It is amazing that activists in the pro life movement don’t get thoroughly dejected: They are scorned by the mainstream media. Their free speech rights are abridged in ways that would never be permitted of labor unions. They are looked down upon by celebrity culture and made fun of by famous comedians. Their leaders are demonized and their grass roots are dismissed as so many religious fanatics. And even when they prevail legislatively, they are stymied repeatedly in the courts.
And yet, they are ever so slowly succeeding. A peer reviewed scholarly article just published in the State Politics and Policy Quarterly has found that pro life inspired state laws have unquestionably contributed to the recent decline in the number of abortions. From the article:
The number of abortions that were performed consistently increased throughout the 1970s and the 1980s (Brener et al. 2002). However, between 1990 and 2005, the number of legal abortions declined by 22.22 percent (Gamble et al. 2008; Koonin, Smith, and Ramick 1993). A number of different reasons for this decline are possible. However, one factor that played a role was the increased amount of anti-abortion legislation that was passed at the state level. Indeed, the Supreme Court’s decisions in both Webster and Casey and the electoral success of anti-abortion candidates at the state level resulted in a substantial increase in the number of restrictions on abortion.
By 2005, more states had adopted parental involvement laws and informed consent requirements (NARAL 1992, 2005). A comprehensive series of regressions provides evidence that these laws are correlated with declines in in-state abortion rates and ratios. Furthermore, a series of natural experiments provides even more evidence about the effects of these restrictions on abortion. States where judges nullified anti-abortion legislation were compared to states where anti-abortion legislation went into effect.
The results indicate that enforced laws result in significantly larger in-state abortion declines than nullified laws. Other regression results indicated that various types of legislation had disparate and predictable effects on different subsets of the population. For instance, parental involvement laws have a large effect on the abortion rate for minors and virtually no effect on the abortion rate for adults. These results provide further evidence that anti-abortion legislation results in declines in the number of abortions that take place within the boundaries of a given state.
That’s the beauty of the American system. People can have their cause knocked to its knees–as in Roe v. Wade–and through creativity, commitment, and doggedness materially impact the society’s laws and the attitudes of the public, despite it all.
More remarkable still, pro life groups do not have very deep pockets. Much of this was accomplished by people staying up late at night making phone calls and licking stamps. Whatever one’s position on abortion, there can be no denying that the pro life movement has been a remarkable political success.
March 30th, 2011 | 2:38 am
And yet, they are ever so slowly succeeding
Genuine civil rights is about having truth on your side.
March 30th, 2011 | 8:51 am
Heck, and that’s just us prolifers who work on the education/legislative level, not to mention the ones volunteering at the pregnancy centers that provide free help or the sidewalk counselors trying to convince women (and quite often the men or parents with them) not to go through with it. We get thoroughly dejected at times (sometimes daily with some of the news stories you have to read), but if you believed it was a human life, and 1 million lives were taken every year, there is no time to sit around and be dejected.
March 30th, 2011 | 9:49 am
I’m happy to see a reduction in the number of (reported) abortions, but I don’t see pro-life groups being the key, because their focus is on women who are already pregnant. Are there higher birth rates? Any evidence young people are foregoing premarital sex (for the first time in the history of humanity)?
I would see better sex education and availability of contraceptives as being far more effective at preventing pregnancy and therefore reducing abortions. Ounce of prevention, as they say.
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
March 30th, 2011 at 10:21 am
padraig: What you would see is irrelevant. This is a scholarly, peer reviewed study in a major political journal. It doesn’t attribute the entire reduction to the state laws. But it states there is an undeniable impact from them.
HistoryWriter Reply:
March 30th, 2011 at 12:08 pm
@Wesley J. Smith,
I’m sure there was a reduction in abortion due to them, but what’s your point: that law can be employed to restrict lawful activity? We knew that already. Once upon a time there was a reduction in black patronage at movie theaters due to Jim Crow laws.
Tell us something new.
HW
padraig Reply:
March 30th, 2011 at 1:34 pm
@Wesley J. Smith, Actually, according to this “scholarly” article, “A comprehensive series of regressions provides evidence that these laws are correlated with declines in IN-STATE abortion rates and ratios” (emphasis mine). In other words, they just sent women across state lines, just as Ireland’s ban used to put pregnant women on the ferry.
Don’t break your arm patting yourself on the back.
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
March 30th, 2011 at 2:27 pm
padraig: I had nothing to do with these laws or those efforts. But they have been shown to be successful.
padraig Reply:
March 30th, 2011 at 3:03 pm
@Wesley J. Smith, Not by this article.
March 30th, 2011 | 12:42 pm
HW,
It’s a good point because one common argument in favor of abortion and even some prolifers who reject an incremental strategy to legislation is that prolife laws are all about feeling good about our “slut-shaming” or insincere commitment to the unborn respectively and not actually about saving lives. Which, they do. And I think a better example than Jim Crow would be making it illegal to own another human being. After all, we’re talking about personhood here, no?
HistoryWriter Reply:
March 31st, 2011 at 8:31 am
@JustChris,
No, we’re actually talking about using the law to prevent people from doing something they’re legally entitled to do. Abortion is legal; slavery isn’t. It’s that simple. So, think Jim Crow and you have a true parallel.
HW
March 31st, 2011 | 3:57 am
This is good news. One would hope that, all people, of good will, whether on the prolife, or prochoice side, would be grateful for the reduction in abortions.
I think that there might be more prolifers out there, than we, perhaps realize (as a prolifer, I hope more will come to see the moral correctness of this view), consider, of all people, Justin Bieber! He came out, recently, and courageously, against abortion.
March 31st, 2011 | 12:34 pm
And I think a better example than Jim Crow would be making it illegal to own another human being. After all, we’re talking about personhood here, no?
Well, you are.
But what do you suppose the “choice” in “pro-choice” is all about?
The “choice” is whether to view that fetus as a person – or not.
HistoryWriter Reply:
March 31st, 2011 at 6:31 pm
@Blake,
You’re not even warm. The choice in “pro-choice” is whether to bear a child or not. Our entire legislative history already establishes that a fetus is not a legal “person.” You may wish it were different, but it’s not. Tough luck.
HW
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
March 31st, 2011 at 6:35 pm
That’s only partially true, HistoryWriter. Only in the context of abortion are fetuses unprotected non entities. People have been convicted of murdering fetuses and it has been upheld by courts. Murder is an illegal homicide with malice aforethought. Homicide is the killing of a human being. In law, still, a human being is a person.
HistoryWriter Reply:
April 1st, 2011 at 9:45 am
@Wesley J. Smith,
Convictions for feticide are typically for manslaughter, not murder, thus recognizing that the fetus has something less than full personhood. We’re talking abortion here, and Constitutional law, not criminal law. I think you’re aware that fetuses do not enjoy protection under the 14th Amendment.
HW
HW
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
April 1st, 2011 at 11:17 am
HistoryWriter: You are just wrong factually. There are people in jail now for the murder of fetuses.
HistoryWriter Reply:
April 1st, 2011 at 5:37 pm
@Wesley J. Smith,
No, you’ve got it wrong. Those guys are in jail because of assaults upon females who miscarried as a result. It’s kind of like hate crimes that add a premium to the sentence: if you shoot your girlfriend or beat her to a pulp you get “X” years; if you shoot her or beat her to a pulp, she miscarries and the fetus dies, you get “X+Y” years. It’s a recognition of the seriousness of the crime, not a recognition of fetal personhood. If these kinds of laws were based on fetal personhood they would be challenged on Constitutional grounds.
HW
April 2nd, 2011 | 1:34 am
HW, that is totally not true. Scott Peterson was convicted of a double homicide-one for his wife and one for his unborn child. The prosecutor could have charged SP with an illegal third trimester abortion but charged him with homicide of an actual human being instead.
HistoryWriter Reply:
April 4th, 2011 at 8:53 am
@safepres,
I think it would be difficult to sustain the second conviction, but it’s something we’ll probably never see adjudicated. It would make no real difference if the fetal murder conviction were successfully appealed; as a practical matter Peterson will be spending the rest of his life in the slammer for his wife’s murder.
Now, had he been convicted of murder for the fetus’ death alone, then there would be something worth the cost and effort of an appeal. As I see it, given the strong case against Peterson for his wife’s murder, conviction for the fetus was simply icing on the cake and good PR for the prosecutor in a high-profile case.
HW
April 3rd, 2011 | 6:27 pm
[...] of the abortion informed consent laws make no bones about their goal–fewer abortions–and a recent study indicates these (and other) state laws have succeeded in that quest. But the MA commission seems reluctant to admit its purpose is to dissuade terminally ill people [...]
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