Of Contraception and Abortion
Oct 17th, 2007 by nick
A new study on abortion rates has some interesting data :
- Abortion rates are not correlated with legality of abortion. That is, the rates of abortion are approximately the same in countries where it is illegal and those where it is legal.
- Abortions are generally safe in countries where it is legal, and generally unsafe where it is illegal.
- Decreased abortion rates in Eastern Europe since the fall of communism correlates with increased access to contraception.
The conclusions we can reach shouldn’t be much of a surprise:
- Women who want an abortion are going to get one, whether or not it’s legal.
- For the safety of those women, the procedure should be legal.
- If we really want to decrease the number of abortions, we need to provide access to contraception.
This last point in particular should not be controversial. Anyone who truly cares about reducing abortion rates should be promoting contraception use. So why are the Bush administration and other “pro-life” folks so insistent on promoting abstinence-only programs both in the US and abroad? Could it be that they’re actually more concerned about enforcing their version of sexual morality on the world than about decreasing abortions?
I think every political/feminist blog I read has posted about this study. It is one of those things that just makes you want to say “duh!”. It is so depressing and hard to believe that so many people (especially politicians) can willfully ignore studies like this and continue to (sucessfully, even) promote policies that go right in the face of such studies.
Yes, and their “pro-life” rhetoric doesn’t sound very pro-life when they support capital punishment. According to the pro-lifers, we’re committing murder when we terminate a pregnancy (even an embryo of just a few cells) but it’s “justice,” not murder, when a criminal is put to death. This logical inconsistency further supports the conclusion that their underlying agenda isn’t what it seems. Furthermore, I wonder how many of these hard-core criminals were unwanted children.
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