SNAP Cuts? More Poverty, More Abortion
by Sarah Terzo
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistant Program (SNAP), also known as food stamps, allows poor individuals and families to buy food they need. A proposal by the chair of the U.S. House Agricultural Committee has been made to cut these benefits drastically.
Myths Vs. Reality
Many conservatives claim programs like SNAP allow lazy people to avoid working. They imagine a “welfare queen” who lives high on the hog on government benefits while refusing to work. They resent their tax dollars going to help such a person.
People aren’t eating lobster and steak on SNAP. The average monthly benefit is $157 per person. Next time you go shopping, check your grocery bill to get an idea of how much that covers.
Second, only a tiny fraction of people on SNAP are nondisabled adults who aren’t working. Let’s look at some statistics.
The Majority of People on SNAP are Disabled, the Elderly, or Children
Here are some numbers. In 2022 in the United States, nearly 40% of those receiving food stamps were children (with 11.6% of those younger than five). People 60 or older made up 18.3% of recipients.
And in 2015, 28% of adults under age 60 who received SNAP were disabled, meaning either they received disability-related benefits or reported health problems.
Using available numbers from 2015 about the total number of people who receive SNAP and specifically adults 18-59 without disabilities who receive SNAP, we can estimate that about 36% of SNAP recipients are non-disabled adults of working age. This means that a majority of SNAP recipients are disabled, over 60, or children.
Now, let’s look at households. In 2019-2020, 36% of households that received SNAP benefits contained at least one member who was older or disabled, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
In addition, 65% of households receiving SNAP had children in them.
Most Nondisabled Adults on SNAP Are Working Full-Time
According to the US Government Accountability Office, 51% of adults on SNAP (between the ages of 19 and 64) were working full time in 2018. An additional 21% were working full-time part of the year (49 weeks or less). Thus, over 70% of those on SNAP between the ages of 19-64 were working full time at least part of the year. The remaining 30% would include at least some of the 28% of people on SNAP who are disabled.
And these numbers don’t include those working part time.
Wages are so low, and the cost of living so high, that many people working full-time can’t afford food.
My friend who worked in a homeless shelter told me many people she worked with had full-time jobs, but still couldn’t afford housing. They slept in their cars, showered at the shelter, then went to their jobs.
These were all single men only trying to support themselves. A single parent trying to raise kids would have an even harder time making ends meet.
It’s impossible to get an exact percentage for people on SNAP who aren’t disabled, are of working age, and aren’t working. Statistics are from different years, some disabled people work, and some people work part-time and aren’t included in any of these percentages.
However, if only around 36% of people on SNAP are nondisabled adults of working age to begin with, and we know that 70% of working age people on SNAP are working full time at least part of the year, and at least some of the remaining people are working part time, we can guess that the percentage of able-bodied people on SNAP not working at all is very low.
We can surmise that the vast majority of people on SNAP are disabled, older, children, or working.
Most People Are on SNAP Only Temporarily
In contrast to the myth of the lazy person living on food stamps, most people are on SNAP only for a short time.
According to data from 2012, over 30% of SNAP participants were off benefits within a year. Almost 50% were off them within two years. And over 60% were off within three years.
SNAP is often a temporary safety net utilized only until people or families get back on their feet.
The Proposed Cuts
The new proposal would freeze benefits, so the increasing cost of food is no longer considered. This would lead to $30 billion in cuts over the next decade. These cuts would affect everyone on SNAP, including children, the elderly, and the disabled.
The proposed cuts to the SNAP program would affect:
- 6 million individuals aged 60 or older.
- 4 million disabled people
- 17 million children.
- 5 million young children under age 5.
Hunger interferes with a child’s education and cognition, inhibiting their ability to learn and leading to lower grades, which can impact a young person for a lifetime. A lack of nourishment during a child’s formative years can also lead to long-term physical and cognitive problems.
SNAP and Abortion
Many pregnant people have abortions because they can’t provide for a child or another child. In a study by the Alan Guttmacher Institute, 73% of people having abortions gave not being able to afford a baby as a reason.
Only 16% of women of childbearing age live below the poverty line. But in 2014, they had 49% of all abortions. Thus, about half of all abortions are done on the country’s poorest women. Sixteen percent of women are having half of all abortions.
Additionally, 26% of women having abortions had incomes of 100% to 199% of the poverty line. They are the second-poorest women in our country. Yet they make up only 18% of the population.
A relatively small proportion of the population is having the majority of abortions, and they are the poorest groups in our society. The 66% of American women who are not poor or close to poor account for only about a quarter of women having abortions.
In other words, for every abortion a middle class or wealthy person has, there are three abortions among the nation’s poor.
Having a child is something many poor people feel they cannot afford. Researcher Laura Hussey, in her book The Pro-Life Pregnancy Help Movement: Serving Women or Saving Babies? (Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 2020), asked women who had abortions the following question:
Other countries provide a lot of assistance to women and their families that the government, employers, and schools in the US do not provide. These countries give women things like free childcare, free healthcare, money they can use to pay their family’s expenses, and the chance to take months or even years off of work with pay after giving birth.
Would you have made a different decision about your pregnancy if you could get that kind of help? (pp. 207-208)
Twenty-two percent of the women who responded said that if such programs had been available, they would have rejected abortion and had their babies. Another 34% said they were unsure.
Only 44% of the woman said they still would have aborted. This means more than half of people having abortions might have changed their mind if the United States had a better social safety net.
Government programs to help the poor, then, would save the lives of roughly between 22% and 56% of babies being aborted today.
Overturning Roe v. Wade, it should be said, didn’t do that. Abortions are more common now than they were before Dobbs. The abortion rate has not gone down since Roe was overturned—it’s gone up.
For those of us who hoped overturning Roe would prevent most abortions, we have been sorely disappointed. When you factor in people who are ordering the abortion pill online (an unknown but likely high number), the situation is even more dire.
Dobbs has barely made a dent.
Twenty-two percent of one million abortions is 220,000. We pro-lifers have the power to save at least 220,000 babies a year just by creating a more robust social safety net.
And this is something we could easily do. Most pro-abortion people won’t fight us on it.
Those conservatives who propose such cuts must choose which they want more. Either they can know for sure that not one, single undeserving person gets government assistance, or they can save the lives of over 220,000 preborn children every year.
Is the fear that someone will get benefits they don’t deserve really more important than saving 220,000 innocent babies? Are there conservatives who are so determined that not a penny of their tax dollars go to help poor children, disabled people, the elderly, working families, and a tiny fraction of nonworking adults that they would let all those preborn babies die?
I don’t want to believe so.
Some conservatives have pointed out problems with government safety net programs. The answer is to reform them, not eliminate them.
Cutting SNAP could lead to more babies being aborted as parents struggle to put food on the table. It’s a step in the wrong direction.
To send an email to your congresspeople opposing cuts to SNAP, go here. All you have to do is click a button.
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For similar posts on our blog, see:
Social Programs to Help the Poor are Pro-life
The Impact of Family Caps on Abortion
Home of the Brave? A CLE Response to City of Grants Pass, Oregon v. Johnson
Threats to the Unborn Beyond Abortion
Cannot put a price on Life. The Good Lord (faith here), does like life more than death. In fact death was never the in the plans-originally. Easy to make solutions here just by talking, but the “Will” is to promote life not death. I challenge any and all who think even if Right to Life fudges the #s we still have net positive life because of Dobbs. The extras IMHO, are because the federal law has been circumvented by other more convenient methods.
I knew people who voted for Democrats like the Clintons and against Republucans like Bush II but favored New Jersey’s Republican governor Christy Whitman BECAUSE she cut benefits to the poor, BECAUSE such cuts increased abortion rates. “Fiscal conservatism” can promote an “ethical liberal” lifestyle.
The following has been puzzling for years. Despite data showing disproportionately many abortions occur with “poor” people, one also hears about “poor” women bearing five or more children over their lifetime, with different men, starting in their teens. The identity groups that consider women who have never had abortions to be as incomplete as someone without a high school diploma tend to be middle class and highly educated, striving to be so, and/or upwardly mobile. About 20 years ago, the Nation lamented that many destitute women had social networks that supported them having children, no matter how “unwantable.” Meanwhile, the writer said, women with things to look forward to have abortions. Any explanations for these contradictions?
Do some reasons for the increase of abortions since Dobbs relate to an aggressive international pro-abortion campaign that had been in the works for years before? Is one group with a high spike in abortion rates Latinas, as their heritage-countries drop protection against abortion? True, some of the reasons for the increase in abortions since Dobbs has been intimidation by teachers and other “guides” and aggressive tactics. But would not the media-fueled mass pro-abortion bloodthirst have happened anyway?
Do not many countries that “provide a lot of assistance to women and their families” have more abortions than live births? Including most European countries? Especially if one excludes Muslim immigrants?
No, that’s actually not the case.
Most Western European countries have abortion rates lower than the United States.
In the blog post, the researcher mentioned Denmark as an example. Denmark has almost no restrictions on abortion in the first trimester except for parental consent. There is no pro-life movement there to speak of. Abortion is widely accepted. yet their abortion rate is far lower than ours. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_in_Denmark#cite_note-10
The only European countries that have higher abortion rates, in general, are the Eastern European countries that used to be part of the Soviet Union and Russia itself. England’s rate is fairly close to ours as well.
But Denmark, where the overwhelming number of citizens are pro-choice and there are no pregnancy resource centers, abortion is paid for by the government and is free for citizens- nevertheless, has a much lower abortion rate than ours. it also has one of the most robust social safety net systems in the world.
Thank-you for your input.
People have used the term “abortion” rate to stand for at least three things:
1. Abortions per fertile women
2. Abortions per live birth
3. Percent of women who (during in their fertility years) have at least one abortion.
Each of these definitions is best for differentcl purposes.
When you mentioned “abortion rate,” which definition did you use? Or did you use “whatever the country reports,” and each country could use a different definition?
In addition, are countries inconsistent on whether they count only abortions before a certain week of gestation? And to the count in Holland, Belgium, and other countries should be added the number of infants killed shortly after birth for deformities, disabilities, and diseases.
Will the numbers be even harder to count with the growth of practices like taking abortion pills before one knows whether one is pregnant?
Problems with counting aside, could not definitions (2) and (3) be high even in western Europe? (At least excluding Muslim immigrants from some places.) In the book “Mother Tongue” (1997), Wallace Wilde-Menozzi reported that in the Parma area of Italy, abortions exceed live births. I knew an immigrant from Italy whose parents were baffled when he had a second child, because in Italy, now, to have children, especially more than one child, now seems alien. And in a hostel, I heard a young woman from Spain say something like, “I guess if a woman doesn’t abort her pregnancy, she…..” I didn’t hear how she finished the sentence, but she sounded as if where she comes from the normal reaction to most pregnancies is to abort.