Are Twentysomethings Anti-Choice Out of Spite?

Jennifer Senior has a nuanced article about the current state of the abortion debate in this week's New York magazine, in which she says that the current generation of twnetysomethings is the most anti-choice since the generation born during the great depression. I found this very upsetting, not just because I am pro-choice, but because the reason my peers are anti-choice is they have no sympathy or empathy for people who become pregnant accidentally. It's not because of their more stringent religious or ethical beliefs—they're anti-choice out of spite. "They feel much more strongly about personal responsibility than the generations preceding them: Didn’t use birth control? The burden’s on you," Senior writes.

There was also an article about the Stupak amendment and the abortion debate in the New York Times' Week in Review section. Even the pro-choice twentysomethings are not fighting hard against the anti-choice tide because they take abortion for granted. The Times quotes Democratic pollster Anna Greenberg, who says, "For many [twentysomethings], the daily experience is: It’s legal and if you really need one you can probably figure out how to get one. So when we send out e-mail alerts saying, 'Oh my God, write to your senator,' it’s hard for young people to have that same sense of urgency." If the amount of political support for Stupak is any indication, we may have that push to defend our rights sooner rather than later.

Photograph here and on the homepage by Karen Bleier/AFP/Getty Images.

Comments

It seems pretty clear to me.

By: sugar_k | Fri, 12/04/2009 - 15:08

I'm chronologically a part of Gen X, but my lack of personal and professional "success" gives me some common ground with the younger generation and helps me understand why they tend not to see abortion rights as a high priority.

The abortion patient profiled the New York article pretty clearly would like to keep her pregnancy except that she doesn't have her boyfriend's support. That's just an anecdote, but I know many more women, my age and younger, who would like to have children but can't or won't for lack of a supportive partner than those who have experienced unwanted pregnancy and had abortions. The economic and cultural strains that make it hard to form stable relationships and start families are much more pressing to us than the threat of unwanted childbirth. I'm pro-choice, but I also know that many women my age would like to have better choices than abortion, that's all. It's got nothing to do with harsh judgment for a failure to use birth control.

What I never understand is why adoption is never considered as a factor when these stories are told. Unwanted pregnancy is always presented as a stark choice between abortion and a life of misery under the burden of too many children. I've never been pregnant, so it's hard for me to say, but I'm curious as to why adoption is rarely mentioned as a point in the single parenthood-abortion continuum.

Problem with logic

By: katmcginty | Tue, 12/01/2009 - 14:11

I would like to point out that if you support a woman's right to get an abortion *only* in the case of incest or rape, then what you are actually saying is that women who choose to have sex and accidentally get pregnant should be punished for either not managing their birth control accurately or for having voluntary sex. Or both.

And if you take this stance, then it is also not logical to campaign against abortion by saying that it is murder and that it takes life, since it also then takes a life in the case of those women who were victimized by rape or incest. Either you are against abortion in all cases because it is murder (and those who are raped can just suck it up and deal) or you are against giving women who want to have sex an "easy out" from the consequences of a failure to use or failure of birth control.

It just seems that the pro-life faction is overly concerned with, basically, other people's business. If we start looking at unplanned pregnancies as an appropriate punishment for women who have sex, then aren't we pushing ourselves back into the nineteenth century, when women were often viewed as people who needed male guidance and control? The day abortion is outlawed in this country is the day I reject my citizenship, since clearly the country does not recognize my agency and authority over my own actions.

I'm pro-choice but I don't

By: Azalea | Tue, 12/01/2009 - 14:05

I'm pro-choice but I don't think every choice is themoral one. I wouldn't want to see adultery criminilized anymore than I'd want to see abortion criminilized but that doesn't mean I think either one is THE way to go.

I think each woman is responsible for her own choices, moral or immoral , because in the end she will be the one solely responsible for that decision she made. Not anyone else.

If she gets an abortion, she has to pay for it, she has to have the procedure done on HER body, she has to recover from it and if it bothers her afterwards those are HER feelings to deal with. Not my problem or concern. Same as if she had the child, or gave him/her up for adoption. She has to deal with it. WHo she sleeps with , is a decision SHE has to deal with. How many children she gives birth to, give up for adoption or abort are all her own issues. Not mine. Her choice, her body, her consequences, her good fortune.

norahc, abortion wasn't invented in the '60s

By: carrot | Tue, 12/01/2009 - 09:10

It's been around for (at least) thousands of years. It predates Christianity, which has a knack for thinking of things through a stark moral lens. How could we possibly be the first generation to think of it as a moral issue?

baby-obsessed media

By: Katie27again | Mon, 11/30/2009 - 19:07

Funny coincidence that the further women get in achieving equality in opportunity, the more cultural emphasis is placed on children and babies. It's hilarious. Here's a great way to keep women in their place: Let's be continually reminding them how baby-making is the single most important thing they will ever do. Once daycare became more prevalent, so did the message that children are unassailable, sanctimonious vessles of high holiness and nead extra extra careful, thorough, and vigilant care! And now we have become a baby-obsessed culture. It makes perfect sense why women are feeling less sympathetic and trading in their concern for women's rights for fetal rights. The anti-chioce, anti-woman party is waging a seemingly successful, steady campaign to keep us forever with one foot barefoot in the home.

@evermore

By: rcwilliams83 | Mon, 11/30/2009 - 17:39

We call it an "accident" when a driver crashes his car, despite the fact that the driver is the one responsible for the crash. "Accidental" doesn't mean that an event occurs through no one's fault; it just means that the consequences were unintended by the actor.

Glib FAIL.

I "accidentally" commented...

By: evermore | Mon, 11/30/2009 - 17:16

I find it a little too vague when the statement was made that "they have no sympathy or empathy for people who become pregnant accidentally"... I am pro-life but have full empathy for women that are raped or subject to incest because that is the only way you get pregnant "accidentally". You don't "accidentally" have consensual sexual relations. Considering that aside from in-vitro, sexual intercourse is the only other way to get pregnant how is it ever deemed an accident when you get pregnant? Anyone who thinks using birth control exempts them from ever becoming pregnant needs to have their head checked...

semantics

By: you know it is | Mon, 11/30/2009 - 16:49

I don't think a complete absence of sympathy is the same thing as spite.

What's wrong with my generation

By: VforVeritas | Mon, 11/30/2009 - 15:02

We *do* take our rights for granted, because we've never had to fight *for* anything.
People my age don't know what it was like when hospitals had entire wards reserved for women were suffering from complications of illegal abortions. These wards ceased to exist after legalization.
They haven't heard about girls in their dorm bleeding to death from an attempted abortion.
Or ever had wonder where one of their friends disappeared to for 9 months, shipped off to a home for girls who had "gotten themselves into trouble".
70,000 women die per year around the world from botched abortions, according to the UN. What was the toll in the US in the days before Roe, in Canada in the days before Morgenthaler?

We might not have know what it was like to lose a friend or relative to illegal abortions, but we may soon if this slide from freedom continues: http://tinyurl.com/ylkh2la

It's part a lack of empathy, but the real culprit is the lack of information. And worse yet is the complete whitewashing and outright LIES on the part of the anti-choicers about abortion - and kids don't know where to look to find out the truth for themselves. And educated public is a fundamental pillar of democracy, and stupidity is going to kill us.

And if women of my generation don't see this as a "feminist" issue, it's b/c a) they don't know what feminism, beyond some vacuous media soundbite, really is, and b) they've been told that "feminism won", and that all women are all equal with men now, there's no more sexism, and everything is great. Huzzah.
You know, sort of like how there's no more racism anymore, now that there's a mixed-race president in the white house.

As a Choice Ambivilant 20-something...

By: StrangerThanFiction | Mon, 11/30/2009 - 14:55

...I have to say that most of my friends are too confused about the issue to march on Washington either way. I was raised to be militantly pro-life, but after a scare in college, I can appreciate the terror of an unintended pregnancy.

I don't know when life begins. Personally, I wouldn't get an abortion, because I think its wrong for me. For another woman in another situation, I don't know. And so I err on the side of "keep it legal, keep it safe." But morally I know many women my age are totally muddled on the issue.