A North Carolina reproductive health program that once received wide elite support is under fire:
Over all, about 70 percent of the North Carolina operations took place after 1945, and many of them were on poor young women and racial minorities. [. . .]
The program, while not specifically devised to target racial minorities, affected black Americans disproportionately because they were more often poor and uneducated and from large rural families.
The program in question is North Carolina’s forced sterilization initiative, a particularly brutal form of birth control once practiced in 31 states on over 60,000 victims. Of course, today the operation frequently performed on the poor and uneducated that disproportionately affects racial minorities is abortion.
There are a thousand disanalogies between forced sterilization and abortion, but that did not prevent a previous generation of well-intentioned people from seeing them as two threads in a seamless agenda of reproductive health.
December 12th, 2011 | 10:27 am
I’m somehow missing the point here. The huge difference between forced sterilization and abortion is that forced sterilization is done against the will, or at least without the consent, of the person being sterilized. Abortions are performed at the request of the people having them.
If the point is that some things such as eugenics are widely accepted by intelligent and presumably well intentioned people in one era, and are seen in hindsight as regrettable or even appalling in later times, I certainly wouldn’t disagree. But that legal abortion will turn out to be something later generations conclude was on a par with slavery or segregation or eugenics, while possible, is by no means certain.
December 12th, 2011 | 10:32 am
Abortions aren’t done at the request of the one being aborted.
December 12th, 2011 | 12:49 pm
David,
“But that legal abortion will turn out to be something later generations conclude was on a par with slavery or segregation or eugenics, while possible, is by no means certain”
I think you can already see the change in the attitudes toward abortion. Buzzwords like “choice” and “planning” have given way to abortion “rights” and to slogans like “safe, legal, and rare.” These changes are all victories for the pro-life movement. Most of the middle- and upper-middle-class women I know can’t imagine getting pregnant, much less requiring an abortion. They are too savvy about birth control to require abortion becomes seen as a kind of failure in their eyes.
Abortion found its widest acceptance when it was inseparable from women’s rights. Now that women are widely accepted in the workplace and as leaders, abortion seems less important and is more separable. I know it’s fashionable now in pro-life circles to dismiss the gradualist, chipping approach, but I still think it’s the right way to go. Everyone knows that abortion is ugly, and the more we know about fetal development, the harder it is for most people to accept abortions after the first month.
We’re closer to achieving reasonable restrictions on abortion than you seem to think, and once restrictions seem reasonable, collapse is inevitable. Abortion will go the way of eugenics.
December 12th, 2011 | 12:53 pm
The link is actually to the argument *some* pro-lifers take when they assert a ‘state interest’ in reproduction. If the state has an interest in promoting reproduction for its needs (such as future taxpayers, potential draftees for the armed forces, economic strategy etc.) then the state may also have an interest in limiting reproduction. Hence we see from an age ago a very non-liberal state dealing with the consquences of a very non-liberal program it enacted long ago.
December 12th, 2011 | 1:27 pm
[...] STERILIZATION: “Reproductive Health of Yesteryear.” That post links to this New York Times [...]
December 12th, 2011 | 1:32 pm
Most of the middle- and upper-middle-class women I know can’t imagine getting pregnant, much less requiring an abortion. They are too savvy about birth control to require abortion becomes seen as a kind of failure in their eyes. . . . We’re closer to achieving reasonable restrictions on abortion than you seem to think, and once restrictions seem reasonable, collapse is inevitable.
Michael,
I hope you don’t think of “reasonable restrictions” being that middle- and upper-middle-class women don’t have abortions because they don’t have unwanted pregnancies, and that poor women don’t have abortions because they are legally prevented from doing so.
December 12th, 2011 | 2:24 pm
David,
Contraception should be widely available and cheap, if not free. Waiting periods, sonograms, parental permission, a definition of life after implantation, exceptions for real, physical danger to the mother’s life—these are all reasonable restrictions that apply regardless of wealth or class.
All of these things are worthless, of course, unless they are backed up by real, substantive pre- and post-natal care of children and mothers.
It’s a scandal when countries like the Netherlands have much lower abortion rates than ours.
December 12th, 2011 | 3:12 pm
a definition of life after implantation
Hmmm, not to long ago Newt was gently bashed on this blog for opting for an ‘implantation’ definition rather than ‘conception’. What makes implantation better than conception? Certainly I’m sure you wouldn’t get upset if some woman said she believed conception was the beginning hence she would avoid contraceptives like the pill that might disrupt fertilized but not implanted egg. If we can toss between implantation and conception then why not quickening (or a proxy like 1st or 2nd trimester?)?
It’s a scandal when countries like the Netherlands have much lower abortion rates than ours.
1. It should give you pause to consider my argument that the pro-life movement erred several decades ago when it decided to become focused on legalisms rather than the actual abortion rate and looking at reasons why its higher or lower in different areas and demographics.
2. You should be careful with the Netherlands comparisions. You’re talking a homogeneous, small, close knit country. The US is a very large, polyglot and diverse country. It’s not practical to expect rates to be the same even if we happened to mirror their policies exactly.
December 12th, 2011 | 5:02 pm
Boonton,
I believe that people are ready to find common ground on abortion. I don’t think conception is likely to find common ground, nor will the first trimester since so much of the baby has formed by three months. Fetal heartbeat and the formation of the brain are candidates, but I like implantation best.
“the pro-life movement erred several decades ago when it decided to become focused on legalisms rather than the actual abortion rate and looking at reasons why its higher or lower in different areas and demographics”
I agree that we should be looking at what works to lower rates and to pursue those methods, but you can’t pin the delay just on the pro-life movement. The abortion rights movement has resisted every effort to reduce the abortion rate.
“You should be careful with the Netherlands comparisions. You’re talking a homogeneous, small, close knit country. The US is a very large, polyglot and diverse country. It’s not practical to expect rates to be the same even if we happened to mirror their policies exactly”
I take your point, but the Netherlands has succeeded because it treats abortion as a last resort instead of just a choice. A good health care system is the place to start.
December 12th, 2011 | 8:12 pm
Michael
I agree that we should be looking at what works to lower rates and to pursue those methods, but you can’t pin the delay just on the pro-life movement. The abortion rights movement has resisted every effort to reduce the abortion rate.
I don’t believe the abortion rights movement has resisted financial aid with daycare, universal coverage for childbirth and children, tax credits for being guardians etc. All these things, while maybe not intended to reduce the abortion rate, would probably do so. I suspect more people have abortions because they don’t have health coverage than have babies because their insurance doesn’t cover abortion….yet the pro-life side seems more concerned with the latter. On the pro-life side the only policy that might be of importance is parental notification….yet its almost always pushed as a stand alone policy rather than as a tactic in an overall strategy to reduce abortion by actually reaching out to underage teens who are pregnant.
And of course the abortion rate fell under Clinton and has either continued to fall or remain steady under Obama, but all you’ll hear from pro-lifers is that these are ‘the most pro-abortion Presidents ever’. Of course these are all mostly due to large scale factors outside of anyone’s direct control. The population is older on average than it was in the 70′s and 80′s. That means fewer unplanned pregnancies. The rise of HIV dramatically increased the use of condoms and alternatives to intercourse like oral sex among younger people, which again reduces the abortion rate. Likewise the Catholic Bishops did speak out against welfare reform capping benefits for women who had more kids while one welfare. So I’ll give some credit to some in the pro-life movement.
But the stuff you can do is probably going to be hard. It’s unclear that pushing contraception by itself will do much. I suspect incomes policies to make childbirth and raising easier at the lower end of the income spectrum. But this may be dangerous. I suspect that welfare reform has both lowered the childbirth rate for those on welfare AND lowered abortions. A ‘Dan Quayle’ type criticism may be valid here. A policy that tries to help out pregnant women to choose birth over abortion may backfire causing more unplanned pregnances and abortions because of the ‘safetynet’ than if everyone was just left to fend for themselves good or bad.
I take your point, but the Netherlands has succeeded because it treats abortion as a last resort instead of just a choice. A good health care system is the place to start.
Fair enough, again no harm in trying to get a good health system for everyone even if it doesn’t lower the abortion rate. when you have a homogeneous society, its easy for most people to be on the ‘same page’. The US is diverse but very partisan because of that. Both pro-choicers and pro-lifers assume the worse intentions of their enemies so are less willing to cut deals and come to agreement where they can.
December 12th, 2011 | 8:55 pm
Boonton,
“I don’t believe the abortion rights movement has resisted financial aid with daycare, universal coverage for childbirth and children, tax credits for being guardians etc.”
It looks like you’re expending most of your energy here in trying to pin as much blame as you can on the pro-life movement rather than recognizing that the abortion rights movement has failed to protect either women or children.
The point is not to continue the blame game but to identify the common ground between both movements.
December 12th, 2011 | 10:18 pm
Let’s say we agree on the following:
- Universal coverage guranteed for all birthing
- Added financial aid for child care. Low income tax benefits for those with children *regardless* of whether or not such people have enough income to pay non-trivial income taxes.
I think that could lower the abortion rate from what it would otherwise be. I would be pretty surprised if you could cut it in half, though. But it would be a start. You can toss in parental consent if you want, although again I would add to it some serious aid in conjunction with it.
December 13th, 2011 | 4:16 pm
I’m somehow missing the point here.
Same arguments.
……
December 13th, 2011 | 9:43 pm
Could it be, many wondered, that Steve Levitt of the University of Chicago and John Donohue III of Stanford are recommending prenatal capital punishment?
If these many people are wondering this why don’t they just read what Levitt had to actually say?
Levitt took great pains to point out he was engaging in descriptive economics, not proscriptive. In other words, he was trying to tease out and test possible relationships by looking at the data, not argue a particular policy was ethical or moral.
While we are on the subject, though, another possibility regarding the declining abortion rate may, ironically, be abortion itself. Just as unwanted children are probably more likely to become criminals (BTW, do not misread that as saying *most* unwantd children, it could very well be a distinct minority for the effect to still hold), it’s just as reasonble to assume unwanted children are more likely to grow up and have unplanned pregnancies….of which some portion would be terminated with abortion. Fewer unplanned pregnancies would mean fewer abortions.
If we can take them at their word, they were simply searching for truth. The question is: Does the study illuminate the drop in crime, or simply play upon unspoken prejudices in the minds of most educated people?
What I recall from Levitt’s work was that overall birth rates do not appear to have dropped from abortion. In other words, abortion has meant a ‘typical’ woman has two kids at ages 24 and 27, say, instead of having two kids at 19 and 23. So Levitt’s hypothesis is not that some group of ‘bad women’ just aren’t having any kids due to abortion therefore we have fewer criminal types today. Instead his hypothesis can be more honestly summed up as being less about ‘bad people’ having abortions than about people having abortions during ‘bad times’.
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