ABORTION AND CLASS: Earlier, I noted how Ann Althouse critiqued Barbara Ehrenreich’s invocation of “grubby lower-class” lifestyles in her piece defending her abortion. Likewise, this widely-derided piece by Amy Richards about aborting two of her three triplets famously invoked similar concerns: “When I found out about the triplets, I felt like: It’s not the back of a pickup at 16, but now I’m going to have to move to Staten Island. I’ll never leave my house because I’ll have to care for these children. I’ll have to start shopping only at Costco and buying big jars of mayonnaise.”

I’m pro-choice, and I don’t think that superficial-seeming reasons for exercising one’s freedom are necessarily arguments against that freedom. (I think you should be able to have an assault weapon or an abortion, regardless of whether others think you need one.) But the snippy upper-middle-class tones of both Ehrenreich and Richards say something about the pro-choice movement, and the larger women’s movement. Something about a kind of economic aspiration, coupled with snobbery, that seems rather unattractive, and largely unexamined. Considering bien pensant attitudes toward snobbery and economic aspiration among, say, Republicans, that’s kind of interesting.

It turns out that there are other interesting factors — and perhaps even economic ones — regarding that Times piece.

UPDATE: A reader suggests reading this from Slate, too.