Aborting aspirations

Some of history’s greatest inventions have made exceptionally greater contributions to the economic landscape around them. Perhaps no one could have anticipated how our economy would revolve around the internet when it was first created. But no one will accuse the internet of not getting its due recognition, surely there aren’t many out there who would deny the impact it has had, or even live in ignorance of its contribution. There are other such unsung heroes, however, whose contributions to the modern economy aren’t given the attention they are due. There isn’t just one hero here, there are two, birth control and abortion. The latter has made its rounds in the news as of recent with the US state of Texas effectively banning abortion by not permitting it after six weeks, the so-called ‘heartbeat law’ that makes no exception if a woman is pregnant due to rape or incest. The US supreme court has of course decided not to take any action, despite the US constitutional right to abortion as enforced by Roe v Wade. This of course came down partly due to a legal technicality but also as a consequence of an all conservative judge base. As politics gets more populist, not only the politicians but also the supreme court begins to pander to the more extreme bases in order to ensure turnouts and party support.

America is unique in the western rich world for its constant controversy surrounding abortion, largely due to Christian and particularly catholic sects that are against it. Yet this kind of ban wasn’t only largely unaccepted but also largely unsupported by major public opinion polls. So, while many in the general public may be opposed to how restrictive this ban is, most largely ignore the economic contributions of abortion and birth control. And it all comes down to women. The marginalization of, the ignorance of and the unappreciation for women. It is common knowledge that women’s contribution in the household is largely overlooked by the economic metrics such as the GDP however, it is important to ascertain that women make equally significant contributions to the economy and this is particularly true in the many countries that have pioneered family planning, and given women access to the tools and resources needed to ensure that they can control their fertility. The contraceptive pill is one of the most common forms of contraception and for good reason too. Unlike other sources of contraceptives, it is something that the woman can easily use herself without having to negotiate with a partner, the control lies in her own hands and thus she can ensure that it is used in the correct manner. Add to this the fact that it has the highest rate of success and provides women with a private and safe method, and it’s no wonder that young women, in particular, are keen on them.

Why the young?

Well, that is because it is the young who have the most to lose from an unwanted pregnancy, getting pregnant young can ensure that women don’t go on to educate themselves or pursue the career that they wished for. In the 1970s family planning clinics saw a boom in universities as more women started to look towards previously male-dominated fields such as law or medicine, without now having to choose between being sexually active and ensuring a career for themselves in industries where a long-term commitment is required. Before the pill degrees such as law, medicine and an MBA consisted of classes that were sometimes 99 percent male, this wasn’t simply because women wanted to enjoy their youth but also many wished to get married and waiting until they were in their 30s meant that they wouldn’t be able to get a suitable partner as at that point their potential dating pool had lingered down.

With the pill, fewer women were getting pregnant by accident and having to get married due to social stigma around being knocked up outside wedlock. Historical data has shown that states in America that allow women access to contraceptives at younger ages, such as 17 or 18 instead of waiting until they become 21, ensure that women there have better postsecondary education, better pay in the future and thus even a narrower gender pay gap. Additionally, economists, Goldin and Katz noted that as the contraceptive was opened to women in each American state, women began to pour into professional capacities greatly contributing to both the local and national economies. This is because contraception ensured that a 5-year course was no longer a so-called risk because women didn’t have to worry about derailing their education with a baby on the way.

Another thing that changed around this time in America was the legalisation of abortion as it came with roe v wade. The impact of the legislation was such that in the US women now make up around 50 percent of the workforce, ensuring that they can bring income into households, sometimes taking on the role of the primary breadwinner and always doing so in a single-parent household. More women earning ensures that more women have access to wealth that they can then invest back into the economy, according to the S&P global women worldwide were estimated to hold around 72 trillion dollars in potential investments worldwide. The involvement of women in society boosts productivity and not only does it help reduce income inequality but it also helps boost the GDP. According to a study done by ‘UN Women’ if all OECD countries had the female employment rates of Sweden it would boost global GDP by over 6 trillion dollars. In fact, even on the micro-level companies recognise that with more women in high-level management ensures that the business performs better on all metrics that concern the organization. In fact, with all the research that surrounds the topic, there aren’t many that could argue that the economy should have fewer women participating. This is why the new ban in Texas is all the more concerning as it seems to live in ignorance of how getting pregnant at the wrong time not only takes away bodily autonomy from women but also puts society and the economy at large at greater peril.

Yet this is where I concede that like everything in economics, none of these ideas are as simple as they seem at first glance. Yes, it’s true that there is a correlation between abortion and increased economic participation by women, and that then leads to better economic performance but there is more to it. The disparities first begin to show when we venture out of the west and into Asia in particular. Japan has built itself an unenviable reputation of having the highest gender gap among developed countries, something that particularly shows up in the Japanese workplace. Women are constantly discriminated against, they are passed up for certain promotions and workplace harassment is still a persistent issue around the country. Many economists have attempted to make the connection between these modern disparities and Japan’s contentious history with family planning.

The contraceptive pill was very controversial in Japan, it was only approved for use in 1999 which is nearly 40 years after the US approved it, as Economist Tim Harford pointed out however Japan was quick when it came to legalising Viagra, trailing behind by only a few months. It is thus crystal clear that the delayed approval of the pill came at the hand of traditional values that wouldn’t want to encourage promiscuity. Yet this nature of the pill comes in stark contrast to Japan’s policy on abortion as the country was one of the very earliest to legalise the practice. But that didn’t come into effect without its own caveats because the move towards the liberalisation of abortion wasn’t motivated because of the positive effect it would have on the economy or the benefits to women, but rather as a sly scheme that supported eugenics. That’s right, when Japan became one of the earliest adopters of abortion in 1948, it was part of a scheme that rallied against the disabled and those with genetic so-called impurities that could be inherited by their children.

Abortion was then used as a rallying cry when sometime around the 60s people in Japan began to fear overpopulation, they didn’t want to live in a country wherein there were too many quote-unquote ‘unfit’, workers or apparently unhappy children because they grew up in poverty or were faced with inherited issues. Most Japanese don’t support eugenics as of today, that much is apparent, however, this also means that since abortion as an argument was introduced with that particularly nasty practice of selective reproduction, rejecting social Darwinism meant also rejecting the practice of abortion. Many feminists in Japan today can’t use the same arguments as those in much of the west, about abortion being a woman’s natural right, due to the fact that many in the camp for eugenics can appropriate that particular reasoning or those in the opposite camp will once again equate the two as going hand in hand. Thus, the inequality in gender in the Japanese economy today can partly be blamed on its risqué history with all forms of family planning. Yet another hitch is the case of another Asian democracy.

For every 100 females in India there are 108.18 males as of 2020, this inequality is largely the result of sex-selective abortion. Finding out the sex of an unborn child is illegal in India as a way to prevent the practice, however enforcement of this law is arbitrary and patchy across India’s many regions, thus illegal sex-selective abortions are rife. But why is this the case and why does it matter? Firstly, the reasoning. For many households having a son instead of a daughter can make a lot of economic sense in India. In research done regarding the issue, it was found that having a first-born son ensures that families would face many benefits, such as an increase in their per capita annual household income by nearly 7 percent, it also means an increase of monthly household expenditure per capita of somewhere around 2 percent, and increase in assets and a reduction in the chances of falling below the poverty line. Clearly to a poor family living in rural India it is an obvious equation, the incentives of having their firstborn be a son far outweigh any moral guilt they may feel of aborting any female children.

Whilst there has been an argument made that families who have firstborn sons end up having fewer kids on average as they’ve already had a male heir and thus don’t need to keep trying. This means that per capita income and expenditure in the household would automatically increase because naturally there are now fewer people in the house. In addition to this as per tradition in India, the wife moves in with her in-laws therefore any income that she may have earned and any of her own expenditure wouldn’t count towards her own parent’s household. Nonetheless, the economic arguments against a female child still prevail due to the many social costs associated, for example, many regions in India still practice the custom of ‘dowry’ wherein upon marriage the women’s family gives her future husband’s family a series of expensive gifts or money as a condition for the marriage.

Many poorer families often have to start saving for the same since the moment the girl is born, as without the ‘dowry’ she would have trouble finding a husband when she is of age and unmarried she would only bring shame to the family. Thus, the girl who is in rural parts of India doesn’t bring home any income but only incurs many costs only to eventually go and live with another family is seen as a burden, a debt to the household, rather than an asset like a son. A son who will live with his parents in the future and care for them in their old age. This means that India’s workforce is dominated by men with a dwindling presence of women, it was 20 percent in 2019 which is less than it was in 2005, something that is a shocking development for a modern 21st-century economy.

India is one of the fastest-growing economies in the world but this impressive growth is held behind by woman’s lack of participation in the economy. It becomes an odd case in which abortion may actually be hurting women in the economy, but it shouldn’t be equated to an argument against abortion as a practice itself because of the independence and freedom it provides them and it allows them to participate in the economy. McKinsey found that India’s GDP would be 60 percent higher if more Indian women participated in the economy. The solution isn’t to ban abortions in order to ensure that sex-selective abortions stop but rather to continue to educate the population on the importance of women in society and in the economy, campaigns like the ones run by the current government to encourage the education of girls are definitely helpful. Abortion in countries like India, or other countries that perform sex-selective abortions like China, should be used as a tool to empower women to take ownership of their bodies rather than to hold them back.

So back to the elephant in the room, Texas. The reason that this development is so unsettling is due to the fact that it is a regression. And one that it unacceptable in the 21st century. Abortion and family planning, in general, are important to preserving how far women have come, this isn’t the time to go back.