Abortion and the Republican Party
I received an email telling me that one of the reasons people would not vote for John Kerry is his stance on abortion. Well, of course I knew that, but it was the way the opinion was expressed and the data used to support the position that prompted me to write this.
Those who oppose abortion should consider two things: 1) The idea that making abortion illegal will actually stop abortion is a theory, not a fact. 2) The idea that voting Republican reduces abortion is wrong.
Let's address the second point first because there is verifiable data to support the claim. Dr. Glen Harold Stassen has written an article entitled "Pro-life? Look at the fruits" in which he says that the abortion rate continually decreased during the Clinton administration and 52,000 more abortions were performed in 2002 than if that same rate of decrease had continued. The rate under Bush is the same as it was during Clinton's last year in office. The data that he uses comes from Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life; here's a graphical representation of the data that I think he's refering to. Jennifer Roth of Leftout goes further and says, "I don't think it's an accident that the abortion rate went up under Reagan and Bush but went down under Clinton." ("No Place to Stand", Sojourners Magazine) 1
Why is this? Consider that Republican administrations hack away at social services in the name of lower taxes. The rich get richer and the poor get poor health care and poor social support. As noted elsewhere on this site, if you want to change something, you have to change the conditions that cause it to arise. In the case of abortion, some of the causes are lack of health care and lack of support for single mothers. According to a report by the Alan Guttmacher Institute (Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life uses their statistics), the top three reasons given for having abortions are:
- having a baby would interfere with work, school, or other responsibilities
- raising a child is beyond the mother's financial means
- being a single parent is too hard
Decreasing health and social services directly contributes to these causes.
As further evidence of the last point, the same Guttmacher report shows that the United States has the second highest abortion rate among developed nations (21.3 abortions/1000 women aged 15-44). The lowest rates belong to Germany (7.6/1000) and Holland (6.5/1000). As most of us know, Germany and Holland have much stronger public health care and social service systems than the US, along with the necessary tax rates to support them.
Now let's address the theory that making abortion illegal will stop abortion. While it may seem like common sense that making the act illegal will bring it to a grinding halt, there is plenty of evidence to suggest otherwise. First, we know that abortions took place in the US before it was legalized. Second, we know that other activities do not stop just because they are prohibited. Just look at the cases of drug use now and alcohol use during prohibition.
What will happen if abortions are made illegal in the US? As usual, the poor will suffer. The rich will go where it is legal and the poor will make do with whatever they can get. Couple that with a general decrease in health services for the poor and the end result will almost certainly be an increase in the deaths of poor women undergoing illegal abortions.
I don't pretend that voting for Democrats is going to stop abortions. But I do know that voting for Republicans is not going to stop them. When you consider other Republican policies of vicious military aggression, a too-willing support of capital punishment, tax cuts for the rich and service cuts for the poor, it is clear that they are neither compassionate nor pro-life.
1Note that the statistics on which the conclusions are based do not agree with those of CDC; I saw that Republicans like to use CDC numbers to "prove" that the claim of higher abortion rates under Repulican administrations is a lie, so that needs mentioning. One of the reasons is that "Starting in 1998, the CDC stopped including statistics from four states including California, a state that accounted for 23 percent of the nation's abortions in 1997." Please do view the graph: http://www.mccl.org/abortion_statistics.htm; it shows both the Guttmacher data and the CDC data. If you want to view the raw CDC data, go here: http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss5309a1.htm.