Some argue abortion is a necessary evil to prevent the United States from becoming an overburdened welfare state. At present, however, there are over two million couples and one million single people wishing to adopt. Figures from Planned Parenthood show welfare costs of $13,900 for each birth. Compare this to the figure of $50,000 each American ends up paying in taxes as an adult. Moreover, the average time a family stays on welfare is only 27 months.

Public attitudes towards abortion were revealed in a March 1991 Gallup poll. 66 percent of those polled did not think financial hardships justify abortion. 68 percent did not think “abandonment by partner” is a valid reason to abort an unborn child.

The Center for Disease Control in Atlanta reported that over two-thirds of all women seeking abortions in 1983 were not using any kind of birth control, while 40 percent of all abortions that year were performed on women who had already had at least one before. Nonetheless, 88 percent of Americans polled said they opposed abortion as a “repeated means of birth control.”

91 percent of Americans polled said they opposed abortion as a means of sex selection, while 69 percent supported parental consent legislation and viability testing on fetuses after the fifth month of pregnancy. This is significant because only 58 percent of Americans were aware that Roe v. Wade legalized abortion during the entire nine months of pregnancy, and not just during the first trimester.

Informing a new mother about human prenatal development and alternatives to abortion was supported by 86 percent of those polled, while 52 percent of the women polled felt the right to life of the unborn child outweighs the mother’s freedom to kill.

According to pro-life feminists, abortion is not the answer to the problem of unwanted pregnancy, it is merely a band-aid which prevents real reforms from taking place regarding society’s treatment of women.

Susan Maronek writes: “Abortion, in the final analysis, works to the advantage of the exploitative male, not for the female. It provides an end to any and all financial, legal or social obligation which comes with childbirth by eliminating the possibility of birth. Abortion provides the ultimate rationale when pressing for sexual favors. It makes the female a perpetual and re-usable sex object. When an unwanted pregnancy occurs, the female is potentially left without any social support...

“The male can remove himself from the situation, physically or mentally because abortion is ‘her’ right. The female is left with the sole and final legal responsibility for killing their offspring. It is her body and mind which bear the scars of this destructive operation and experience...Abortion is a male sexual fantasy come true.”

Pregnancy and childbirth are natural. The ability to bear children is the one thing which truly distinguishes women from men. Demanding the right to abort in order to achieve equality implies women must become males in order to compete and survive in a man’s world.

Rosemary Bottcher says abortion reduces women to the status of sex machines which can be “repaired,” if necessary. She refers to it as the “castration of women.”

Abortion merely reflects a larger problem. Abortion is symptomatic of the rampant sexism within our society—it is not the cure. Television advertisements, sitcoms, women’s books, magazines, etc. are still sexist in nature.

Most imply that women are nothing more than homemakers, or that their only goal in life is to catch a man. Women still earn only 60 cents for every dollar a man makes. The average pay of female college graduates is equivalent to that of males who graduated from high school. Only 0.8 percent of all working women earn over $25,000 per year.

The majority of working women are unorganized and underpaid. Working mothers are also forced to pay for childcare and still tend to be segregated into women’s jobs. A 1981 survey, for example, found that 75 percent of all practicing physicians were male. Abortion itself is a huge practice run by entrepreneurs—mostly males—with $320 million in yearly profits.

“If women must submit to abortion to preserve their lifestyle or career, their economic or social status,” writes Daphne de Jong, “they are pandering to a system devised and run by men for male convenience.”

In a 1989 opinion editorial on the subject of abortion entitled “The Bitter Price of Choice,” pro-life feminist Frederica Matthewes-Green, wrote: “It is a cruel joke to call this a woman’s ‘choice.’ We may choose to sacrifice our life and career plans, or choose to undergo humiliating invasive surgery and sacrifice our offspring. How fortunate we are—we have a choice! Perhaps it’s time to amend the slogan—‘Abortion: a woman’s right to capitulate.’”

In her 1999 article, “The Feminist Case Against Abortion,” Serrin Foster, Executive Director of Feminists For Life, wrote: “The feminist movement was born more than two hundred years ago when Mary Wollstonecraft wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. After decrying the sexual exploitation of women, she condemned those who would ‘either destroy the embryo in the womb, or cast it off when born.’ Shortly thereafter, abortion became illegal in Great Britain.

“The now revered feminists of the 19th century were also strongly opposed to abortion because of their belief in the worth of all humans. Like many women in developing countries today, they opposed abortion even though they were acutely aware of the damage done to women through constant child-bearing. They opposed abortion despite knowing that half of all children born died before the age of five. They knew that women had virtually no rights within the family or the political sphere. But they did not believe abortion was the answer...

“The goals of the more recent NOW-led women’s movement with respect to abortion would have outraged the early feminists,” concluded Foster. “What Elizabeth Cady Stanton called a ‘disgusting and degrading crime’ has been heralded by Eleanor Smeal, former president of NOW and current president of the Fund for a Feminist Majority, as a ‘most fundamental right.’”