ICYMI Scott: Abortion is not the way to help single Black mothers

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Tim Scott (R-S.C.) penned an opinion piece in The Washington Post, arguing that increased access to opportunity — not abortion — is the solution to America’s economic challenges.

Opinion | Tim Scott: Abortion is not the way to help single Black mothers
The Washington Post
U.S. Senator Tim Scott

My mom raised my brother and me on her own, struggling to make ends meet. She worked 16 hours a day three days a week, and eight hours a day two days a week, just to keep food on the table and the lights on.

She was a nurse’s aide, changing bedpans and rolling patients. She did this work because she wanted to teach my brother and me a lesson that there is dignity in all work and dignity in all life.

I thought of my mother — of all Black mothers like her — during an appearance last week by Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen at a Senate Banking Committee hearing, when Yellen was asked how a ban on abortion might affect the American economy.

“I believe that eliminating the right of women to make decisions about when and whether to have children would have very damaging effects on the economy,” Yellen said.

She went on to say how abortion affects “particularly low-income and often Black” mothers and how a lack of access to abortion “deprives them of the ability often to continue their education to later participate in the workforce.”

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In that moment, I felt compelled to speak up and speak out on behalf of people like my mom. There are voices today who would tell you that our lives were hopeless. That a life like the one we had as a family was not a life worth living, and that the United States would be better off if people like us didn’t exist at all

[…]

If abortion is our first and “best” answer to ensure that women and low-income families can thrive economically, the United States has reached one of its darkest times in our history. The claim is simply false and echoes the egregious arguments made in the early 20th century by Margaret Sanger in support of the eugenics movement.

But there is a better way. The American Dream is one of hope and opportunity. I know this, because I’ve lived it. In America, the son of a Black single mother can go from poverty to the U.S. Senate in one lifetime. If we want to talk about the economic stability of our country, let’s talk about what we can do to ensure single moms and their kids have access to that same American Dream.

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