Thread by @asymmetricinfo

Yes, it is both true that most of the women who have abortions are low income, and that educated women are much more supportive of permissive abortion law than women without a college diploma.

https://twitter.com/AmandaMarcotte/status/1469010967673675778

How do we explain this? Well, for starters, the majority of women at any income level haven't had an abortion, and variation in opinion among those who haven't may explain the difference.

Or maybe those who have regretted it. Or maybe they think the law should be different. I don't know, and can only get so far by consulting my own imagination.

At any rate, I didn't say that abortion rights were some sort of effete professional woman need. Rather, I think the reasons lower income women have abortions are probably different from the reasons a Harvard freshman does.

And that this may systematically change how those women view abortion rights.

For example, a lot of abortion rhetoric among educated women naturally stresses the effect an unwanted pregnancy might have on finishing your education. Women who never went to college might consider this a less compelling reason to abort.

That's not to say that the educated women are wrong, or selfish, or what have you. I just think they shouldn't assume that their views are shared by most women. Even women who poll as nominally pro-choice might differ substantially on the particulars of when it should be legal.

But I will say that if you don't actually spend a lot of time in working class communities, you probably shouldn't generalize about their views, or suggest that they only hold them because unlike you, they have been brainwashed by misogynist Republican propaganda.

Working class people get their ideas the same way the rest of us do: through a combination of life experience, argumentation, self-reflection, and yes, uncritical acceptance of stuff that is believed by people they like.

The idea that they are mere dupes, waiting to be enlightened by the superior minds of the women's studies department, is beyond arrogant.