on earth is talking about the 13.8% of women earning over $60,000? Our focus has been on the 50% we talked about earlier-we say let's solve this problem and get the trend going in the right direction. It's clear meantioning that figure is only meant to divert attention from those who need help).

Any positive restructuring of socio-economic conditions helps the middle class and so our argument about socio-economic conditions and abortions still stands.

Archcons seem to suggest that only if you make less than $15,000 yr (or some insane amount) can you be considered to be going through financial hardship. I've got news for the archcons, there are families with a combined income of $80,000 who are going through financial hell, not to mention the problems of those making less.

Jesus was about people, not laws. Christians need to be about people and not laws.