Wow, you always get one with this topic. BTW what happened to producing sources on this board?
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In all reality, voluntary has been skewed as involuntary by the rising cases of wrongful accusations levied at men of rape, date rape, you get the drift
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Source?
Actually if you live in the US your view on how many Rapes are in fact "false" rapes will be determined by the state you live in. For example in the bible belt state of Kansas they claimed that 25% of all rapes were false (Kansas Star 1996), while in Dallas only two months earlier on the Morning Show they sighted only 6.9% of rapes as false accusations. The wide opinion held by most academics places a national average at around the same level as that of other crimes of 2% of rapes being false accusations (Marcia L. Roth, Louisville Courier - Journal & Columbia University Journal Review; Julie Allison & Lawrence Wrightman (Rape, the Misunderstood Crime). The FBI totals their data on a state by state basis and come to an average of 8%. No matter how much you look at the numbers they aren't high unless you're in Kansas.
According to what looks like your argument you seem to be saying there are three types of women who have abortions. Some who are victims of rape or whose lives are seriously at sake you have no issue with. You however categorize the other two groups of women into two deroguatory categories of women who are using abortion in lieu of birth control, and women who are having babies to increase their welfare allowance but stop once they reach a financial cap.
First of all 54% of women who have an abortion were using contraception (Alan Guttmacher INstitute US 2003 Facts in Breif). That would be my first incicator that these women 1. were thinking about the "risk" of preganacny and were doing something to prevent it 2. their partners were most likely not trying to get them pregnant and may not want to have any part in raising a child. If people do use contraception that is an indicator that they were not trying to produce a pregnancy. Or are we moving back to an "every sperm is sacred" ideal where all sex is only supposed to be for procreation?
Second 52% of women getting abortions are under the age of 25, 78% of teen pregnancies are unplanned this accounts for 25% of all unplanned pregnancies.
This begins to show us that the major issue in reducing the amount of abortions is directly related to reducing the rate of teen pregnancy. Which has in fact been very effective in the 1990's the teen pregnancy rate steadily dropped from 1990 to 2000 by a total of 28% (and 32% for women of colour), and the abortion rate has falled 43% in the same period. Apparently sex education does work, and contraception becomes more effective as people know how to use it properly.
I guess this is where we turn to the less than flattering depiction of the welfare mother. First of all less than one third of women who need access to contracetion are able to get it under medicaid (The Guttmacher Report on Public Policy 1998). Then we have to consider that 57% of women who get abortions are over 200% below the poverty line.
The original Hyde amendment in 1977 disallowed any federal funds form being spent on abortion (meaning if you were on welfare you didn't have a choice) however they gave children's allowance creating the current image of the welfare mother who has kids simply to increase her allotment.
Yet there are numerous studies that show that the welfare rates do not cover what is considered the basic cost of living, meaning more children would push a woman further below the poverty line. These women do not have children to up their allowance they usually have them because of 1. lack of access to contraception coupled with 2. the newer Medicaid laws will only provide abortion in cases of rape or incest (except in 2 states where that isn't even a reason) and "medially necessary" in only 16 states. This creates a situation where many women either have to pay for less than legal abortions from money they don't have or they have a child that will be a financial burden.
If we're going to get into a debate over the sterotypes associated with poverty we should move it to another thread.