"Lost Children"

More on Ursula K. Le Guin's "What It Was Like" here. 

A comment thread on "I acknowledge that pro-life folks think abortion is murder. I just don’t believe it" (I know first-hand this argument is true; also, from LMR: "In 2012, U.S. families adopted more than 7,000 children, yet over 100k children await adoption from the American foster care system."):

Forcing a woman to give birth at the wrong time in her life leads to poorly-raised, potentially anti-social children.

Letting her wait until a better time results in children who will have a better chance. Those kids would most likely not have been born had she been forced to give birth earlier.

Those who make abortion a crime are denying life to those later children, who would have been born in better circumstances.

I like that argument. Not one I've heard or thought of before. But it's true. By forcing birth when the woman isn't ready for it, you're most likely denying birth when she is, when the odds of successfully raising said child are better.

I think it's an important point that needs to be emphasized more. I call them the "lost children."

Take for example a woman whose fetus tests for a genetic disorder. If she is able to have an abortion she may go on to have several healthy children in the future. If not, she may spend her life caring for a severely disabled child. Which is more "pro-life?"

I don't think the government can answer that question. So let the woman and her doctors decide.

I've seen that argument before. It was made by Ursula K. Le Guin in her essay "What It Was Like" about her own abortion. She was pregnant in college and had an abortion. If she hadn't, she says, she'd have been stuck with that child and would never have had the three wanted children she bore later on in marriage. (Probably, also, she would never have been able to embark on her literary career, and then we'd all be worse off.)

I'll look that one up. This is a point I always like to emphasize, especially with my Catholic relatives - legal abortion can be "pro-life" as well. The point is not so much how many children are born, but what circumstances they are born into.