In the midst of a pro-life post, Sara of Diotima surprised me by pointing out that 70,000 women die each year from unsafe abortions. Sarah linked to an article in Science to support this figure; Science, in turn, cited the World Health Organization. The WHO has since revised its estimate upwards, to 78,000.
The surprising thing is that Sara seems to consider those deaths an argument against legal abortion. But just the opposite is true: the vast majority of unsafe abortion deaths take place in countries where pro-life forces have successfully restricted or outlawed abortion. Africa – which has by far the highest rate of unsafe abortion deaths – also has overwhelmingly pro-life laws. This is unsurprising; where abortion is illegal, women will seek abortions from people without medical training, and fear (or local laws) may keep them from seeking medical help if the unsafe abortion goes wrong.
The best cure for unsafe abortion is safe abortion – and that means legal abortion. What kind of a difference can legal abortion make? Here’s what happened in Romania when abortion was outlawed, in 1966 – and when it was legalized again, in 1989.
There’s a very clear relationship between legalized abortion and deaths from unsafe abortion.
There’s also no evidence that outlawing abortion reduces the number of abortions. From a WHO article on unsafe abortion:
This is just one of the many ways that pro-life views make no sense. There is no serious doubt that pro-life laws lead to increased death and injuries due to unsafe abortions. Furthermore, as the Netherlands show, it’s possible to have the world’s lowest rate of abortion by concentrating on reducing demand, rather than by threatening doctors and mothers with jail time.
There’s no reason the US couldn’t have an abortion rate as low as the Netherlands; it would just require the pro-lifers to quit trying to use the law to legislate against women’s freedom, and instead put just as much energy and funds into reducing how likely women are to want abortion. In economic terms, the difference between a pro-lifer and a feminist who opposes abortion is that pro-lifers focus on reducing the supply of abortion by taking away women’s and doctor’s freedom; feminists who oppose abortion would rather reduce the demand for abortion, without attacking women’s freedom. The feminist method is at least as effective for reducing abortion – and is far less deadly to women’s lives.
UPDATE: Paul at A Fortiori responds:
It’s dangerous to commit a bank robbery, for instance, but we don’t just consider that fact to be insufficient to justify legalizing bank robberies: we think it’s not a point in favor of legalizing bank robberies at all.
When making laws, I think it makes sense to both know what your sought-after benefit is, and to keep a cost/benefit analysis in mind.
The benefit of outlawing bank robberies is to reduce bank robbery, since our banking system wouldn’t work very well if people felt free to rob banks at will. The cost of outlawing bank robbery – the increased danger to robbers – is probably acceptable, because of the benefits we gain.
Now, what is the benefit of outlawing abortion? Paul’s post implies that the benefit is to punish evildoers (women, doctors, folks like that). If that is the benefit, then we should indeed outlaw abortion; from a cost/benefit point of view, more women will be punished if we outlaw abortion than if we don’t.
On the other hand, many pro-lifers have argued that the purpose of outlawing abortion is not punishing women, but reducing the amount of “babies” (actually, zygotes and fetuses) killed by abortion. Furthermore, “pro-life feminists” often argue that outlawing abortion benefits women.
If that’s the case, then I think my argument – applying a cost/benefit analysis to see if outlawing abortion actually reduces abortion and benefits women – is one that logically should carry weight, even if you believe abortion is murder. If the goal is to reduce abortion and help women, then logically it should be a matter of some concern to pro-lifers that 1) there are fewer abortions per capita in pro-choice Netherlands than in any pro-life country, and 2) pro-life laws appear to increase the number of illegal, unsafe abortions, leading to tens of thousands of women needlessly dying each year.
The question for pro-lifers, I think, is which is more important to you – saving lives, or punishing women?
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Further update: I know many pro-lifers will respond by reflexively trying to disprove or find a reason to disregard the statistics. Before you do, ask yourself – why are you so against this being the case? Look at this from a point of view apart from partisan politics: If it was true that we could reduce abortion and save more women’s lives without forcing anyone to give birth against their will, wouldn’t that actually be a wonderful thing?
I understand, a world with no abortions at all would be even better. But that will never happen on this Earth; no pro-life state has ever succeeded in eliminating abortion, not even those states that are far more brutal and aggressive in fighting abortion than the USA can ever be.
Why are pro-lifers so reflexively against even the possibility that restricting women’s freedom might not be the most effective way of reducing abortion? So much that virtually no pro-lifers are willing to even consider the possibility, apart from searching for an excuse to dismiss it?
I’m not being snarky – I sincerely don’t understand it.
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By the way, if pro-lifers believe abortion is murder, why do they propose such wimpy penalties for it? Often their proposed laws would only jail the doctor for a couple of years, and wouldn’t punish the woman at all – which begs the question of who gets punished if the woman self-aborts. If abortion is murder, why not seek the murder-level sentences for women and doctors?
(Okay, now I’m being a little snarky. But my previous question was entirely sincere.).
There is no serious doubt that outlawing abortion leads to increased maternal death.
I’m confused what you mean by “maternal death”. That is does it include deaths by unsafe abortions or not? And aside from aborting unsafe pregnancies, is there any evidence that abortion leads to less deaths during childbirth? And how?
Just a little confused by this. My avid pro-choice stance does not negate my skepticism in dealing with rather ambiguous statements like this.
Whoops! That should have said “unsafe abortion deaths,” not “maternal death.” I’ve made the correction.
I do think that outlawing abortion probably does increase maternal deaths, by making it more likely that problematic pregnancies will be carried to term rather than aborted at an earlier, safer time in the pregnancy. But I don’t have any supporting evidence for that – it’s just something I suspect.
Ah that makes sense now.
I agree that probably outlawing abortion would cause more maternal deaths, but the “no serious doubt” line seemed a bit out of place. Now I see why.
Good post, though Amp.
I think my point was supposed to be that even if you care about both protecting fetuses and protecting women, do you care about both in equal measure? Wouldn’t the pro-lifer want to say something like, “I’m all for protecting women, but we’re actually talking about women who are violating the rights of the unborn, so their protection doesn’t count for as much.”? Or something like that?
I see a big problem in the combination of pro-life views with anti-contraception views. What keeps the abortion rates low in countries such as the Netherlands is a totally different sex education curriculum and also the fact that for years contraception there was state subsidized for poor women. This has now been changed, and it’s likely that the abortion rates will go up. But they’re unlikely to rise to the U.S. levels as the use of contraceptives is so much less stigmatized in Europe, especially among the young.
Paul, since my point is that pro-choice regimes can have fewer abortions and fewer deaths from illegal abortions, the “which do you care more about, saving women who choose to have abortions, or saving fetuses” choice isn’t relevant. Pro-life laws are bad for women and for fetuses.
Amp, a large segment of the population does not care about results, or effectiveness. They believe in Retributive justice, where crimes or “evil” creates a social moral outrage that must be satisfied by retribution, or to rectify an imbalance in the social order. These are the people who make draconian penalties as a deterrant. These laws are usually ineffective (or even counter productive) in reducing the “crime” (drug use, homicide, etc.), or recidivism. People who believe in alternative conceptions of Justice such as rehabilitative, commutative, or distributive often have trouble speaking to one another.
I also think, Amp, that religions have been, for so long, patriarchal in character. The status of women as second class (at best) members of the clergy and of society is enforced through attributive status as child-bearers and -rearers. Anything that allows women to break out of that status, independent source of money, the ability to take part in the choice of whether or when to bear children is to be fought.
I can only imagine it is a form of indoctrination (in the worst definition) that women will actively seek to remain in such a second-class status. I think it really is true that if men could become pregnant, contraception and abortion would be legal and paid for by insurance.
Great post, great questions.
As many have said here Amp another good post. I can’t help but notice how active men are in the anti-abortion ranks. Why men who have been so unattentive to children and babies in particular get a burr under their saddle when it comes to a fetus leads one to speculate that there is more going on here than altruism.
If abortion was a medical procedure decided upon by the person carrying the fetus, commonly known as a woman, you would add to the already serious erosion of power men are already reeling under.
If men had babies not only would abortion be none of women’s business, it would be an accepted procedure, no doubt covered by insurance as Charles2 stated. Child bearing would also be a sign of man biological and biblical superiority to woman.
I think that you should not put sayings on the internet that say whether you are for or against abortions because people looking at the site will be offened, like me.
And while you’re at it, Amp, I’d really like there to be a permanent banner ad across the top of the blog. It would say, “FRESH NY DELI NOW” and when being clicked, would result in a hot pastrami on rye being delivered to my door in 30 minutes or less. Unless it was between 10 AM and 3 PM on a Sunday. In which case it would result in a fresh, hot garlic bagel with vegetable cream cheese being delivered to my door in 30 minutes or less. Be a dear and get to work on that, will you ? Thanks.