Abortion bans won’t just cost women their lives and their dreams. They will also cost taxpayers billions of dollars in healthcare costs for unplanned pregnancies, welfare and other government benefits, litigation costs, and other expenses.
For Republicans who claim to be concerned about deficit and government waste, these harmful bans prove to be a colossal expense.
How Abortion Bans Cost Taxpayers
Numerous analyses have shown that abortion bans directly impact taxpayers. Consider the following numbers:
- In 2010, unintended pregnancies cost the U.S. more than $20 billion—more than half of the total funding spent on pregnancies. Abortion bans guarantee that number will soar.
- Women forced to carry pregnancies they do not want are more likely to need public assistance, so welfare and food stamp costs will rise.
- Women denied abortions have worse health five years later, and are more likely to die after giving birth. Their healthcare costs will be massive, and in many cases, taxpayers will foot the bill.
- The cost of litigating abortion-related lawsuits is enormous. In 2016, when the government attempted to close the majority of Alabama abortion clinics, the state ended up paying the ACLU of Alabama $1.7 million. That figure doesn’t take into account other legal fees involved in litigating the case, which were almost certainly massive.
- Research consistently shows that banning abortion doesn’t end it. It only makes it unsafe. In Latin America, where abortion is banned or severely restricted in most nations, the abortion rate is more than three times as high as the U.S. abortion rate.
- States may lose money from businesses that boycott them. In Georgia, the film industry has brought $9.5 billion in economic gains. As calls to divest get louder, Georgia may have less money to waste, at a time when its policies are costing taxpayers more than ever.
- More than 25 million unsafe abortions occur each year. Unsafe abortions are a leading cause of maternal death, killing thousands of women annually. The government may be left picking up the tab. It will have to cover some portion of the healthcare costs associated with unsafe abortion. When children are orphaned or their parent is disabled, the state may incur millions in additional costs.
The ‘Pro-Life’ Republicans Who Think Money Matters More Than Human Lives
Forced birthers may respond to the massive expense of abortion bans by countering that they’re saving lives. After all, you can’t put a dollar on human life, and if it costs taxpayers billions to save babies, so be it.
The problem here is the hypocrisy, since this reasoning does not extend to living, breathing women and children, nor to policies that could actually prevent abortion.
Despite a pile of research showing that policies like comprehensive sex education, free birth control, paid parental leave, and expansion of Medicaid lower the abortion rate and improve healthcare outcomes, Republicans continue to oppose these measures. These policies, they say, just cost too much. It’s not fair to the taxpayers to pay for a woman’s pregnancy or a child’s healthcare. Too bad, so sad. Let the poor suffer and die. And let the taxpayers pay for policies that cause even more suffering and death.
Meanwhile, they sit passively by and do nothing to slow an epidemic of preventable maternal deaths. The U. S. maternal mortality rate is the highest in the wealthy world. Georgia, which recently banned abortion, has maternal mortality rates higher than Iraq, Iran, and 100 other nations. These deaths are almost entirely preventable, and analyses consistently show that shortcomings in our healthcare system—not lifestyle issues or other failings of individual women—are the primary culprit. Death during birth is a preventable tragedy in a modern healthcare system, and is virtually unheard of in most other wealthy nations.
The problem is so bad that USA Today recently called out hospitals for knowing how to prevent maternal mortality, yet consistently choosing not to do it. Here again, we see Republican leaders leaning on the same tired arguments they always use: It costs too much money, and in any case, the government has no place in healthcare. Let the market sort it out. Who cares how many people die?
They want it both ways.
They want the government out of healthcare, unless it’s forcing women into unnecessary vaginal probes or reaching into women’s homes and uteruses to tell them what they can do with their bodies.
They want to save taxpayers money, unless taxpayer funds can be used to abuse and control women.
They want to limit needless litigation, unless that litigation costs the taxpayers millions and defends an unconstitutional law.
They want to protect life, and they want to do nothing to save the lives of women and children.
They want to prevent abortion, and they refuse to adopt any policies that could actually do so. They want only the policies that brutalize women.
The Human Cost of Abortion Bans
The tragic human toll of abortion bans is already painfully clear. Human Rights Watch recently emphasized that the human misery in Honduras offers a “frightening preview” of what’s in store for women in the U.S. if abortion is banned. Their report details the stories of a woman forced to undergo a miscarriage while handcuffed, the women forced to bear rapists’ children, and the doctor who risks incarceration to perform abortions on women whose pregnancies threaten their lives.
Abortion bans increase women’s vulnerability to domestic violence—which is already the second-leading cause of death during pregnancy. They drive the maternal mortality rate higher. They punish the 32,000 women who get pregnant each year from rape. They increase late-term abortions. They put sexually abused children in mortal danger.
The list is endless. The human suffering is immeasurable. Republicans do not care. The least we can do is point to their hypocrisy. They’ll let women die for lack of healthcare, claiming it’s because they want to be good stewards of taxpayer dollars. But when they want to control women’s bodies, they’ll happily burn through taxpayer funds.