Last Monday, David Frum wrote an essay for CNN.com titled “Let’s Get Real About Abortions.” Frum chides pro-lifers for placing too much emphasis on legally restricting abortion while neglecting the material needs of women facing crisis pregnancies. Frum does not favor banning abortion and his concerns about the state of the modern conservative movement in the United States are well documented. However, it is still disheartening to see a conservative commentator spout tired liberal talking points about how generous social programs are an effective strategy for reducing the abortion rate.
Now Frum is correct that the incidence of abortion is affected by the strength of the economy. However, Frum overstates his case. For instance, the number of abortions rose sharply throughout the 1970s. This was not because the economy was poor, but rather because the legalization of abortion changed sexual mores and shifted attitudes toward the issue. Additionally, even though the economy was strong during the 1980s, the number of abortions actually increased slightly between 1980 and 1989. Finally, today’s slow economy may be increasing the abortion rate. However, the Guttmacher study Frum cites indicates that the number of abortions increased by only one percent between 2005 and 2008—hardly a dramatic increase.
Like other commentators, Frum touts Europe as a model to follow. He argues that the reason why abortion rates are lower in Germany is because they have more generous social programs. However, while the U.S abortion rate has fallen, Germany’s abortion rate has gradually increased since the early 1980s. Frum also cites the Netherlands as a country with low abortion rates. Again, despite the generous social programs, over 60 percent of pregnancies to women under 20 in the Netherlands still end in abortion. Overall, there is no body of peer reviewed research which shows that increased welfare spending reduces abortion rates. Furthermore, studies of abortion rates in the U.S. states found that the level of welfare benefits failed to have a statistically significant impact on the incidence of abortion.
Pro-lifers do realize that many women seek abortion due to economic hardship. That is why they enthusiastically support the thousands of pregnancy resources centers in the country. Pro-lifers may disagree about what types of assistance the government should provide to women facing crisis pregnancies, but nearly all agree that pregnancy resource centers have played a valuable role in helping countless women who decided to bring a crisis pregnancy to term.
As veteran pro-lifers are well aware, we need to pursue several strategies simultaneously. We need to change the culture, enact protective laws, and offer assistance to women facing crisis pregnancies. That is certainly a realistic approach to stopping abortion.
Michael J. New is an Assistant Professor at The University of Michigan – Dearborn and an Adjunct Scholar at the Charlotte Lozier Institute. Follow him on Twitter @Michael_J_New.
November 5th, 2012 | 8:46 am
“However, while the U.S abortion rate has fallen, Germany’s abortion rate has gradually increased since the early 1980s. Frum also cites the Netherlands as a country with low abortion rates. Again, despite the generous social programs, over 60 percent of pregnancies to women under 20 in the Netherlands still end in abortion.”
It’s not uncommon for people to quote rates when it suits them, then absolute numbers when it suits them.
At first glance figures strike me as facile; my suspician being that German and the Netherlands have a lower rate of unwanted pregnancies. If the author could please provide figures for the total number of abortions in Germany and the Netherlands as compared to the total number of abortions in the US.
With those figures we might better assertain if women in Germany and the Netherlands are less likely to have unwanted pregnancies in the first place; which in my view, within the sanctity of life, state/citizen calculus may be the best way to prevent abortions.
November 5th, 2012 | 9:53 am
I do sometimes wonder how much impact a change in the law, without a corresponding change in public attitudes, would have on abortion rates.
Anyone who remembers France in the 1960s & 1970s, before the Veil Law of 1975, will know that pretty well every village seemed to have its « faiseuse d’anges » or “angel-maker.” Everybody knew about it, nobody talked about it and the police regarded it as “women’s business” and did turned a blind eye. Occasionally a woman died and, then, the Parquet, like Captain Renault in “Casablanca” would be shocked, shocked to discover that such things went on and there would be a brief flurry of prosecutions of unqualified women. Medical practitioners, doctors and midwives were never, ever, prosecuted.
Many will recall the « le manifeste des 343 salopes » on 5 April 1971, when 343 mostly prominent women admitted to having had an abortion and challenging the authorities to prosecute them. This, needless to say, did not happen. Perhaps even more significant was the publication of a similar manifesto in February 1973, by 331 doctors, including professors in the leading teaching hospitals, again challenging the authorities to prosecute them. The procurator of the Republic excused himself on the grounds of “lack of evidence.”
Does anyone imagine the position in the United States would be so very different?
This is not to say that the law should not be changed; merely that any such law might well prove to be a dead letter.
November 5th, 2012 | 9:54 am
The United States’ teen pregnancy rate is almost three times that of Germany and France, and over four times that of the Netherlands.(Figs. 1 and 2)
From: http://www.advocatesforyouth.org/component/content/article/419-adolescent-sexual-health-in-europe-and-the-us
I wonder why pregnancy rates are so much lower in these countries.
November 5th, 2012 | 10:06 am
Building on David Ryan’s comment, how many teenagers in the Netherlands get pregnant? The 60% abortion rate quoted is for women under 20 years old, ie teenagers.
November 5th, 2012 | 10:25 am
to further Michael PS’s comment — we have to realize as the Church that our finest hours have always come through proselytizing and persuading, not through the sword. change minds by deed and word, expressing the love of Christ, and the laws will follow.
i cannot help but think that the impatience that many of us feel with our fellow man is always and everywhere a submission to temptation — and the attempt to bend the laws of mundane sovereigns against the obvious sentiment of the vast majority of people so ruled on earth is but a form of that impatience. it will not serve God or his Church to persist.
to the extent that Frum is calling for a return to patience and persuasion in word and deed over forcing our fellow man against their will, i agree with him. have faith that life can and will win the argument.
November 5th, 2012 | 12:29 pm
In my long experience, those who earnestly seek changes in the law of abortion are hard to match in their prayer life and in the efforts they expend to supply alternatives. All this slicing and dicing of what is better to do strikes me as needlessly discordant. Seek life in prayer, work, politics and policy, do these things in parallel and without rancor, and support those who make the effort rather than subject them to critiques that too often justify passivity in one or more spheres. Europe is averting more life altogether than we in the United States. It is no model for a Christian future. That said, we are a faith that may sleep in the Garden but still repair to the Cross at the last hour. Ours is a time to hold fast, without fear of the Centurion’s sword or, far more terrible, the pundit’s disapproval.
November 5th, 2012 | 12:43 pm
The World Health Organization calls unsafe abortion “The Silent Pandemic.” Before abortions were legal in the USA, the difference in the estimates of illegal abortions can be explained by the lack of documentation that accompanies illegal actions. The statement “because the legalization of abortion changed sexual mores” is unfounded inference that can be otherwise explained.
“Estimates of the number of illegal abortions [in the USA] in the 1950s and 1960s ranged from 200,000 to 1.2 million per year.”
Mr. New points to the tracking of legal abortion in 70s which starts at zero so obviously there would be a growth in numbers after it was legalized.
Without peer review we can still try to account for why Europe has a lower abortion rate and Frum’s “thesis” is NOT irrational.
Mr. New has not refuted anything. We should favor REALISTIC SOLUTIONS TO PROBLEMS, not wishful thinking that pretends they will go away by passing a law.
“After a decade of largely unrestricted access to abortion, the rate in Switzerland remains stable and is among the lowest in the world.”
As Qtd in: http://www.water-scribe.com/conservatives-and-black-market-abortion
November 5th, 2012 | 7:18 pm
Germany, as well as much of the rest of Europe, has more restrictive abortion laws than the U.S.A. No late-term abortions except when the mother’s health is in danger. Only first trimester abortions allowed, and then with pro-life/adoption counseling and mandatory waiting periods. Also, abortion is not covered by state medical programs except for those of lower incomes. These are all restrictions that U.S. abortionists give their blood money to Democrats to prevent from being made law in U.S. states.
November 5th, 2012 | 7:27 pm
Also I doubt Germany allows nurse practitioners or others to perform abortion as is done in some U.S. states.
Also, I doubt Germany skips performing basic health inspections and enforcing regulatory compliance of abortion facilities for 1 month or 1 year or 20 years as was done in Philadelphia and Maryland.
Nor are they likely to subsidize German abortionists for distributing birth control at 4X the cost or providing a mammogram referral (which any health facility can do) for the rare 30-40yo woman to visit them.
If you think U.S.’ present system is neutral on abortion, it isn’t. American conservatives and libertarians should be acting together to roll back the corrupt gains in public privileges granted to abortionists.
November 6th, 2012 | 3:37 pm
[...] Michael New writes that despite the insistence of some, there is no evidence that offering welfare benefits to women decreases abortion rates. At National Review, New also has information on three ballot initiatives in Montana, Florida, and Massachusetts, which may be of interest to pro-life voters. [...]
November 8th, 2012 | 11:07 am
[...] Let’s Actually Get Real About Abortion – Michael New, First Thoughts [...]
November 8th, 2012 | 9:02 pm
Are you sure you want to get real about abortion? Okay, in 1968 Joseph Ratzinger wrote the following, “Regarding the future, it seems likely that, in global terms, the influence of the Church over the world will constantly diminish. The numeric triumph of Catholicism over other religions, which today can still be admitted, probably will not continue. ….
In this state of things, one should no longer be concerned with the salvation of ‘the others,’ who for some time now have become ‘our brothers.’ Above all, the central question is to have an intuition of the Church’s position and mission in History under a positive new point-of-view. This new point-of-view should allow one to believe in the universal offer of the grace of salvation as well as the essential part that the Church plays in this. Therefore, in this sense the problem changed.
What concerns us is no longer how ‘the others’ will be saved. Certainly we know, by our faith in divine mercy, that they can be saved. How this happens, we leave to God. The point that does concern us is principally this: Why, despite the wider possibility of salvation, is the Church still necessary? Why should faith and life still continue to come through her? In other words, the present day Christians no longer question if their non-believer brothers can reach salvation. Overall, they desire to know what is the meaning of their union with the universal embrace of Christ and their union with the Church.”
(Joseph Ratzinger, “Necessita della missione della Chiesa nel mondo,” in La Fine della Chiesa come Societa Perfetta, Verona: Mondatori, 1968, pp 69-70).
Five years later, abortion was legalized in the US. Why does God permit abortion? If the Church He founded to save souls is no longer interested in salvation, at least aborted souls enter an eternity of natural happiness in Limbo. While abortion remains a despicable crime, it seems that there are far fewer souls in Hell, thanks to abortion. God permits evil so that good may come from it.
November 9th, 2012 | 8:39 am
The idea that all abortions are a result of economic hardship is held by many liberals including Professor Stephen Schneck at Catholic University who used it as an excuse to support Obama’s re-election in an interview on “The World Over” on EWTN. Ray Arroyo tried valiantly to make him see how Obama had increased abortions via subsidizing Planned Parenthood, ditching the Mexico City Policy and Obamacare, but he still insisted that Romneycare had reduced abortions by offering free care to pregnant women and that Obamacare would as well. Its a convenient facade to hide behind, but the professor had no hard facts to back it up and a poor knowledge of women’s motivations for abortion. He certainly hadn’t read this article.
November 12th, 2012 | 4:43 pm
Everything I’ve read about ‘low abortion rates’ has included a significant statistical sleight-of-hand: they determine abortion rates per capita without weighting them against birth rate. For example, they brag that Netherlands abortion rate is low (per 1000 women of child-bearing ages), but they conveniently ignore the fact that the Netherlands have a ridiculously low birth rate. Of course their abortion rate is low…no one is getting pregnant at all!
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