An anti-poverty agenda that excludes access to reproductive health care is woefully incomplete

I’ve written extensively in this column about anti-poverty policy. I’ve underscored the importance of minimum wages, work supports including child care and wage subsidies, SNAP (food stamps), housing and health care. I’ve often stressed the critical role for criminal justice reform. I never shut up about the benefits of full employment.

But I’ve never said a word about reproductive rights.

I have long supported such rights. And I’ve long recognized the decline in teenage pregnancy, particularly among poor girls, as an important advance for social policy (see Belle Sawhill’s work on access to contraception and its positive impacts on child/parent outcomes). But I’ve failed to connect the dots between access to comprehensive reproductive health care, including abortion, and economic security.

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