Daugherty 1 Whitney Daugherty 10/10/11 Professor Lutz Exploratory Essay Abortion and Welfare While researching a topic I came

across abortion and welfare, and it really sparked my attention because its going around in the society around us. Its a very important topic that many teens and parents should know about. The passage that caught my eye was about income support increasing abortions, this was one of my main concerns about abortions and welfare. Does income support increase abortions? Would there be fewer abortions if families werent on welfare or are there other things causing these abortions too? There are many great arguments out there and facts about this subject. The article is basically about each state programs of abortion and they make

up a hypothesis and test it. All of these issues came about when thinking about abortion and welfare today. Before I could discover the answers to these questions, I needed to do some background checks on abortion and welfare today to get some statistics about this topic, see how many abortions per year, and connect that with welfare and look at Daugherty 2 the differences, and so on. I started my research at Google and found a great article on an online library site. The article is basically about how activist test states welfare generosity while thinking about family caps, Medicaid, child care and cash assistance. They came up with this Welfare state expansions may help reduce abortion, but programs' effects are not unambiguously pro-natalist (Wiley 1). Also there was another great argument that low-income women abort at disproportionately high rates and those economic factors heavily influence abortion decisions (Darroch & Henshaw 1). This is a great debate because many argue and are very vulgar and just say yea but your killing the

baby the end. When really they dont think about the baby after its been born as far as a good home life and not being clean and having sources. Continuing on with my research I also found two different groups that they keep in mind while giving money assistance which were TANF (temporary assistance for needy families) and CPSW (childless pregnant single women). While this articles focuses on these types of things while doing their research and it makes it interesting. The results were that they would provide TANF because they didnt have the stability to have a child at the time. They were also more likely to get an abortion because they didnt have the stability to make it with a child. But on the other side CPSW are more likely to get

more welfare and more likely not to have an abortion because statistics show that the first child usually ends up being born. I agree with both of these Daugherty 3 arguments because they make great sense. This makes me think that if they didnt provide TANF then there would be double the amount of abortions because families couldnt live.

While Im reading all about these arguments Im wondering about some of the statistics of abortion in different families. So this leads to my next research session. A couple of these statistics contrast to some of my arguments earlier. One is saying women making 24,000-34,000 a year and 25 years or older are accountable for 52% of abortion in the United States. This contrasts my argument because they obviously dont need too much money help, but you also got to keep in mind and ask yourself how many kids these women have already? This can play a huge role in abortion as well because us children arent cheap. But on the other hand 64.4% of abortions occur on never married women. This is a great statistic because there could be a lot of thinking behind this. Youve got to keep in mind that these women could have been raped or not supported by welfare, or the guy could have left them because maybe it was a one night thing. This is a great topic but there are so many contrasting points which makes it hard to choose a side. This next article I found is talking about how when Medicaid and health benefits rose for women the fertility rate also rose. This supports the argument that some

Daugherty 4 women are having abortions because they cant afford it and have no help from anyone else. The statistic on this is the fertility rate rose 10.8% and the abortion rate dropped by 25 abortions every 100 people (National Center of Health Statistics). This makes me lean toward this side a lot more, seeing how just one change with money less people are having abortions and more people are choosing to have kids. The reason is because they feel more stable as I was saying earlier related to the first article. Throughout this article they also tested the chances

of abortion for married and un-married women as well because this will have an effect on the results of having a child or not as well. The results for an un-married women the probability of abortion rises 5-10%. This is most likely because there arent two checks coming in so the women wont be as stable. For married women the probability for abortion actually tests to go up 3% because they are more stable will be able to live in a good way. This article was fun to read because it I had to work to dig deep and find the results

because it was more like a study rather than an article. I found it interesting that not only money but also education follow the path of getting an abortion or not. Makes since after I saw the study and the results because it showed that the more years of education the women had the better off they were, which is common sense because more education means better job which leads to more money in the long run. Most of the data also showed that family history affects the childs money as well. Didnt make sense at all because its my life I will be able to live it and make what kind of money I want depending on the work Im willing to put in. This Daugherty 5 isnt the case though because if your family is in debt you will affect your childrens living style as well because they wont get some that they want and also you wont be able to help them and give them a boost during college or any other obstacle in their lives. Ive noticed that there are many things that can affect abortion and they are like dominos if one fails then they all will because they all lead to one another.

I continued my quest to find answers, this time my concern is to look for other things causing abortions. There are many reasons for women to have an abortion aside from welfare or money issues. A couple reasons are because the woman could have been raped or sexually assaulted (1%), health problems with the mother or the child (6%), the main reason is for social reasons, the child in unwanted or inconvenient (93%). So as you can see there are other reasons out there that causes abortion. The main one is social which is related to money so this goes toward the argument that most abortions are connected to money issues within the family or relationship. Many women dont have any other choice besides an abortion because they will not be capable of supporting the child. Some people argue that they should still have them but they dont think of the consequences that will happen in the long run. After all, I am a lot more educated on welfare and abortion from my research findings. I am still siding with the side I originally chose because all the data I collected and the studies and tests people have ran match up with what I thought before I started Daugherty 6

researching the topic. On the other hand I do see the other sides arguments saying that most abortions dont come from lack of money assistance because they do come from other reasons like rape, and health problems. But 93% of abortions are from social problems which are related to money. Although I did come to a conclusion not all abortions are solely from lack of money. After in-depth research I do have an idea about peoples views and outlooks on abortion, some dont agree with the whole topic but the women in the situation are the ones that have to deal with the consequences. It would be a hard decision but they have to do what they have to do as far as having a healthy living style. Abortion affects on people are sad and they might regret it miles down the road but the positive and negative affects rests on the women making the choice.

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