By Memory Pamela Kadau
The economy is often described as consisting of firms, government and households. Economic activities of households are determined by income, savings and what they can spend on such basics as health, food, education and clothing, socials amongst other recurrent needs of households. Of critical importance for the economic balance of the household is the number of dependents in each household. Children constitute the majority of dependents in households and meeting their needs takes up a significant amount of the household budget. In Zimbabwe, the government doesn’t provide childcare support for single mothers or any struggling parents/guardians who take care of children and these have to meet all the costs on their own. This stark reality makes control of family size not only a matter of women’s bodily integrity but a critical socio-economic factor determining the wellbeing of women and their households.
In this respect, abortion rights are deeply intertwined with economic security, independence, and mobility for millions of women and other abortion patients, who are already struggling in poverty or living on the edge. For some women, an addition of one more dependent is the final straw on the proverbial camel’s back, pushing them right into the vortex of the vicious cycle of poverty. This makes abortion is an irrefutable economic issue and determining the size of a family is one of the most profound economic decisions that a person will make in their lifetime. It defines their bodily integrity as much as it determines the socioeconomic status they will attain, it is much more profound for men than women.
In addition, the state of the economy depends on the state of the people living in it. And the state of people living in it depends on how many mouths need feeding in every household, and how thinly stretched are the time, patience and finances of the heads of those households. These circumstances are more unforgiving for women hence the State cannot impose laws that take away rights of its most vulnerable, mostly women, to make a final determination on the growth of families they will naturally take care off with little assistance from the State. To illustrate this, I will look at a few examples in respect of the financial constraints and what lack of access to abortion services mean for women and their subsequent offspring.
Firstly, abortion access influences a family’s ability to afford higher education and rising food, fuel and health-care prices. It is intertwined with income and wealth inequality with higher earning households being able to feed, cloth, educate and care for an extra being. It impacts day-care waiting lists, in underfunded public schools and meager incomes and family health, both physical and mental. Thus, access to abortion and abortion services can have powerful impacts on women’s economic outcomes, including what kinds of jobs they can and cannot take, educational attainment, chances of being in poverty and financial distress, mental health and so much more.
Therefore, legalization of abortion will help hundreds of thousands of Zimbabwean women to secure the right to access a critical health service. Research in countries which have legalized access to abortion, like South Africa, Sweden and Finland, show that availability of the service has positively affected women’s labor force participation and educational attainment, significantly bolstering the ability of women and families, along with state and local economies, to thrive. The direct opposite is true for majority of countries which deny women the right to an abortion, it has had nationwide consequences, the effects on women and families’ economic security is particularly devastating. This gruesome reality is reflected in children taking up family responsibility the recent case of the Tsholotsho minor who was sexually abused leading to pregnancy and birth at a tender age of nine years.
It is therefore imperative that to protect girls and women from the disempowering jaws of poverty, robust action to strengthen the nation’s social safety net and advance policies to help working families, women, and other people who can become pregnant, facing unintended parenthood in our most vulnerable communities. However, the ultimate solution is reviewing the Termination of Pregnancy Act (TOP) and making access to abortion services easy for women and girls needing them. Denying access to abortion has devastating consequences for women socioeconomic welfare, with downstream effects on their children, communities, and local and national economies. In countries like Sweden, access to reproductive health care, including abortion, helped lead to increased labor force participation. It enabled many women to finish school. That increased their earning potential. It allowed women to plan and balance their families and careers. This is an imperative if Zimbabwe is to deal with the scourge of child marriages and women poverty which torments single mothers pushing them into crime and sex work.
As an example, I have previously written about the impact of the reversal of Roe v Doe case in the USA by its supreme court earlier this year. Research in that country show that following the Supreme Court’s decision in Roe in 1973, women experienced a significant increase in labor force participation. The largest gains occurred in the decade and a half following Roe, during which women’s labor force participation grew at the fastest rate on record, including faster than during the 15 years prior to the Supreme Court’s decision. Equally important, the Roe framework helped to sustain these higher rates of labor force participation for the generations of women who followed, especially from vulnerable communities.
This could apply to Zimbabwe’s women in mining, farming and informal settlements whose access to health care services are part of a range of intersectional factors exacerbating their vulnerability. In addition, because of the Roe Case research shows that women’s educational attainment also grew under. One study found that access to abortion for women facing early, undesired pregnancies increased the probability of their entering college by 41 percent and completing college by 71 percent. These positive effects were particularly pronounced for Black women (a vulnerable group) experiencing early pregnancies: access to abortion increased their probability of entering college by up to 200 percent.
Furthermore, because of abortion legalization, women’s earnings were boosted. According to one study, women whose abortion care allowed them to delay an unplanned start to parenthood by one year saw an 11 percent increase in hourly wages later on in their careers. Provided that many women are their families’ sole or primary breadwinner and that access to abortion has had positive impacts on women’s economic security overall, it is unsurprising that abortion legalization also lowered the chances of a child living in poverty.
When a mother gives birth after thorough planning, the children enjoy the best of care available, have better life opportunities, and mothers have less chances of sliding into poverty or depression. One 1997 study by a women’s foundation in the USA found that the so-called marginal child who was not born due to abortion access—and who would have been born absent abortion legalization—would have been 40 percent more likely than the average American child at the time to live in poverty.
In our local context research by several human rights organisations like Amnesty International, SAfAIDS, Women Action Group among others make it clear that when women do not have access to abortion care, they are more likely to suffer financially. Another research, led by an interdisciplinary team, the Turnaway Study tracked two groups of women: one composed of those who had received abortion care, and the other composed of women who had been denied care. The study determined that women who were forced to carry a pregnancy to term experienced a wide range of negative financial consequences, including lower credit scores, increased debt, and more negative public financial records such as bankruptcies and evictions.14 In addition to the impact on women themselves, the study showed that these restrictions are associated with worse child developmental outcomes and a greater likelihood of child poverty.
