"The one regret I have about my own abortions is that they cost money that might otherwise have been spent on something more pleasurable, like taking the kids to movies and theme parks"
About this Quote
Ehrenreich swings a hammer with a feather on it: the line is funny, but the laugh lands on a bruise. By calling her “regret” purely financial, she refuses the culturally mandated script that abortion must be narrated as tragedy, moral reckoning, or lifelong wound. The joke is a jailbreak from the confessional genre. She doesn’t deny complexity; she denies the requirement to perform it on demand.
The most loaded move is the casual pivot to “taking the kids to movies and theme parks.” It smuggles motherhood into the frame not as an argument against abortion but as proof that abortion and parenting are not opposing identities. That’s the subtext: reproductive decisions live inside ordinary household math. Not metaphysics, not shame, not a courtroom. Just budgets, time, childcare, the relentless logistics of raising actual children.
Context matters. Ehrenreich, a writer steeped in materialist critique, aims her punchline at the way American moral debates float above economic reality. Abortion opponents often insist the issue is purely ethical; Ehrenreich drags it back to the marketplace, where even healthcare is a consumer transaction. The sting is that in the U.S., the “choice” is frequently mediated by money, and that fact is treated as background noise rather than scandal.
Her intent is also defensive in the best way: she preempts the insinuation that a “good” woman must regret abortion. If regret exists, she’ll define it herself - dry, defiant, domestic - and in doing so, she reframes autonomy as something lived, not sermonized.
The most loaded move is the casual pivot to “taking the kids to movies and theme parks.” It smuggles motherhood into the frame not as an argument against abortion but as proof that abortion and parenting are not opposing identities. That’s the subtext: reproductive decisions live inside ordinary household math. Not metaphysics, not shame, not a courtroom. Just budgets, time, childcare, the relentless logistics of raising actual children.
Context matters. Ehrenreich, a writer steeped in materialist critique, aims her punchline at the way American moral debates float above economic reality. Abortion opponents often insist the issue is purely ethical; Ehrenreich drags it back to the marketplace, where even healthcare is a consumer transaction. The sting is that in the U.S., the “choice” is frequently mediated by money, and that fact is treated as background noise rather than scandal.
Her intent is also defensive in the best way: she preempts the insinuation that a “good” woman must regret abortion. If regret exists, she’ll define it herself - dry, defiant, domestic - and in doing so, she reframes autonomy as something lived, not sermonized.
Quote Details
| Topic | Dark Humor |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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