Posted on 10/12/2026 12:16:45 PM PDT by Morgana
One of the latest narratives disseminated widely by abortion advocates is the claim that induced abortion (intentionally killing human beings in the womb) is central to the idea of reproductive and economic 'justice' for women.
But killing humans should never be offered as a sort of 'solution' to financial hardship.
Key Takeaways:
* The Center for Reproductive Rights recently released a flawed, non-peer-reviewed study promoting the message that women need abortion because having children is too expensive.
* Abortion advocate Jessica Valenti appeared on Vox Media's "America, Actually" podcast to discuss abortion, which she claims is an "affordability" issue.
* Several commenters on X were horrified by this idea, noting that it isn't acceptable to kill anyone simply because they're deemed 'too expensive.'
The Details:
An 'affordability' issue?
"Abortion, Every Day" creator Jessica Valenti recently appeared on Vox Media's "America, Actually" podcast, where she argued it is a mistake for Democrats to ignore abortion while campaigning for the midterms in favor of economic issues.
According to Valenti, the ability to kill one's preborn children is an economic issue.
She stated (emphases added):
"It is an affordability issue, right?
Like, you'd be hard-pressed to find something more important to your financial life than whether or not to have a child, than whether or not that you're going to be forced into pregnancy or not even just forced into pregnancy, but forced into massive medical debt, because your pregnancy goes wrong and you can't get an abortion.
And then you're in real medical trouble, and you go septic, or you lose an organ, right? There's a million ways that that works, but I also think that this issue reaches so far beyond individual people."
While pregnancy and raising children can be expensive, the answer to this is not to advocate for killing people; after all, if a parent said it cost too much money to continue caring for their two-year-old, not many people (outside of the Netherlands, anyway) would argue that it is acceptable to kill that child. In addition, "forcing" a woman "into pregnancy" seems something more akin to "The Handmaid's Tale" than reality, so it's unclear what Valenti meant by this.
There are real systemic issues involved, as Valenti pointed out, which particularly affect Black women, and yet, the solution is to offer more support, not killing. Offering women death isn't a solution; it merely upholds the status quo and redistributes the injustice, ending the life of an innocent human being.
What incentive is there to invest the time and money necessary to truly support women when they can just be pushed toward abortion instead? Maternity care deserts
Valenti also mentioned maternity deserts, saying, "You're looking at states like Idaho, which has lost a third of its OB/GYNs. Maternity wards are shuttering. Some women have to travel hours and hours just to give birth."
Maternity care deserts (areas where there is little to no maternity care) are a legitimate problem, but killing one's preborn child certainly isn't a solution to this. If anything, the decrease in population (exacerbated by abortion) is making this problem worse.
A 2022 March of Dimes report found that 36% of all counties are considered maternity care deserts, and “access to maternity care is diminishing in places where it’s needed most, impacting nearly seven million American women of childbearing age and roughly 500,000 babies.”
Rural communities are most impacted, putting those women and children at most risk.
However, the solution is not abortion. And as a 2023 article published in the JAMA Health Forum explained, policy recommendations to address maternity care deserts do not involve abortion; instead, recommendations include investing in the workforce, building community-based services, and expanding health coverage for pregnancy and childbirth.
All of those things would help address the systemic issues noted by Valenti.
Many viewers were not convinced by her arguments, and found them disturbing, commenting on X.
One wrote, "Oh Vox… do we want to go down this road? If we want to justify eliminating people from the population because they’re financial burdens, you might not like where we end up."
Another followed the argument to its logical conclusion, writing, "Why not infanticide by this logic?"
Another person asked, "Did you just equate killing babies to affordability?"
Yet another commenter pointed out, "By that measure we should be killing the elderly, the handicapped, and anyone else who is a 'burden to a family."
Another stated, "I’m very pro choice but it’s weird to be this obsessed with abortion. Get a new shtick."
Another pointedly claimed, "'It's expensive out there, killing your kids is a simple and easy budget hack to keep your personal finances on track.' -Democrats"
Zoom Out:
A non-peer-reviewed University of Michigan study, funded by the pro-abortion Center for Reproductive Rights, claimed that women in pro-life states are more likely to pay increased health insurance costs. The researchers compared women ages 18–44 from 2019–2025 in states with pro-life laws versus states without them.
The group posited that pro-life laws led to higher medical costs, which researchers assumed would occur because more pregnancies are carried to term rather than aborted — and as prenatal care can be expensive, insurers may ultimately pass some of those costs along.
However, pro-life states didn't show higher direct hospital and doctors bills, which researchers suggested means insurers are spreading additional health care costs associated with pregnancy onto beneficiaries.
This study is not peer-reviewed, and the researchers don't seem to have directly observed this happening. They aren't matching insurance claims showing higher maternity-related costs to specific insurers, and then showing that those same insurers raised employee premium contributions in response. The abstract itself calls the evidence “suggestive.”
The researchers also excluded several states that expanded Medicaid during the period, which creates another problem. The pro-life states examined are disproportionately Southern, lower-income, more rural, and have very different labor markets, employers, insurance markets, and health systems from states like Massachusetts, New York, and Washington.
The study relies heavily on the idea that, absent pro-life laws, the trends would have continued moving similarly, despite the existing differences already present among these states.
For example, employer health insurance premiums rose 7% nationally in 2023, another 7% in 2024, and 6% in 2025. Employee premium contributions also substantially differ for things completely unrelated to abortion. In 2024, workers in the South paid an average 28% of family premiums versus 22% in the Northeast and 23% in the Midwest.
Employee contributions also vary hugely by employer size and industry. That also means that the differences found in the study could just as easily be explained by regional labor-market differences.
The Bottom Line:
Both with the University of Michigan study and the Valenti interview, the message is the same: if people are too expensive, it's better to just kill them.
Surely we, as a society, can do better than this.
Dear FRiends,
We need your continuing support to keep FR funded. Your donations are our sole source of funding. No sugar daddies, no advertisers, no paid memberships, no commercial sales, no gimmicks, no tax subsidies. No spam, no pop-ups, no ad trackers.
If you enjoy using FR and agree it's a worthwhile endeavor, please consider making a contribution today:
Click here: to donate by Credit Card
Or here: to donate by PayPal
Or by mail to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794
Thank you very much and God bless you,
Jim
We are more prosperous than ever before in history, but can’t afford babies? Hogwash. It’s all about priorities.
Next (or already arriving): Your elderly grandparents are just too expensive. MAID is the solution.
Held tightly between the knees.
Too expensive?
Lefties of course will expect other people’s children to pay for their Social Security and Medicare, empty their bedpans, put food on the table and keep the lights on as they age.
Meanwhile, they will live selfishly, make no provision for themselves, and opt out of the great task of sustaining the society and building the future.
And they will tax younger generations up to their eyeballs to subsidize their hedonism. This will be called “social justice.”
When the Great Reset happens, maybe we should begin by abolishing all forms of government funded income transfer programs and healthcare support. Return charity to families, friends, and churches.
It would be ugly for a few years as the incorrigibles died by the millions. We would probably have to get used to shooting looters on sight. But in a few years, we would be over the hump and could resume building a better future. Which would again have room for children.
We are more prosperous than ever before in history, but can’t afford babies?
- - - - - - -
Don’t more adults than ever before live with their parents? I think that’s a good measure of prosperity. There is nothing to brag about.
Exactly.
An aspirin solves the problem. Just hold it between your knees, ladies.
19 minutes before me! LOL
One wonders who is funding these pro-abortion groups in the West. If I had to guess, I’d bet money that Islamic groups are behind many of them. While we’re aborting our future, they’re planning victory via demographics.
What do the fathers of the aborted say about this?
MacKenzie Scott, jeff Bezos’ ex-wife, donated $275 million to Planned Parenthood, the largest single-person donation in the organization’s history.
Can’t afford a baby? There is a solution. One aspirin.
Held tightly between the knees.
That’s an old tried and true method which has been handed down from mother to daughter for generations.
Vaginal insertion actually improves fertility in medical contexts: In legitimate reproductive medicine, doctors sometimes prescribe low-dose aspirin to increase the chances of pregnancy because it improves blood flow to the uterus and aids embryo implantation.
This is out of control.
In Massachusetts, sign a petition to block 3rd-trimester abortions until 2028 :
Why are babies too expensive?
Because government is too big.
Before 1930 government spent 3 to 4 percent of the US GDP.
Today government spends 20 to 25 percent of GDP.
Shrink government and make babies affordable again.
the first child a couple has can cost a little because of the needed infrastructure to start the process.
BUT, those items can usually be obtained for free during baby showers.
After that ... babies are CHEAP, nearly nothing to spend money on besides diapers for a couple of years while they breast feed. Then they get a little older and still eat very little. Eventually they get to school and you spend a little on clothes and school supplies and that is it.
After the first you can reuse everything you got at the start and hand down the clothes from the oldest to the younger ones which cuts the costs of each additional child. Then as a bonus once you have a couple, the oldest ones act as free baby sitters for the younger ones.
The biggest costs of children are optional:
buying them a car
paying for their college
Then fast forward a couple of decades and you have caretakers that do not charge anything when you are sick and or dying.
Its really easy to not get pregnant. This point seems to be ignored by the “advocates”.
How expensive is it to put the baby up for adoption if you don’t want it? Didn’t know those firehouse baby drop-offs charged ridiculous fees. If they are too attached to it to put it up for adoption, how can they kill it? It’s crazy people logic.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.