Washington D.C., May 11, 2022 / 15:21 pm (CNA).
When Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen claimed that abortion economically helps women — including low-income, Black women — one senator challenged her with his personal story.
“I’ll just simply say that, as a guy raised by a Black woman in abject poverty, I am thankful to be here as a United States senator,” Republican Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina said Tuesday.
He made his comments during a May 10 hearing held by the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. At the hearing, Yellen testified as a witness and claimed that abortion enables women to succeed in the workforce.
“I believe that eliminating the right of women to make a decision about when and whether to have children would have very damaging effects on the economy and would set women back decades,” she said. “Roe v. Wade and access to reproductive health care, including abortion, helped lead to increased labor force participation.”
Yellen’s remarks followed a leaked Supreme Court draft opinion that suggests justices will overturn Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion nationwide in 1973.
Roe v. Wade, Yellen claimed, enabled women to pursue an education, increase their earning potential, balance their families and careers, and benefit their planned children.
Studies show that “denying women access to abortion increase their odds of living in poverty or need for public assistance,” Yellen added.
At a later point in the hearing, Scott asked her to clarify.
“Did you say that ending the life of a child is good for the labor force participation rate?” he asked.
The increased labor force participation rate, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, is the percentage of the population that is either working or actively looking for work.
“To the guy who was raised by a single mom who worked long hours to keep us out of poverty — I think people can disagree on the issue of being pro-life or pro-abortion — but, in the end, I think framing it in the context of labor force participation is, just feels callous to me,” he added. “I think finding a way to have a debate around abortion in a meeting for the economic stability of our country is harsh.”
Yellen replied that she did not intend to come across as harsh.
“In many cases, abortions are of teenage women, particularly low-income and often Black, who aren’t in a position to be able to care for children, have unexpected pregnancies, and it deprives them of the ability often to continue their education to later participate in the work force,” she said. “So there is a spillover into labor force participation. And it means that children will grow up in poverty and do worse themselves.”
Scott responded that “there’s a lot of ways for us to address the issue about the child that’s here.”
“We can, at the same time, have a real conversation about increasing child tax credits that are refundable,” he said. “We can, at the same time, have a conversation about the opportunity to have a more robust system around the issue of child care, of early childhood education. We could have a conversation about financial literacy.”
At the end of the hearing, Scott stressed that millions of children face circumstances similar to his: being raised in poverty by single-parent households that are Black.
The American Dream is one of hope and opportunity. We should be having conversations about economic policies that ensure everyone—including single moms and their kids—have access to that dream. Sec. Yellen’s comments today don’t meet that mark. pic.twitter.com/DqumCuggHs
— Tim Scott (@SenatorTimScott) May 10, 2022
“Telling Black teenage moms that there’s only one alternative for them is a depressing and challenge message,” he said. “What I’m talking about is the importance of understanding the reality that even during tough financial times in households like the one I was raised, there is still hope.”
He ended, “I’m simply saying that the experience of so many of us, millions of us, in poverty, I conclude is a reason to be hopeful about what’s possible even for those incredibly powerful positive women making really hard choices.”
The argument that women rely on abortion to succeed economically is a common one made by abortion supporters.
An amicus brief submitted by hundreds of professional women in Dobbs v. Jackson, the case that could overturn Roe, argues that, instead, abortion harms women.
If you value the news and views Catholic World Report provides, please consider donating to support our efforts. Your contribution will help us continue to make CWR available to all readers worldwide for free, without a subscription. Thank you for your generosity!
Click here for more information on donating to CWR. Click here to sign up for our newsletter.
“. . . I think framing it [abortion] in the context of labour force participation is, just feels callous to me . . .”
Understatement of the year.
Janet Yellen has permanently lost me. And she speaks for many, I’m afraid.
Those who support the ongoing genocide of black babies in he womb are racists.
Yellen’s yellin’ reminds this reader of the afterbirth from some of President Johnson’s Great Society programs. Yellen’s economist mindset is a hammer looking for a nail…
Have we not read how some of Johnson’s largesse programs aggravated a “culture of poverty” (Oscar Lewis, late 1950s), as more young single women opted for pregnancy to qualify for welfare? The Law of Unintended Consequences and the destruction of the Black Family in America and, on the Beltway plantation, elected party hacks expand their client groups…
The illegitimacy rate among Blacks went up from 40% to now 70%, and among Whites from 10% to now 40%…public policy has thrown gas on the Sexual Devolution of the late 1960s. A large share of those in poverty are actually single-parent or broken families, Black and White.
And now, we hear Yellen redefining [!] the abortion agenda as an economic benefit. Sounds a lot like corporate America when, in 2015, it flooded the United States Supreme Court with 400 assembly-line amicus briefs redefining [!] gay “marriage” as an economic benefit—arguing that a favorable decision would hike the GNP by some fraction of one percent in new private spending.
The Alito draft Opinion on the 1973 Roe v Wade also notes that there’s something rotten in Denmark with Justice Kennedy’s related fatwa in the 1992 Casey v Planned Parenthood case: “At the heart of liberty, is the right to define [!] one’s own concept of existence, of meaning and of the mystery of life.”
Redefinition: abortive child abuse is good economics!