Concerned Women for America (CWA) sent a letter for the record to the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs making the case that protecting the sanctity of human life is the best economic policy for women, and disputing the claim that women need abortion to succeed. In the letter, CWA CEO and President Penny Nance, says:

As the CEO and President of Concerned Women for America (CWA), the nation’s largest public policy women’s organization, I can assure you that the hundreds of thousands of women I represent see no higher and more fulfilling calling for a mother than raising strong children to become productive citizens who make a positive mark on our nation. It is offensive to me and the women I represent to suggest that we are helpless, aside from having access to abortions. Women are strong. We are capable. We do not need abortion to have worth. We are worthy. We can succeed on our own merit. Instead of promoting abortion, policymakers should do better in supporting mothers.

Women rarely choose abortion. They turn to it when they feel they have no choice but that. This committee would do the LORD’s work by making sure no woman ever feels like that again.

Babies are critical to the health and well-being of the American economy. According to CDC data, birth rates between 2007-2022 declined by 22%. In the future, that means there will be far fewer people to pay off the growing national debt. A report from the Heritage Foundation noted that in 2007, a baby entered this world with a share of the national debt worth $30,000. In 2020, that number jumped to $59,000.

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Each abortion comes with a heavy economic cost. Since Roe, an estimated 63 million babies have been aborted in the U.S. Over 35 million of them would now be old enough to participate in the labor force. A one-for-one increase in population and labor force participation cannot be assumed. But far more people would be alive and contributing to the economy if not for abortion. The Senate’s Joint Economic Committee found that the economic cost of abortion in 2019 was nearly $6.9 trillion, 32% of the GDP, due to the 630,000 unborn lives lost to abortion that year alone.

The hideous reference to the “unwanted” child that will be nothing but a burden to the world because of who his or her parents are is nothing but a lie that lawmakers should work to erase. No child is unwanted. We all have the same Creator, as referenced in our most foundational documents, and all have the same intrinsic value. Well-known eugenicist Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider, famously told Mike Wallace, “The greatest sin in the world is bringing children into the world that have disease from their parents, that have no chance to be a human being, practically. Delinquents, prisoners, all sorts of things just marked when they’re born. That to me is the greatest sin – that people can commit.” How can she deem an unborn baby a “delinquent?” This insulting, warped view of children in the womb permeates the abortion movement to this day but should be wholly and forcefully rejected by lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.

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Economics touches every aspect of life, and while abortion has real financial consequences, life itself can never be fully reduced to mere economic statistics. We are living through one of the most prosperous times in history, with more technological advances than ever before, yet social scientists are struggling to explain what many have deemed a concerning “mental health crisis among U.S. teens.”

Abortion is, first and foremost, the inherent denial of the right to life that each human has, whether inside or outside of the womb. This is a moral truth that Secretary Yellen denies by reducing abortion to an economic good.

We urge this honorable committee to look at the needs of women as a whole, and not in mere economic terms. We urge you to look beyond the traditional left-right divide and think outside the box for ways to improve women’s lives. We urge you to recognize that no one group speaks for women as a whole. Conservative women are often ignored in this debate because of the high value we place on human life. We thank you in advance for considering our arguments on their merits, even as you consider those from women who think differently than we do. We welcome the debate.

The letter concludes,

In the end, we believe that the vision of society we propose is the better public policy to pursue. We believe it is in line with truth, human nature, natural law, and the best instincts of our most celebrated world leaders. We believe it is most in line with our founding documents, with the vision of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Frederick Douglas, with the heart of Mother Theresa, and some of the greatest suffragists like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. It best protects and promotes human flourishing in every area of life, including our overall economic stability.

Click here to read the entire letter in PDF form as submitted on February 6, 2024.