My Time colleague writes about Obama’s late-term abortion remarks:

I think it’s probably true that there are women in the world who have abortions for what others might think are “bad” reasons — perhaps even because they’re “feeling blue.” But the whole point of being pro-choice is not that you think all abortions are a great idea, it’s that you don’t think government should restrict access to them based on the reasons why a woman wants one.

Fair enough, but the context here is late-term abortions. And if “being pro-choice” means thinking that late-term abortions should be legal for whatever reason a woman wants one, then there are not very many pro-choicers in this country. Depending on the poll, only 9-20 percent of the public agrees. Most self-described pro-choicers, in other words, don’t define the term the way Cox does.

She also writes:

[Obama’s] characterization reminds me, unpleasantly, of the right-wing canard that some women “use abortions as birth control,” i.e., run around having unprotected sex and then blithely show up at the clinic whenever their luck runs out. Because, you know, it’s so fun and convenient.

Most abortion is “birth control” in the sense that it is aimed at preventing birth, but I see what Cox means. When people use the line, though, I think what they have in mind is women who have multiple abortions. Since around 45 percent of abortions are repeats and 33 19 percent of abortions are double repeats, that concern is not based on “right-wing” imagination.

Update: I was going from memory, which was dumb. I fixed the double-repeat number by looking up the latest CDC report.