It’s not just abortion, it’s a whole package designed to turn the clock back for women. The “Pregnant Women Support Act” is fine and good, but even if I lived in a mansion and had a housekeeper, chef and nanny, I still wouldn’t want to have a baby every year.

Making abortion illegal will not stop it from happening, we only have to look at the situation of women in countries where abortion is illegal. WHO estimates that around 68.000 women die each year around the world due to unsafe abortion.

If sincere pro lifers are serious about reducing the need to abortion, perhaps they should consider pouring their vast resources into research for better, safer more reliable contraception instead of pandering the “abstinance” and “pill and IUD kills babies” mantra.

Reliable and affortable contraception -free for teenagers and those with low incomes- combined with no-nonsense sex education from an early age, will go a long way in preventing abortion and reducing teen pregnancy.

Compared to Europe, Japan, Australia and New Zealand, American teenagers have the highest pregnancy rate:
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/being-human/teenagers/mg18524891.3 00-teenagers-special-going-all-the-way.html

In the studies you posted, what types of contraceptive methods were used?
The pill and the condom are not the best methods for everone. So conducting an experiment and not taking into account the personal lifestyle of that person could be counter productive. Some women can not use the pill method because it need to be taken at about the same time every day. There are other methods where you can get a patch every month, get an implant and last a couple month ect.

If all women could recieve the proper type of contraceptive for their specific lifestyle then there would be a decrease in unwanted pregnancies and thus abortions.

This is an excellent discussion on contraception, and you are correct that unfortunately some pro-lifers and many pro-life organizations either avoid the topic completely or wrongly overstate their position. I have done extensive research on emergency contraception, for example, and I believe the pro-lifers have made a big mistake in focusing on a theoretical post-conception mechanism of action for the medication.

On the other hand, looking at the research on the subject, there have a plethora of studies that looked at the effect of increased access to regular and emergency contraception on groups of women. These studies usually split women into groups where they give them varied access to contraception. One group may have a free supply of pills, and another may only get a prescription. Many of these studies use women who are post-abortive - under the belief that women who have experienced abortion will be more motivated to prevent another pregnancy.

In almost all cases, the group with increased access to contraception had no decrease in pregnancy, abortion, or STD rates from the group with less access. Mind you, every one of these studies are done by pro-contraception researchers.

This is why I sincerely doubt that increased access to contraception will decrease the problem of unwanted pregnancy.

Some of these studies can be found at the LTI blog under emergency contraception. I may post some others soon.

Thanks again for visiting Jen. Blessings to you.

Serge

Contraception is widely available. I can hardly turn my TV on without seeing some kind of contraceptive commerical (there’s that new shorter period one on right now). I don’t have a problem with that. I have more of a problem with people thinking that contraception will solve the abortion issue or somehow make it go away. I think prolife groups typically shy away from the contraception issue because of their ties to Catholic groups and their Catholic supporters. There is also a belief among some prolifers that birth control pills prevent the implantation of an embryo.

What proponents of abortion also miss with those countries is those countries typically made abortion legal after the U.S. did. So they had a longer time to have contraception when abortion was illegal and focused on preventing nplanned pregnancies as opposed to seeing abortion as some kind of back up birth control. They also have tighter restrictions on abortion. I would also like to some day find some kind statistics on how often unmarried people in various countries have sex. Would the U.S. be higher or lower?

I’m not certain if I think the lack of consisent contraceptive use is a result of attitudes about sex or access to contraceptives. It could be but I don’t see it. Consider where some of the highest abortion/pregnancy rates are. I typically see the highest abortion rate per capita in large cities like New York, Atlanta, D.C., L.A., Detroit, where attitudes about sex are more open/liberal and contraceptives are often paid for by the state. Those are also areas where the age when people get married is typically higher.

I think it is absolutely the case that we won’t lower the abortion rate *without* having contraception widely available, so in that narrow sense the groups you refer to are correct. It just doesn’t end there. People also need to be empowered to have healthy, equal sexual relationships — including relationships in which they can say “no” if that’s what’s best for them. They need to use contraceptives correctly and consistently. They need to not feel like being prepared makes them sluts.

I’m not going to defend anybody who claims that all you need to do is throw a lot of condoms and pills around and the problem is magically solved. But there are plenty of people with much more sophisticated and intelligent strategies for preventing unplanned pregnancies, and I think more pro-lifers should be engaging and working with these people.

Or the arguments that certain countries in the Europe have the lowest abortion rates because of their contraception initiatives.

I think that the contraception initiatives *are* a big part of that, though, along with universal comprehensive sex education and a general difference in cultural attitudes toward sex in those countries. They seem to send far fewer mixed messages about sex (everybody has to have it / it’s wrong and shameful) than are sent in the U.S. They’re obviously doing something right — not only are their abortion rates much lower than ours, but so are their rates of unplanned pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease.

I do like your blog, BTW. I check it almost every day. I particularly appreciate the stem-cell information.

For example, all the claims about Plan B from Planned Parenthood about how making it over the counter it would dramatically lower the abortion rate/pregnancy when studies showed giving college students various levels of access to Plan B didn’t change the pregnancy rate at all for the various groups. Or the arguments that certain countries in the Europe have the lowest abortion rates because of their contraception initiatives. Or the Alan Guttmacher Institute giving California and New York high grades in preventing unplanned pregnancy simply because they gave Planned Parenthood money and inspite of their high pregnancy and abortion rates.

That’s more of the idea (if only all birth control was free then there would a much, much smaller number of abortions) I was going after. I wasn’t trying to say that all contraception is bad or that contraception doesn’t play a role in preventing unplanned pregnancies.

I hope this clarifies my view and I’m sorry for not being more precise in my post.