An unwanted child may be resented

The argument

The case rests on what happens to children who are born after their mothers were refused an abortion — an outcome that can be studied directly, because the comparison is between women who wanted the same thing and were treated differently by the law. In a study carried out in Sweden, researchers found that children born to mothers who had been denied an abortion were twice as likely to be hospitalized in their lives for psychiatric issues, twice as likely to suffer from learning difficulties, and six times as likely to require public assistance before they turned 21. These are not measures of momentary hardship. Psychiatric hospitalisation, learning difficulties and dependence on public assistance are outcomes that track a person for decades, which is what makes the finding an argument about the child's whole life rather than about the circumstances of their infancy. And because the mothers in question had all sought the same thing, the difference in outcomes points to what followed from the refusal rather than to some prior difference between the families. The detrimental effects also spread beyond the unwanted child and onto their brothers and sisters. A study published in the Journal of Pediatrics found that the siblings of children born after a mother's request for abortion was denied were themselves affected: they were more likely to grow up in poverty and to require social assistance. Presumably this was due to the additional financial strain of raising another child, a strain divided across everyone in the household. Taken together, the two findings describe a harm that is neither confined to one person nor brief. Denying an abortion does not simply produce a child where there would have been none; it produces measurably worse prospects for that child and for the children already there.

Context

Children thrive in a loving environment. Children growing up in an unwanted, unloving environment are more likely to commit crimes, suffer from underachievement, and fall victim to social problems like drug abuse.

Premises

Counter-arguments

A mother's options are never limited to aborting a child or raising it to adulthood. Adoption is always on the table. They are able to surrender their child to a loving family that will provide a nurturing and caring environment. That way the mother is not burdened with an unwanted child, the child does not grow up in an unloving and un-nurturing home, and a happy couple gets to have a child.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P3] A woman's options are not limited to abortion and raising the child. She can put it up for adoption.