"We have had virtually unlimited access to abortion for nearly twenty years. Yet during that same period, more and more women and children have slipped into poverty"
About this Quote
Casey’s line is built like an indictment: you were promised liberation, you got deprivation. The rhetorical move is classic political jujitsu, taking a policy commonly framed as expanding women’s autonomy and reframing it as a symptom, even an accomplice, of economic abandonment. “Virtually unlimited access” does a lot of work: it paints the post-Roe landscape as permissive to the point of excess, priming the listener to see abortion not as healthcare but as a social default. Then comes the pivot word, “Yet,” which turns a correlation into an implied verdict.
The subtext isn’t just moral opposition to abortion; it’s a claim about priorities. If abortion is readily available while “more and more women and children” fall into poverty, Casey suggests the state has offered a private exit (terminate a pregnancy) instead of a public commitment (wages, childcare, healthcare, housing). It’s a critique aimed as much at liberal governance as at abortion rights: access to the procedure becomes a symbol of a society willing to manage inequality rather than solve it.
Context matters: Casey was a prominent anti-abortion Democrat in an era when the party was sorting itself after Roe and through the Reagan years’ economic restructuring. Poverty trends in the 1980s and early 1990s gave him raw material. The quote works because it weaponizes a moral debate to expose a material one, asking a question that stings: when social supports erode, are “choices” still choices, or just the cheapest policy on offer?
The subtext isn’t just moral opposition to abortion; it’s a claim about priorities. If abortion is readily available while “more and more women and children” fall into poverty, Casey suggests the state has offered a private exit (terminate a pregnancy) instead of a public commitment (wages, childcare, healthcare, housing). It’s a critique aimed as much at liberal governance as at abortion rights: access to the procedure becomes a symbol of a society willing to manage inequality rather than solve it.
Context matters: Casey was a prominent anti-abortion Democrat in an era when the party was sorting itself after Roe and through the Reagan years’ economic restructuring. Poverty trends in the 1980s and early 1990s gave him raw material. The quote works because it weaponizes a moral debate to expose a material one, asking a question that stings: when social supports erode, are “choices” still choices, or just the cheapest policy on offer?
Quote Details
| Topic | Equality |
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