On his own blog and reprinted on Marriage Debate, Justin Katz suggests that gay-friendly laws are associated with high abortion rates.
Justin doesn’t give his source, so perhaps I’m missing something. But as far as I can tell the USA only has a lower abortion rate than Sweden’s using the CDC’s numbers, which undercount abortions significantly. The Alan Guttmacher Institute (which surveys abortion providers directly, for a more accurate count) reports that the USA had an abortion rate of 21 abortions per 1,000 women aged 15-44 in 2000. In contrast, Sweden’s abortion rate in 1999 was 18 abortions per 1,000 women aged 15-44.
So unless we use a statistical source known for undercounting US abortions, Sweden has a lower abortion rate than the USA.
Even if Justin were correct about Sweden (perhaps he has a more recent data source that I don’t know about), that would only make Sweden the exception to the rule. The Netherlands – which are also very gay-friendly – has the lowest abortion rate of any country in the world (6.5 per 1,000) – much, much lower than in the USA. Belgium has extremely pro-gay laws and an abortion rate nearly as low as The Netherlands (6.8 per 1,000). The other countries in the world with gay-marriage or marriage-lite laws – Germany (7.6), Denmark (16.1), Norway (15.6), France (12.4), and Canada (15.5) – all have significantly lower abortion rates than the USA (and also lower than most countries in the world).
Meanwhile, Eastern Europe – the least gay-friendly place in the developed world – has an incredibly high abortion rate: 90 abortions per 1,000 women age 15-44. Overall, it’s clear that gay-friendly countries have fewer abortions.
Of course, correlation is not causation; it seems unlikely that gay-friendly laws cause lower abortion rates. My theory is that more sexually liberal attitudes are associated with both gay-friendly laws and widespread use of contraceptives, which would account for the correlation. (A relatively generous safety net for unwed mothers probably also lowers demand for abortion in Belgium, Germany, France and the Netherlands).
It’s also notable that in recent years, as the laws in the USA have become significantly more gay-friendly, abortion rates here have declined..
The problem is that European birth rates are so low that per-1,000 numbers aren’t very useful. I should have been clearer about what “rate” I meant (and I’ll add a note to my post to clarify), but it’s suggested in the context that I’m speaking from the conceived child’s point of view. The “baby’s odds.” That measure makes a whole lot more sense to me for these broad social discussions about family structure.
Using the AGI’s numbers (at least for the U.S.), I looked at abortion as a percentage of children conceived among other factors in a post from March. The line graph showing comparative abortion data for various nations illustrates the trends.
Beyond that, you’re playing loose with the context to lump all laws into “gay-friendly.” And I was careful to frame the point as dealing with “liberalization of family structure.”
I am always amazed at your patience in calmly refuting dubious essays such as Katz’s that proclaim the rightness of their made up data, as if they know the data must be that way because they believe it.
I don’t have that patience. All I want to do is scream, “Homophobic SOB!”
Sorry. See? Can’t take me anywhere.
Justin, I didn’t intend to muddy the issue by using the shorthand term “gay-friendly.”
In practice, however, it doesn’t make any difference. Replace the phrase “gay-friendly laws” with the phrase “having gay marriage or gay-marriage-lite laws” – which is, as far as I can tell, what you’re referring to when you say “liberalization of family structure” – and my post is still correct.
The problem is that European birth rates are so low that per-1,000 numbers aren’t very useful.
If you’re claiming that birth rates in Europe are too low for a per-1000 number to reach statistical significance, then I beleive you’re mistaken. If your claim is something else, then you need to explain it.
Your abortion rate statistic is different from the standard abortion rate statistic in that it effectively removes the effects of birth control from the picture, by counting only what happens post-conception. I therefore find your statistic dubious; in the real world, birth control exists and its effects ought be included in our measurements. A measurement that removes the effect of preventing conception in the first place paints an inaccurate picture of the world.
Even accepting for argument’s sake that we should ignore the effects of birth control, however, fetuses concieved in the Netherlands still has “better odds” than the USA, according to your measure. You should have acknowleged that in your recent post.
The bottom line is, by standard measures used worldwide for measuring the abortion rate, countries with gay-marriage and gay-marriage-lite laws have lower abortion rates than the United States. It’s only by using a heterodox – and in my opinion, confusing and unsound – statistic that you can reach a different conclusion.
If Justin Katz thinks that abortion is a bad thing, I too am at a loss to understand why he thinks abortions per conceived fetus is a more meaningful statistic than abortions per woman. If the European rate of abortions per fetus is higher than the American rate of abortions per fetus, but the European rate of abortions per woman is lower than the American rate of abortions per woman, that simply means that the European conception rate is lower than the American conception rate, most likely because of a higher rate of contraception use by Europeans. But that doesn’t alter the fact that American women have more abortions than European women, and thus the causal link that Katz seems to think exists between gay marriage (or gay-marriage-like legal unions) and abortion suggests that gay marriage causes fewer abortions, not more of them.
I’m somewhat confused by the graph and the argument.
Couldn’t we just embrace the stunning decline in abortion rates in Demark, which Stanley Kurts says has “defacto gay marriage” and compare that trend to the dramatic increase in the UK which does not have SSM, and prove SSM reduces abortion?
Doesn’t that seem to make more sense saying SSM causes the rates to increase based on Sweden and the US? Looking at Justin Katz’s graph, Sweden’s current abortion rate seems to be about the same as their rate in 1980. So, it doesn’t look like the changes in SSM necessarily affected the rate. Our rates have been dropping since 1980. So, our steady drop in abortion rates has finally dropped us below Sweden, but it’s not clear that that has to do with SSM. (Possibly because kid have better access to birth control? Who knows.)
As we always learned in our science and statistic courses coorelation does not mean causation.
But Mr. Katz (and other opponents who throw out the ‘see, look what happened to scandanavia’ argument) miss several points, the change in family structure in Scandanavia began decades before their loosing of the family structure to allow gay marriage or marriage-lite. Gay marriage didn’t ’cause’ the family structure to ‘weaken’, if anything it was the other way around. The statistics support that view, an anecdotally, my partner was a missionary in Sweden in the late 70’s. Even then most couples with children were not civilly married, long before gay marriage was on the scene.
but the entire argument also is a false comparison on top of being a false coorelation. The Scandanavian countries have always had a very strong cradle to grave social system, socialist in fact. Swedish (Norwegian, Danish) civil marriage confers few if any real benefits/obligations not already given in the social system itself. Very unlike the US system. The decline in ‘civil’ marriage (which is what Katz is talking about here, not the decline in ‘families’) is due to the fact that a civilly recognized marriage in Sweden means very little in comparison legally. If Mr. Katz would bother to visit Sweden for any length of time, he will see that the family structure he (and most of us) so cherishes, of two parents and children, is very much alive and strong.. they just see little reason to make it ‘legal’.
Wait a minute. I thought the reasoning was that gays can’t get married because they can’t concieve. Now it’s because they magically raise the abortion rates. C’mon! If there’s one thing that I learned despite my abstinence-only education, it’s that straight people are the ones making babies all over the place. If they could scare you out of being gay by holding unplanned pregnancy over your head, I’m sure they would.
As we always learned in our science and statistic courses coorelation does not mean causation.
You know what’s funny?
The weird thing is no one has shown any correlation! I mean.. do that math. Define two measureable variables. Say X=The current absolute abortion rate. Y=The current existence of non-existence of SSM defined as 1 or 0.
Get a a reasonably large sample of countries, preferably with similar economic structures. Figure out which ones have SSM and which don’t. (Justin Kurtz considers Denmark to have SSM– it’s defacto. So, we may have arguments, but decide and explain.)
Since we are discussing Europe, maybe we should pick all of Europe? Or…. Stick numbers in a spread sheet and find the correlation. Then tell me the number. Oh.. and calculate the confidence interval! Or do a test for statistical significance.
You can pick other “X”. There change in the abortion rate between 1995 and 2000. (Then reasonably Y might be the average value of the legality of SSM during the period. If it was legal for all 5 years Y is 1. If legal 4/5 years it could be 0.8). Or do something.. calculate a correlation.
Right now, Justin Katz is looking at a graph, picking two that he thinks sort of suggest the trend he wants to prove, and ignoring two that suggest the counter trend. and then ignoring all the flat line trends.
The problem isn’t as simple confusing correlation with causation. The problem no one is even calculating a correlation.
Beyond all the statistics, why would same-sex marriage raise abortion rates? How are they related at all?
I’m guessing the assumption is that same-sex marriage weakens the institution of marriage in general, which in turn means, um, that more people are going to have sex before or outside of marriage, maybe, and so there will be more unplanned pregnancies, or something…
None of these assumptions make sense on their own, and they make even less sense when put together. So if there were causation, upon what connection between abortion and same-sex marriage, exactly, would it be based?
I forgot an assumption: that more people would abort unplanned pregnancies than they do now. Because more children born to unmarried parents doesn’t necessarily mean more abortions; it might not even mean more children.
Lucia,
you are absolutely correct and I would hope (though not expect) that Mr. Katz would make mention that he did some ‘quick and dirty’ calculations that just don’t hold up.
Looking at that graph, Denmark has falling abortion rates, yet they have ‘de-facto’ gay marriage. How is this explained by Mr. Katz’s reasoning. UK has rising rates, no SSM (yet, if the rate starts to fall after SSM or CU, what will he say?), even the rise in Sweden’s rate is quite small statistically. And even his US example doesn’t hold up. Falling rates while some state (Vermont, California, Hawaii, New Jersey, Maine) start instituting civil unions and domestic partnerships.
You are right, not only does coorelation not prove causation (one must give solid hypothesis or evidence of a cause), he hasn’t even shown a coorelation, in fact in some cases the coorelation is opposite his intention.
Well, I’m not sure to what or to whom to respond. Ampersand’s post reflects about a dozen words in a 1,000-plus word essay. Moreover, the essay was written to be a broad argument, not a scientific investigation of particulars. Some mightn’t agree, but I thought it might be useful to devote 1,000 of the tens of thousands of words that I’ve written about this issue to a stepping back.
Ampersand:
If you’re claiming that birth rates in Europe are too low for a per-1000 number to reach statistical significance, then I beleive you’re mistaken. If your claim is something else, then you need to explain it.
“Statistical significance” for what? An “inaccurate picture of the world” in what sense? At the very least, I would think you’d concede that it’s debatable depending on the topic. (I’ve most often seen it expressed your way or as a percentage of live births.) Of what significance is the knowledge that children who aren’t conceived are at a per-1,000-mother advantage not to be aborted?
It’s interesting to note that abortion rates are, following your argument, relatively higher when the effects of birth control are minimized. I don’t think it’s a stretch to suggest that children who can be blamed on faulty birth control are at a higher risk to be killed. Furthermore, I would argue that the family arrangements of the parents (or lack thereof) contribute to that decision. But again, that’s a tangential argument, and we could go on for hours debating varying factors in relation to each other — socialism and childbirth, birth control and abortion.
The point is that comparisons across countries and cultures require different measures when we’re talking about cultural changes. If your argument is that socialism and birth control keep Scandinavian abortion rates down — fine, wonderful. (Although Great Britain will complicate that discussion.) But the United States isn’t socialistic and still counts on marriage to do some cultural work.
As for including the Netherlands in this context, that would require further exploration. As you can see by the graph, abortion rates (my way) increased steadily throughout the ’90s, not a happy trend in context of the gay marriage debate. But let’s bring your measurement into it; the per-1,000 number is more useful for internal trends than cross-culture comparisons. (Since I’m just illustrating a point, I’ve grabbed numbers quickly from here and here, so the age ranges aren’t “standard.”)
From 1990 to 2000, Netherlands abortions increased from 18,384 to 27,200. Population of 20 to 45 year olds dropped from 6,088,000 to 5,976,000. Just to make things easy, divide those by two (for women), to get 3,044,000 and 2,988,000. So, the per-1,000 abortion rates are 6.04 and 9.10 for 1990 and 2000. That’s an increase of about 50%.
Now, for the purposes of our discussion, it seems to me that we ought to be most concerned about trends in nations whose policy shifts we are considering. And the trends aren’t very attractive.
—
I’ll have to come back to address other comments; I’ve work to do.
Justin Katz:
Your response does not address ampersand’s (and my) basic point. If abortion is bad, why is abortions-per-conception a more relevant statistic than abortions-per-woman?
On your argument, you would welcome a policy that caused the abortion rate (abortions per woman, and thus total number of abortions) to increase as long as it also caused the birth rate to increase more (thus reducing the abortions-per-conception rate).
As an opponent of abortion, that makes sense to you, does it? You’d approve of a policy that caused more abortions as long as it also caused a greater increase in births?
Justin Katz:
The point is that comparisons across countries and cultures require different measures when we’re talking about cultural changes. If your argument is that socialism and birth control keep Scandinavian abortion rates down — fine, wonderful. (Although Great Britain will complicate that discussion.) But the United States isn’t socialistic and still counts on marriage to do some cultural work.
If your goal is to reduce the number of abortions, why aren’t you arguing that the U.S. should adopt more “socialistic” policies towards pregnant women? (I assume that “socialistic” is your preferred way of referring to the kinds of public policy that ampersand described as “a relatively generous safety net for unwed mothers.”)
I don’t think it’s a stretch to suggest that children who can be blamed on faulty birth control are at a higher risk to be killed.
Higher risk of being aborted than what? Fetuses conceived through sex that does not involve birth control? Probably, yes. Presumably, people more often have sex without using contraception with the intent or willingness to produce a baby than they have sex with contraception with that intent. Given that the whole point of contraception is to prevent pregnancy, it should hardly be surprising that fetuses conceived through contraceptive failure are more often unwanted, and thus more likely to be aborted, than fetuses conceived through sex that does not involve contraception. It should also hardly be surprising that the abortion rate is lower in countries where the rate of contraceptive use is higher, since such countries are likely to have a lower rate of unwanted pregnancy.
Don P:
Your response does not address ampersand’s (and my) basic point. If abortion is bad, why is abortions-per-conception a more relevant statistic than abortions-per-woman?
— I didn’t address this point directly because my argument isn’t centrally about abortion.
On your argument, you would welcome a policy that caused the abortion rate (abortions per woman, and thus total number of abortions) to increase as long as it also caused the birth rate to increase more (thus reducing the abortions-per-conception rate).
— Not quite. But I oppose policies that decrease birth rate while increasing abortion rates in every measure.
If your goal is to reduce the number of abortions, why aren’t you arguing that the U.S. should adopt more “socialistic” policies towards pregnant women? (I assume that “socialistic” is your preferred way of referring to the kinds of public policy that ampersand described as “a relatively generous safety net for unwed mothers.”)
— Actually, in my hurry, I think I dragged in something that Trey said above about socialism. But you’re pointing to what was essentially an example, not a direct component of my point. (At any rate, in the absense of socialism, benefits for pregnancy encourage pregnancy, which encourages behavior that results in abortion, as stories out of Great Britain suggest.)
It should also hardly be surprising that the abortion rate is lower in countries where the rate of contraceptive use is higher, since such countries are likely to have a lower rate of unwanted pregnancy.
— Do you have evidence of this? I’m not willing to accept it as given, as intuitive as so many people seem to find it.
From 1990 to 2000, Netherlands abortions increased from 18,384 to 27,200. Population of 20 to 45 year olds dropped from 6,088,000 to 5,976,000. Just to make things easy, divide those by two (for women), to get 3,044,000 and 2,988,000. So, the per-1,000 abortion rates are 6.04 and 9.10 for 1990 and 2000. That’s an increase of about 50%.
According to Abortion, A Guide to Dutch Policy, the increase in the dutch abortion rate over the past decade or so is due entirely or almost entirely to an increase in the demand for abortions by women who are members of ethnic minorities, most notably Moroccan, Turkish, Surinamese and Antillean women. The rate of abortion for such women is between four and nine times that for women in the Netherlands who are of dutch ancestry. The paper also notes that women in these ethnic groups tend to have low rates of contraceptive use.
Justin Katz:
I didn’t address this point directly because my argument isn’t centrally about abortion.
That is irrelevant. You said that you think abortions-per-conception is the more important statistic to this discussion than abortions-per-woman. If you think abortion is bad, why is that? Why isn’t abortions-per-woman more important?
Not quite.
Then you’re contradicting yourself. You previously said that abortions-per-conception is the more important statistic to you than abortions-per-woman, because the former is a measure of a “baby’s odds” of being aborted vs. being born. It follows from that position that you should welcome a policy that had the effect of increasing abortions-per-woman (and thus, of increasing total number of abortions) as long as it also had the effect of increasing births-per-woman (and thus, of decreasing abortions-per-conception) by a greater amount.
Do you have evidence of this?
Sure.
Increase in Effective Contraceptive Use Can Reduce Abortion Rate
Study Shows Emergency Contraception Contributed Significantly to Drop in Abortion Rate
Relationships Between Contraception and Abortion: A Review of the Evidence
Improvements in Contraception Are Reducing Historically High Abortion Rates in Russia
So… the argument is that allowing gay people to marry would increase contraception use amongst heterosexuals, which would in turn increase the rate of abortion?
Huh? How??!
Sorry if I misunderstand the argument, but I find this concept totally bizarre.
Also, even it *were* true that SSM and increased abortion rates correlated – so? Perhaps both are an indication of a liberal society in which people’s personal choices are respected, and part of that is that women feel more free to choose abortion rather than be forced to carry an unwanted pregnancy.
Justin Katz said:Moreover, the essay was written to be a broad argument, not a scientific investigation of particulars
In my opinion, if you buttress your broad argument on statistics and calculations, then your broad argument is open to criticism on that basis.
I agree that your argument is long, but as I see it, the basic argument is:
Legalizing SSM causes “something bad” to. Here is the proof that “something bad” happened. (The proof is supposedly based on statistical analyses of the data. Supposedly, you have shown a correlation.) Since something bad happens, SSM should not be legalized.
It doesn’t really matter how many words you used– you did not prove something bad happened at all. You have not shown a correlations, and your statistical analyses has not been presented.
Moreover, based on the long discussion, it appears you cherry pick your data. You dicuss relatively small changes in the abortion rates US and Sweden; you ignoring the dramatic changes in the UK and Denmark.
Obviously, you can remedy this deficiency by actually doing the calculation, explaining your analysis and presenting the numbers. Until you do, your argument has a big, big hole.
We have a fair amount of data about abortion, and a fair amount of data about gay marriage or gay civil unions, but saying that the two have *any connection at all* seems to me about equivalent to saying, “Adding armadillo-crossing signs on Oklahoma highways has caused an increase in the number of grocery stores, per capita.”
The only connection I can see between abortion rates and the legalization of homosexual marriage is that abortion rights and gay marriage rights are both liberal ideas that affect people in a social way, not just, say, a fiscal one. And… so?
Seriously: even if countries that do have gay marriage rights DO have an increase in abortion, either per-fetus or per-woman, so what? How can they possibly be related? Do countries that have gay marriage rights have an increase in consupmtion of Spam, per-person? Because that strikes me as just about as relevant.
To someone who is terribly afraid of erosion of the traditional family structure, I can see how these two ideas– gay marriage and abortion– would be related, in the sense that the two concepts, like that of women wearing pants and working outside the home, fall into the same general category. But saying that they’re *correlated* strikes me as so paranoid it’s kind of funny.
I’m… uh… sorta a pro-lifer myself. It strikes me that there are only three ways to reduce abortion, period:
1) Reduce the number of conceptions.
2) Increase the fraction of accidental conceptions that are wanted, or at least tolerable.
3) Place restriction on access to abortion.
I think that 3) is fairly obvious, in its methods, but what about 1 and 2? I don’t know, but for 1), the first thing that comes to mind is that conceptions (basically) only happen with unprotected, penile-vaginal sex. The obvious steps for 1) are to promote contraceptive use, abstinence, and alternatives to coitus in the sexual realm: oral, anal, and manual variants? 2) is more likely to be achieved through support of mothers: better preschool, day-care, and public welfare systems and stable relationships between the expecting mother and father.
I feel like there’s little room for my pro-life view among my fellow liberals, but at the same time, liberals seem to support more 1) and 2) measures than conservatives. Roe v. Wade means that many of the 3) measures that they would like to implement are impossible. Liberals want to promote more 1) measures, with education that includes contraception and abstinence, rather than just the latter (I see little support for sodomy promotion on any side of the aisle). Conservatives are opposed to many 2) measures, like welfare and child support for the poor. Where they support things that would reduce abortion, they are impotent (how do they make relationships more stable?). Where they support things that are likely to increase it, they are effective. I feel like conservatives do more to increase than reduce abortion, by undermining our society and economy that make children viable, and removing the means to prevent contraceptions, but I feel like liberals are so hostile to the pro-life view that it’s kinda hard to swallow.
If by “the pro-life view” you mean legal prohibition (or significant restriction) of abortion, the reason I am so hostile to it is because I believe, as our courts have repeatedly affirmed, that abortion is not merely a right, but a fundamental right, a right that is vitally important to the ability to live as a free and equal person.
And to piss you off even more, I’m also pretty hostile to the “I’m pro-choice, but I think abortion is abhorrent” line taken by some liberals and leftists. I don’t think abortion should necessarily be celebrated, but it shouldn’t be condemned either. Except in extreme cases, no one is in a position to make that call except the pregnant woman herself and those she chooses to confide in.
Hmmm… Don, I guess you’ll abohor me. I think abortion should be legal.. but I think it’s a really bad thing. I’m not sure I’d call that “condemming” abortion. There are other things I think are really bad, but which I also think should be legal. (e.g. Divorce, rampant promiscuity, acrylic nails with little butterfly appliques — ok that last one is trivial. I couldn’t help myself.)
Because I think abortion is bad, I think that contraception and information about contraception should be widely available. I also think that it’s important to help women who are pregnant so they decide to continue the pregnancy– without ruining their lives or that of their children or families in the process.
I know lots of people who hold similar views to mine. I know we don’t satisfy Justin’s desire to restrict abortion, and we don’t probably don’t meet your need to see abortion as not bad. But.. there you go!
I guess I came late to the party, but it seems to me that all the statistics and info we need are right here in the U.S.: The rate of abortion has gone down, not up, in the last 20 years, and attitudes towards gays, and gay marriage have become more tolerant. Why can’t we conclude that more liberal attitudes toward gay people is associated with a drop in the rate of abortion? Well, for one thing, the incidence of abortion is not simply a function of attitude, but is also a function of availability — of abortion itself and of “reliable” alternatives (contraception at the front end and welfare at the back end). It’s also a function of the number of indivdiduals in the demographic cohorts most likely to avail themselves of abortion (which reached something of a trough over the last 5-10 years but which are set to go up again in the next 5-10 years). Unless you can control for all these factors and no doubt others I haven’t even thought of (number of abortion providers per capita?) it’s a silly and meaningless exercise.
There is also the possibility that a trend observed in a relatively homegenous population like Sweden (if such was observed) would not necessarily or even likely be repeated in the relatively very heterogenous population of the US.
Justin should ask himself why he felt the need to search for a link between the “gay question” and abortion . . . perhaps because it doesn’t stand alone as a moral imperative for a large swath of people? Thus one must connect it to the more straightforward moral proposition that is abortion in order to get a groundswell of public disapprobation . . .?
lucia:
Hmmm… Don, I guess you’ll abohor me. I think abortion should be legal.. but I think it’s a really bad thing. I’m not sure I’d call that “condemming” abortion.
Lucia to women who have abortions: “You did a really bad thing!” Sounds pretty condemnatory to me.
There are other things I think are really bad, but which I also think should be legal. (e.g. Divorce, rampant promiscuity,
Why do you think divorce and rampant promiscuity are really bad things?
I know we don’t satisfy Justin’s desire to restrict abortion, and we don’t probably don’t meet your need to see abortion as not bad.
What I’m saying is that, in the vast majority of cases, you are simply not in a position to judge the choice another woman makes about continuing or terminating her pregnancy, and you shouldn’t do so, let alone tell her that she is doing “a very bad thing.” It’s not your call to make. An abortion may be a tragedy, it may be the lesser of two evils, it may be the least-bad way out of a bad situation, but that doesn’t mean it’s the wrong choice.
Barbara:
Unless you can control for all these factors and no doubt others I haven’t even thought of (number of abortion providers per capita?) it’s a silly and meaningless exercise.
Exactly. That’s what makes this whole thing so ridiculous. Abortion rates are affected by so many factors, and the effects of gay of marriage on abortion, if any, are likely to be so small and so difficult to measure in comparison to those other factors, that Katz’s whole exercise is just a waste of time. He’s just grasping at any straw that he thinks might possibly reflect badly on gay marriage.
Have you ever looked at his blog? He seems to spend hours and hours sifting through websites looking for anti-gay-marriage material and constructing charts and graphs to illustrate his “argument.” One has to wonder why he is so obsessed with the issue.
Don P– I’m probably a lot less judgemental than you assume. Partially because I am very non-judgmental about people, I find myself comfortable labeling actions generally “bad”, without necessarily judging the people who do them as bad.
But, I don’t think see a big disctinction between your calling a abortion a “tragedy” or the “lesser of two evils” and my saying it’s a bad thing. Evils are bad things. Tragedies are sad– or bad– or at least not happy things. One usually tries to avoid tragedy– sort of like burns, cuts or bruises. Abortion is “bad” in this sense at least.
I also don’t think choosing the lesser of two evils is a wrong choice. If my choice was being injured or killed, I’d pick injury. Injury is still a bad thing. I don’t feel compelled to call injury, good or even neutral just because in a particular circumstance it’s the lesser evil.
One reason I don’t feel compelled to call injury good is because I don’t feel recognizing that someone made the best of a bad situation means they are a bad person. I applaud people for picking the least bad way out of a bad situation, and I also figure they, often, are the best judge as to which choice is least bad in context.
So, I prefer not to judge, or to make the law decide for them. I think they should decide. I think the law needs to let people choose the lesser of two evils.
Still, I would prefer to structure things so most people can avoid having to pick between bad and worse. To do this, I need to recognize bad from good. I can’t just call bad “good” because it’s the lesser of two evils. I hope to structure things so they can pick between good and better!
Why do you think divorce and rampant promiscuity are really bad things?
I think rampant promiscuity tends to make most people unhappy in the medium to long run– based on general observations. I notice that rampant promiscuity has a high probability of putting someone in a situation of having to pick between bad and worse. So, it’s a bad, or at least unwise, choice. I also think it’s their choice and not mine.
I think divorce is a sad thing. Like an injury, it is bad. It is sometimes the best choice under the circumstance, but nearly every divorce I know of causes tremendous turmoil. (It also generally occurs at the end of a lot of turmoil. ) It is better, and happier, when marriages work.
lucia:
Don P– I’m probably a lot less judgemental than you assume. Partially because I am very non-judgmental about people, I find myself comfortable labeling actions generally “bad”, without necessarily judging the people who do them as bad.
Then you’re just being incoherent. You say that abortion is a “very bad thing.” That means you’re telling women who have abortions that they are choosing to do a very bad thing. That’s condemnation. You’re not in a position to make that judgement.
But, I don’t think see a big disctinction between your calling a abortion a “tragedy” or the “lesser of two evils” and my saying it’s a bad thing. Evils are bad things. Tragedies are sad– or bad– or at least not happy things.
Yes, exactly. You’re telling women who have abortions that they are choosing to do evil. That’s what I object to. You have no moral right to judge them like that.
I also don’t think choosing the lesser of two evils is a wrong choice. If my choice was being injured or killed, I’d pick injury. Injury is still a bad thing. I don’t feel compelled to call injury, good or even neutral just because in a particular circumstance it’s the lesser evil.
But choosing the lesser of two evils is the better choice, the moral choice, the good choice. In a situation in which abortion is the lesser of two evils, abortion is a good thing because the alternative is worse. Simply saying “abortion is very bad” ignores that fact and condemns women who have abortions as choosing to do bad. In the vast majority of cases, you have no basis for making that judgment about them.
Still, I would prefer to structure things so most people can avoid having to pick between bad and worse. To do this, I need to recognize bad from good. I can’t just call bad “good” because it’s the lesser of two evils.
But good and bad are always relative terms. There is no absolute good or bad. Our choices are always constrained by the options available to us. In a situation in which a woman must choose between terminating and completing a pregnancy, the choice to terminate may often be the good choice, because the alternative is worse. You need to acknowledge that, instead of implicitly attacking women who have abortions by saying that they are choosing to do a “very bad thing.”
Lucia:
I think rampant promiscuity tends to make most people unhappy in the medium to long run– based on general observations.
I’d love to see your evidence for this.
I notice that rampant promiscuity has a high probability of putting someone in a situation of having to pick between bad and worse. So, it’s a bad, or at least unwise, choice.
This makes no sense, either. Treating the sick also has a high probability of putting someone in a situation of having to pick between “bad and worse.” Does that mean treating the sick is wrong? Of course not. Perhaps you would respond that treating the sick is a good whereas promiscuity is not. But promiscuity is a source of great pleasure for many people. Pleasure is a good, just like health is a good. People obtain pleasure in many ways that carry risks–sexual promiscuity, mountain-climbing, eating fast food, riding motorcycles, and so on. It’s not your place to judge them just because you value pleasure less than they do or choose to obtain pleasure in different ways than they do.
I think divorce is a sad thing. Like an injury, it is bad. It is sometimes the best choice under the circumstance,
Then in those circumstances divorce is a good thing, isn’t it? If divorce wasn’t available to people who are in those circumstances, they’d be worse off, wouldn’t they?
but nearly every divorce I know of causes tremendous turmoil. (It also generally occurs at the end of a lot of turmoil. ) It is better, and happier, when marriages work.
But this observation is just irrelevant. The fact is that marriages often don’t work. The fact is that women are often faced with unwanted pregnancies. The fact is that all our choices in life are limited by circumstances. It is always possible to imagine a circumstance in which the choices available to us would be better than the ones with which we are actually confronted. In any situation, the action we choose to take isn’t “bad” simply because in other circumstances a better action might be available to us. And that’s as true for abortion as it is for anything else.
You’re not in a position to make that judgement.
Okay, I don’t mean to overreact, but this strikes me as an extraordinarily silly thing to say. We’re ALL in a position to make that judgement. We’re all in a position to decide for ourselves what our moral standards are, and to decide where we stand on abortion. I am 100% in favor of keeping abortion safe, legal, and available, but if you’re someone who believes that “abortion = murder,” then you obviously believe that abortion is a “very bad thing,” and it’s no more unreasonable for you to have that view than it is for you to believe that murder is a “very bad thing.” I disagree, of course, and I’ll do my best to change your mind, but that doesn’t change that you have the right (and obligation) to make that moral distinction for yourself.
You don’t have the right to prevent others from making their own moral distinctions, and they don’t have the right to prevent you from making yours. In fact, as far as I can tell, we’re getting into the area of inalienable rights here. I have the right to my own judgement. Period. I have the right to disapprove of the things other people do, even if they feel it’s none of my business. Period.
Do I have the right to interfere physically, legally, or otherwise? Not so much.
—JRC
Don P–
I don’t have evidence that rampant promiscuity makes people uhappy generally. It is simply my observation, which may conflict with yours. You are permitted to think rampant promiscuity is a good thing based on your experience. All that means is we have a different opinion.
Since I’m not labeling people who are promiscuou “bad”, or calling for them to be tarred and feathered or trying to make their choice illegal, what does the fact that I have a different opinion make you angry?
I do think our use of the word “bad thing” differs. My use the word “bad” would not make seeking or providing medical treatment a bad thing. However, it would recognize that some useful medical treatments have bad side effects. One would never tolerate these side effects except to solve a horrible killer disease.
My solution: I applaud the use any medical treatment when it’s the lesser of two evils. Encourage research to develop more effective treatments with fewer side effects.
JRC:
Okay, I don’t mean to overreact, but this strikes me as an extraordinarily silly thing to say. We’re ALL in a position to make that judgement. We’re all in a position to decide for ourselves what our moral standards are, and to decide where we stand on abortion.
No, you’re not. Abortion is such a personal and intimate matter, involving questions of liberty and equality and health and the nature of life on which people have such diverse views, and that are so strongly dependent on the particular circumstances of each individual case, that you are simply not in a position to make that call for someone’s else’s pregnancy. Who are you to tell a woman that the risks of an unwanted pregnancy to her physical health, her mental health, her job or career, her relationship with her husband or boyfriend, her ability to care for her children or other dependents, and the future direction of her life do not justify terminating her pregnancy?
I am 100% in favor of keeping abortion safe, legal, and available, but if you’re someone who believes that “abortion = murder,” then you obviously believe that abortion is a “very bad thing,” and it’s no more unreasonable for you to have that view than it is for you to believe that murder is a “very bad thing.”
Then why isn’t it also “reasonable” to believe, say, that the killing of black people isn’t murder on the grounds that blacks are not really people? Or that the killing of children isn’t really murder on the grounds that children are not people? If equating abortion with murder is “reasonable,” why aren’t these other views about murder and the nature of persons that you disagree with also reasonable? Or do you in fact think that they are reasonable?
You don’t have the right to prevent others from making their own moral distinctions,
I cannot prevent people from making their own moral distinctions. I do have a right and an obligation to criticize people who make judgments about the morality of other people’s actions that they are not in a position to make, as in abortion.
Lucia;
Look, “bad” in this context is a moral judgment. A bad act is an immoral act, a wrong act, an act that one ought not to take. If abortion is immoral, then women who choose abortion are choosing to behave immorally. They’re choosing to behave in a way that they ought not to behave, because that’s what “immoral” means. You cannot say “Abortion is morally wrong” without also saying “Women who choose abortion are choosing to behave immorally.” The claim that you can is just incoherent.
If what you mean to say is that abortion is tragic rather than immoral, an unfortunate event that may nevertheless be the right choice, then that is what you should say. But using the language of right and wrong, good and bad, moral and immoral is necessarily to imply moral judgments about women who have abortions. And you have no business doing that.
It’s like saying that treating cancer is “bad” because cancer treatment is debilitating and disfiguring. It causes nausea, hair loss, fatigue and so on. Those outcomes may be tragic, unfortunate, unpleasant, etc. But that doesn’t mean cancer treatment is “bad,” because the alternative is very likely to be worse. The right choice is never a “bad” choice, even if it has tragic consequences.
Look, “bad” in this context is a moral judgment.
Why do you think that?
In my opinion, saying “bad” means “immoral” is like saing “fruit” means “apple”.
The word bad has a wide range of meanings even if we restrict it to describing describing actions. One possible meaning is “immoral”; others are “unfavorable”, “not meeting an acceptable standard”, “disagreeable”, “sorrowful” , “sorry” and “suffering pain and distress”. There are even more meanings to the word “bad”. These definitions are in the dictionary.
I do not believe by using the word “bad” I am making a moral judgement.
Ah, I think I see where the confusion is.
I do not believe that the view that “abortion = murder” is a reasonable one. This is why I said in my original comment that I do my best to change the minds of people who hold that point of view. However, for those who do hold that point of view and whose minds have not yet been changed, it IS reasonable to stand in moral opposition to abortion.
Where we seem to differ is that, while I would rather argue against the underlying assumptions that seem to lead to that moral distinction, you prefer to argue against the ability or right to make the moral distinction in the first place.
I have two objections to that.
First, in terms of setting moral standards, we all need to do it, even if it’s only in a personal way. By deciding (for example) that I believe discrimination to be wrong, I make a statement about how I want to act in my life, and what living a morally upright life means to me. Many “against abortion-but-pro-choice people” hold this point of view. That is, they’ve made a statement about their beliefs regarding abortion without trying to stop anyone else from making a differing statement. You seem to be saying that that’s something people don’t have the right to do . . . that is, your argument boils down to “nobody is allowed to make moral distinctions at all, because when they make them for themselves, it may differ with the moral distinction someone else might make sometime, and who are you to judge?”
Second, for people who believe that abortion is murder (which, I hasten to repeat, I DO NOT), it is, of nature, not a private decision. Arguments that we don’t have a right to make judgements about abortion because it’s a private matter make about as much sense to them as an argument that we don’t have a right to make judgements about murder because, after all, it’s just between the murderer and their victim.
I do find it a little funny that you use the example of “Then why isn’t it also “reasonable” to believe, say,” . . . “that the killing of children isn’t really murder on the grounds that children are not people?” when that’s PRECISELY the argument pro-lifers have been using since, oh, for-fricking-ever. That’s what they believe we’re saying.
The thing is, if you believe that fetuses are people, then it’s not unreasonable for you to believe that the termination of a pregnancy is murder. If you believe that cows are people, then it’s not unreasonable for you to believe that meat is murder. If you believe that watermelons are people, then it’s not unreasonable for you to believe Gallagher shows are mass-murder (actually, regardless of what you believe, they ain’t good). I disagree with all three of these premises, but the conclusions follow naturally from the premises. Argue against the premises if you like, but to argue that, regardless of hte premises, people ought not be able to draw the natural conclusions, is to fight a losing battle.
—Myca
I agree with what Myca said.
And I’d like to add, Gallagher shows are bad, in oh, so many, many ways!
“abortion is a good thing because the alternative is worse.”
What is this ‘worse’ alternative???
Dale
Organizations such as The American Family Association do not seek to “protect marriage.” They seek to deny gay relationships “any legal recognition” of any kind.
http://www.unitedanglicanchurch.org/uac_information.htm
http://www.cwfa.org/ma-update.asp
http://www.beliefnet.com/story/130/story_13037_1.html
http://www.cwfa.org/papersarchive.asp
http://www.cwfa.org/images/content/masjc-09163.pdf
http://www.afa.net/Category.asp?y=2004&m=4&id=5
http://www.afa.net/family/Default.asp?y=2004&m=4&id=5
They argue from one side of their face that marriage is unnecessary for gay couples because most (if not all) rights granted by marriage are available by other means– such as a medical proxy.
They are lobbying to deny gay people access to each and every one of those rights they say can be attained without marriage.
From the other side of their face, they seek to reserve “all rights traditionally belonging to marriage” solely for heterosexual couples.
http://www.ccv.org/Homosexuality-Where_CCV_Stands.htm
http://www.state.tn.us/tccy/tnchild/36/36-3-113.htm
They also say that if civil unions are allowed, “don’t panic,” because they will try to get rid of them later.
And if there were any doubt of their intentions, they are even lobbying for legislation that would forbid gay couples from having hospital visitation– even with a medical proxy.
They’ve even sued to force municipalities and companies do stop voluntarily providing same sex partner coverage for their employees
Do you want an idea of their ultimate, Final Solution, to “The Gay Problem?”
Michigan just passed The Conscientious Objector Policy Act (COPA) which would allow physicians, pharmacists, and health care insurers to refuse medical treatment to any individual they choose on “ethical, moral, or religious grounds.”
http://www.365gay.com/newscon04/04/042904michFolo.htm
http://www.tgcrossroads.org/news/?aid=870
http://www.philly.com/mld/dailynews/news/opinion/8709907.htm
http://www.washblade.com/2004/5-7/news/healthnews/HIBS.cfm
http://www.michiganlegislature.org/mileg.asp?page=getObject&objName=2003-HB-5006
While the law forbids “conscientious objections” due to race and religion, they rejected an amendment to the bill that would have included sexual orientation on the list of those who could not be discriminated against.
They also rejected an amendment that would have required an objector to provide a referral to another service provider.
And the bill does make an exception for “emergency treatment,” but does not specify what constitutes an emergency– for example, is bleeding to death an emergency, or is something like a broken arm (not life threatening, but painful) an emergency?
There are COPA laws in the works in several other states right now. I honestly believe that if we do not do something soon, this will be the first true step in the next Holocaust.
These laws like COPA are what people like Grand Rabbi Ira Korff are supporting at the same time that they say homosexuals should be treated “with love, intelligence and compassion,” to quote Rebbe Y.A. Korff.
This is the same hypocritical scumbag who distributed “Last Temptation of Christ for Viacom,” and now says “what’s coming out of Hollywood” is the real problem with society. He owns a newspaper, and claims that “the values and institutions which have been around for centuries have been undermined by concepts like free love and free speech.”
Ira Korff also says, “”Freedom of speech does not give people the right to speak derogatorily about others,” yet he says homosexuals are destroying society and likens them marrying each other to marrying, “man’s best friend, the dog.”
http://www.massnews.com/past_issues/other/5_May/doma2.htm
Rebbe Korff says that, “if you act civil, you will breed civility in others. I hardly see him as being in any way “civil.”
http://www.massnews.com/past_issues/2000/8_Aug/rebbe.htm
http://www.massnews.com/past_issues/other/5_May/doma2.htm
These people do not want to “protect” squat. They come only to destroy. And the final smoking gun pointing to a conspiracy to commit genocide is the so-called “Conscientious Objector Policy Act.”
It is disgusting that a fellow Jew like Ira Korff, who was appointed as a chaplain to the City of Boston, is so willing to put on the jackboots and become a willing executioner himself.
When did “Never Again” suddenly become, “take THEM first?”
They claim that they are trying to protect and preserve the sanctity of marriage and the family.
They are lying.
One of the members of The MFI / AFM is The Grand Rabbi Ira Korff, Chaplain for the City of Boston.
The title of ”Grand Rabbi” is neither elected nor appointed– it is inherited. The Jewish community didn’t choose Ira Korff.
He is lying.
For almost two years, I worked for Ira Korff at The Jewish Advocate newspaper in Boston.
Last year, within the space of about four months, my mother had congestive heart failure, my grandmother died, and I was diagnosed with cancer.
I spoke to Ira Korff and told him I was having another operation in a week, and my mother was having an operation the week after that.
I asked Ira Korff if I could take an unpaid medical leave for a month to protect and preserve my family and my health.
Grand Rabbi Ira Korff, Chaplain of the City of Boston, champion for the preservation and protection of the family, said “No.”
He told me that in this economy he could replace me quickly for less money.
In their crusade against gay people, Ira Korff and The Massachusetts Family Institute have joined forces with the leadership of The Islamic Society of North America, Islamic Society of Boston, Islamic Society of New England– supporters of Hamas and of Al Queda. Terrorists.
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/1203/ marriage_terrorists.php3
The image of same-sex couples at the altar together is more horrific to Ira Korff than people flinging themselves from the windows of the burning World Trade Center.
Ira Korff is more afraid of seeing gay people happily married than he is of seeing his own brethren lying mangled and bloody in the streets of Israel.
Ira Korff is also the Honorary Consulate to Austria. The post had been discarded in disgust following the election of a Nazi-sympathizer as Chancellor of Austria. Ira Korff jumped at the chance to take the unwanted “honorary” position on the bones of our martyred fathers.
Grand Rabbi Ira Korff rubs shoulders with terrorists and Nazis.
These so-called protectors of the family and preservers of marriage are liars and frauds and hypocrites.
They are people like Ira Korff, whose newspaper I know (and can prove) has been lying for years about the circulation figures upon which it bases its advertising rates.
They are a motley assemblage of Judases, Uncle Toms and Judenrats.
Liars. Frauds. Hypocrites.
What Ira Korff and his fellow travelers are doing now has all been done before, and it started with laws about who was allowed to marry whom.
Why would someone want to exchange their yellow star for a swastika?We need everyone to speak up and say, with one voice, “Never Again!”
—
Rev. Ian Brumberger
Brockton, MA
The National Association for Stupid Acceptance
http://www.imwithstupid.org
Because Stupidity Does Not Excuse Ignorance
It kinda gives me the creeps when aborting a fetus is compared to treating cancer! I would also like to know what the worse alternative to abortion is.
Does anyone see a problem with a woman having the power to decide whether her fetus is just a complex piece of flesh or a human being with rights?
As far as I know….I am a human being with rights even if no one else agrees! That is the nature of being a person with rights. They are inalienable.
Either a fetus is…or is’nt. It cannot be both ways. If it is’nt…..no one can be charged for murder by aborting a fetus.
Well this is for the person who started comparing apples to oranges, how can two people in a same sex marriage conceive, which is the only possible way they can contribute to a increase in abortions, I think someone needs to go back to school and learn human reproduction…hmmmm…this is only another attempt to control other peoples lives and beliefs…only someone with no common sense would even connect the two..
I am againt Gay Marriage, and do think it will harm society… however, their is no tentative link between Abrotion, which resukts form pregnency which invariabely coms fom Heterosexual unons, and Gay Marirage…
THdeir is a link with current liberal trends and the acceptance of both, but only in political spectra, and usually those who support one support the other. But int he real world of average pple, their is no link…
The initial assumption, that same-sex marraige weakens the institution of marraige, is the one that is flawed. How, exactly, does one man marrying another man affect another man marrying a woman? I would love to see the divorce rates in countries that allow same-sex marraige compared to the 50% or higher divorce rate in America.
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I found this thread indirectly and thought I might add a few belated notes on the available statistics that would inform this discussion.
In addition to the ratio of marriages per 1,000 unwed women of reproductive age, the following factors can be useful in a broad examination of trends in family formation across societies:
1. Live births per 1000 pregnancies.
2. Abortions per 1000 pregnancies.
3. Nonmarital births per 1000 pregnancies.
4. Prevalence of contraceptive use (and unmet need).
Justin Katz said:
>> I looked at abortion as a percentage of children conceived
This is a fair approach.
Standard ratios that compare live births, nonmarital births, and abortions can use one or both of the following denominators: 1000 women of reproductive age (15-44 years); 1000 pregnancies (live births, abortions, and miscarriages). In a way both denominators would tell a similar story in monitoring the trends in births (marital and nonmarital) and abortions. These measures can be found in use by most official statistics gathering agencies. But not all, so inter-country comparisons need to be based on confirmation of similar assumptions.
For example, in most cases the relatively few pregnancies attributable to very young women (under 15 years) and older women (over 44 years) are included in the count of total pregnancies while the count of women in those age groups are excluded from the total number of women of childbearing age. Use of total pregnancies, rather than total women aged 15-44 years, would approximate this approach and is thus commonly used, however, there may be demographic reasons to use the count of women instead.
Another example: while Justin’s use of “children conceived” is valid in concept, his graphs note the exclusion of miscarriages and so are technically incomplete. Miscarriages are typically estimated based on the sum of an assumed percentage of live births and an assumed percentage of abortions. But this is not so for all stat agencies, so taking miscarriages into consideration across countries would add a layer of complexity to the graphing of the trends. Also, the official criteria for a miscarriage can be markedly different from country to country.
Underlieing assumptions need to be similair, if not identical, not just in the calculation of miscarriages, but also in the estimation of abortions. Nonethless, the basic idea is sound: compare ratios of abortions/pregnacies. To keep it simple, it may be reasonable to include only official abortion statistics and to exclude miscarriages, and that should be noted, as Justin did note in his graphs. I don’t think I’ve read here that anyone objects to this ommssion.
In a few European countries it is also possible to monitor recent trends in nonmarital births and nonmarital abortions that are broken down into single mothers and unwed cohabitating mothers. But comparison across countries is difficult because in many cases all unwed mothers are lumped together in a single category or cohabitating mothers are rolled-into the stats for married mothers. Likewise, a high prevalence of unofficial traditional marriages (in some less developed countries and in many Eastern European countries) can artificially inflate the count of nonmarital births and nonmarital abortions.
Given the limitations on comparable statistics, I think Justin’s simplified graphs of the selected countries represent a reasonable illustration of the relevant data in this discussion.
Ampersand replied to Justin’s comment:
>> Your abortion rate statistic is different from the standard abortion rate statistic in that it effectively removes the effects of birth control from the picture, by counting only what happens post-conception.
Justin is correct to focus on measures that do not incorporate the use of contraceptives, because that is how the statistics are gathered and reported.
The measure that Ampersand may find useful is the prevalence of contraceptive use. And the related statistic on unmet need for contraception. While all methods of preventing conception (traditional and modern) are combined in determing these two measures, abortion is explicitly excluded as a separate phenomenom.
While some viewpoints might blend abortion into a “birth control rate”, no such blended rate actually is estimated by statistics agencies around the world. This is not a politically-driven method; it is practicably impossible to combine stats on abortion with stats on contraceptive use. They can be considered side-by-side but as a single measure.
Ampersand’s intuition that the two are related is reflected, for example, in an oft-noted observation in some societies that a high unmet need for contraception correlates with a high incidence of abortion. Some liberal NGOs in the field advocate for increased access to modern contraceptive methods as the primary means to reduce abortion rates, for example. I use that example because I imagine it would be favored by Ampersand and demonstrates that the lack of a blended “birth control rate” does not mean that reality is overlooked when abortions and live births are counted and compared without incorporating contraceptive use. Other observations include correlation between a low unmet need and a high birth rate. There is utility in measuring abortion and contraceptive use separately.
The prevalence of contraception presents limitations when comparing one society to another. Until recently, this measure has been unused in developed countries; and in less developed countries the measure excluded single non-cohabitating women. In recent years developed countries (especially in Eastern Europe) have added both contraceptive prevalence and unmet need in the reporting of statistics on very young women — under 20 years — and also on cohabitating women separately from married women. In some countries, such as The Netherlands, the statistics are broken down by country of origin, which helps to track the influence of the host society on generations of newcomer populations. An interesting sidenote: this has also led to observations about the influence of immigrants on national trends.
In sum: Justin is quite right to focus on measures based on total pregnancies and which exclude contraceptive use. But it is also possible, in some countries, to add a comparison that incorporates contraception, as Ampersand suggested. Such a comparison would still need to consider abortion statistics as separate from contraception statistics since abortion is not rolled into a single measure of “birth control”.
Correction of a typo:
In the 4th last paragraph I said, “… impossible to combine stats on abortion with stats on contraceptive use. They can be considered side-by-side but as a single measure.”
That should read: “They can be considered side-by-sidebut but *NOT* as a single measure.”
I do not agree with homosexuality nor the marriages produced thereof, however, it would seem to me, that by logical reasoning, less same sex marriage leads to less babies which then leads to less abortions. If you do not have children to be aborted, there can be no abortions.