Evangelical White Privilege in Abortion

While official statistics are not available, evidence is there were a lot of illegal abortions before Roe made them legal. Doctor's offices back then were often small individual operations with no records required. Payments were in cash. Evidence of "bad back alley" abortions were the wings of hospitals serving only young women with infections. There were, of course, states where abortions were legal.

My late brother was a psychiatrist in Missouri before Roe. The law there was women who were suicidal could get abortions if signed off by a psychiatrist. Often, he told me, sanctimonious doctors from around his large city would drop in for a sign off for their daughters. "I'm opposed to abortion, but my daughter has a great future and this will mess it up" was always their line. His experience was identical to a woman who grew up and still lives in the evangelical South.

The woman author of the link tells of her experience helping young women in the South obtain discrete abortions. After she had helped them, they looked down on her because she believed in abortion rights while they maintained these rights should not be available to everyone. "That was just a one-off." It is as if they faced relationship and career dilemmas that made giving birth impossible. Their circumstances were unique and the moral imperatives imposed on others should not be imposed on them.

The landmark study "Left Behind" asked women who had had abortions their political and religious views on the topic. Several said they remained opposed to legalized abortion because it is murder. In their own case, they explained, giving birth would have been a hardship too great to endure. 

The rule seems to be that upper middle-class white should have access to abortion because they will only use it when there is good justification. Poor women, and women of color in general, will simply be careless and murder their babies without regard to the moral issues.

With the overturn of Roe, white middle class women have been made better off compared to women of color than they were previously. We don't yet know for certain how many abortions will be prevented, to the extent there are some. To the extent that some women give birth instead of having abortions the result will be white women advancing more in their careers than women of color. The privilege gap will grow instead of flattening out.