[This is the “non-Catholic version” of the post below this one; it’s the same post, but I’ve taken out the arguments about Catholicism, so that folks who are uninterested in that debate, might read the arguments for why John Kerry would reduce abortion more than George Bush will.]<\/i><\/p>\n
[This is why being a blogger is so cool. I mean, a real writer would never be able to do unprofessional $#!+@ like this.]<\/i><\/p>\n
I assume that the primary goal of a sincere pro-lifer is not to punish the guilty, but to reduce abortion as much as possible. So I therefore assume that pro-lifers support pro-life policies – and pro-life politicians like George Bush – because they think pro-life policies will reduce abortion. But there are legitimate reasons to doubt that’s true.<\/p>\n
First, how likely is it that abortion will ever be banned in the USA? Reagan couldn’t do it. Bush Sr. couldn’t do it. So far, Bush hasn’t been able to. Face it: the country is divided on abortion. The most pro-lifers could possibly accomplish is throwing abortion to state-by-state restrictions; but some states will never ban abortion, so all that will do is force women to cross state lines.<\/p>\n
Even if legal abortion could be entirely banned, it’s unclear that this would actually reduce the real number of abortions by a significant degree. Before the Supreme Court’s Roe v Wade<\/i> ruling, American women had somewhere between 200,000 and 1.2 million abortions a year in the U.S.. Although measuring something as hidden as illegal abortions is always difficult, the best pre-Roe scholarly assessment came to a figure of about a million abortions a year (“…prior to the adoption of more moderate abortion laws in 1967, there were 1 million abortions annually nationwide, of which 8000 were legal….” From Christopher Tietze “Abortion on request: its consequences for population trends and public health,” Seminars in Psychiatry <\/i>1970;2:375-381, quoted in JAMA <\/i>December 9, 1992).<\/p>\n
Another option is to look at what happens to birth rates; an significant increase in abortions should lead to a declining birth rate. So if Roe<\/i> caused a big increase in abortions, the birthrate in the US would have dropped post-Roe<\/i>. So what actually happened?<\/p>\n Similarly, what happened when Poland banned abortions in the 1990s? If pro-life policies reduce abortion significantly, there would have been a spike in Poland’s birthrate. But Poland’s birth rate remained steady. (See Reproductive Health Matters <\/i>(Volume 10, Issue 19 , May 2002): “The restrictive abortion law in Poland has not increased the number of births.”)<\/p>\n Pro-life laws may prevent a few abortions; but they don’t prevent enough to be measured statistically, or to have a noticeable effect on birthrates. That may seem counterintuitive, but it actually makes sense. Why? Because most women don’t have abortions lightly.<\/i> They have abortions because they are feeling very determined, or perhaps very desperate, and the anti-abortion laws don’t seem just to them. When something is desperately wanted by consumers – and when that something is fairly easy to supply – outlawing it won’t make it actually unavailable. Just look at the market for pot; and the proportion of casual pot smokers is far higher than the proportion of casual abortion patients.<\/p>\n Here’s another statistic to consider<\/a>: Which countries have the least abortion? Belgium has an abortion rate of 6.8 abortions per 1,000 women aged 15-44. The Netherlands, 6.5. Germany, 7.8. Compare that to the USA’s rate of 22. Even better, compare it to countries where abortion is illegal: Egypt, 23; Brazil, 40; Chile, 50; Peru, 56.<\/p>\n According to the World Health Organization<\/a>:<\/p>\n If pro-life laws are the best way of reducing abortion, then why are the world’s lowest abortion rates found in pro-choice countries like Germany and the Netherlands, while some of the world’s highest abortion rates are in countries that outlaw abortion?<\/p>\n Statistically, there’s no evidence that outlawing abortion lowers abortion rates; and quite a lot of reason to think that it doesn’t.<\/p>\n * * *<\/p>\n There’s no evidence that any pro-life law will reduce abortion by any significant degree in the United States.<\/p>\n What will <\/i>reduce abortion? If the examples of the Netherlands, Germany, and Belgium – countries that have incredibly low abortion rates – are any example, we should consider reducing abortion by reducing the demand<\/i>, rather than reducing the supply<\/i>. As Ono Ekeh recently wrote <\/a>in National Catholic Weekly<\/i>:<\/p>\n Pro-life moderates and liberals embrace the “demand-side” approach. This approach seeks to reduce the number of abortions by addressing the social issues that compel too many women to contemplate what would normally be unthinkable. If social conditions were changed so that women were empowered, and if we effectively addressed issues such as health care, child care, family leave, wage inequity, domestic violence and other women’s issues, we could reasonably expect a significant reduction in the number of abortions in the United States. For instance, 21 percent of abortions in the United States are a result of inadequate finances. This category of women, though not exhaustive, represents a very fixable opportunity. Consider the following simplified example. If a woman for whom inadequate finances were the primary reason to consider an abortion is confident that there would be assistance to compensate for her lack of finances, the lack of finances then weighs less in her deliberations.<\/p>\n This demand-side approach will take time and does not immediately make abortions rare, but our goal is to change a culture, not just a law. This approach is a steady tide that lifts all boats of human dignity. It seems that this is a reasonable means of attaining the goal of a culture of life even if different from the process laid out by traditional pro-lifers.<\/p><\/div>\n Given that traditional pro-lifers cannot, as far as I know, point to a single country in which pro-life policies have resulted in a low abortion rate comparible to the Netherlands, it’s time for those who seriously oppose abortion to consider the demand-side approach to abortion reduction.<\/p>\n * * *<\/p>\n Finally, regarding the current presidential race, the matter of the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) should be considered. George Bush chose to defund the UNFPA, removing the $34 million US contribution, due to accusations that the UNFPA supports coerced abortion in China. Many people believe these accusations were not true (both a Bush State Department team, and a British inspection team including a well-known pro-life critic of UNFPA, found that the accusations were not true).<\/p>\n UNFPA does not provide support for abortions or abortion-related activities anywhere in the world. In fact, they prevent <\/i>abortion, by providing family planning services and birth control in developing countries all over the world. They also help prevent AIDS, provide medical care which makes pregnancy and childbirth safer for mothers and babies, and work to prevent and treat obstetric fistulas. (Follow this link for more posts about UNFPA<\/a>).<\/p>\n According to UNFPA<\/a>, “UNFPA estimates that $34 million applied to family planning programmes could prevent some 800,000 abortions, 4,700 maternal deaths and 77,000 infant and child deaths annually worldwide.”<\/p>\n It’s certain that John Kerry, if elected president, would refund UNFPA – which in turn could prevent hundreds of thousands of avoidable abortions.<\/p>\n There’s very little chance that George Bush could succeed in banning abortion. Even if he does, there’s virtually no evidence that Bush’s pro-life policies will reduce abortion. It is, however, certain that having John Kerry in office will prevent thousands <\/i>of abortions; not in some theoretical far-off time, but immediately<\/i>, next year.<\/p>\n If you’re sincerely in favor of reducing abortion, as much as possible, as quickly as possible – then you should probably be voting for John Kerry. Objectively, a Kerry presidency will prevent more abortions. Shouldn’t that be the bottom line, if you’re pro-life?.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [This is the “non-Catholic version” of the post below this one; it’s the same post, but I’ve taken out the arguments about Catholicism, so that folks who are uninterested in that debate, might read the arguments for why John Kerry … Continue reading \n Year Births Birthrate\n\n 1973 3,136,965 14.9\n 1974 3,159,958 14.9\n 1975 3,144,198 14.8\n 1976 3,167,788 14.8\n 1977 3,326,632 15.4\n 1978 3,333,279 15.3\n 1979 3,494,398 15.9\n 1980 3,612,258 15.9\n<\/pre>\n