How the Religious Right Promotes Abortion

Friend of Religious Left Law, Andrew Koppelman sent along this post which he thought would interest our readers (I am sure he is right). The post also appears on balkinization

    The religious right purports to be deeply concerned about the high rates of abortion in the United States, but its most stalwart proponents have succeeded in implementing and maintaining policies that keep the abortion rate high.

    I draw this lesson from discussions in Naomi Cahn and June Carbone’s wonderful new book, Red Families v. Blue Families:  Legal Polarization and the Creation of Culture.  The book is primarily a study of the way in which different family forms have emerged in different parts of the country, and the political ramifications of the polarized value systems that result.  But the data it contains reveals a deep incoherence in the American government’s family planning policies.

     The most effective way to lower the abortion rate would be to increase the availability of contraceptives and information about contraception, especially to poor women.  This is precisely what the federal government did in the 1970s, hoping to reduce out-of-wedlock births to poor women.  But the Reagan administration cut contraception funding and shifted family-planning efforts toward adoption counseling and abstinence education, which were more acceptable to its conservative base.  The consequence, of course, was very high levels of abortion.           

    Since then, there has been a toxic political equilibrium, in which the conservative right keeps contraceptive funding low.  The left has not called them on the way that such policies increase the abortion rate, perhaps because proponents of family planning are reluctant to admit that abortions are a bad thing.  But somebody needs to say it:  the religious right is responsible for many abortions in America.

Cahn and Carbone observe that two different family systems, presupposing different norms, now exist in the United States.  The older, more traditional model demands marriage before (or very soon after) sexual activity begins, identifies responsible parenthood with marriage rather than maturity or economic self-sufficiency, aims at socialization into traditional gender roles, and embraces authoritarian models of parenting.  The appropriate response to unplanned pregnancy is the shotgun marriage.  Same-sex marriage seems to flout this entire complex of values, elevating the happiness of adults over the well-being of children.

 This model remains prevalent in much of the United States.  Where it does, the Republican party has reliable support:  the political affiliation of a state correlates well with the median age of first marriage.  But where it prevails, divorce rates are the highest in the country, because early marriages are the most likely to fail.  Teen pregnancy, high rates of sexually transmitted diseases, and single motherhood are frequent.  The problem is that, although this ethic has considerable continuing power, it is in decay.  Its enforcement mechanisms have weakened.  Unhappy couples can no longer be forced to stay together, and teenagers can’t be prevented from having sex.

    At the same time, a new sexual ethic has emerged and is now deeply entrenched in the blue states.  This model, which Cahn and Carbone call the “new middle class ethic,” is tolerant of premarital sexuality so long as contraception is carefully used, with abortion as the responsible fallback.  It calls for postponing marriage and parenthood until the completion of higher education, and aims at more egalitarian gender roles within marriage.  It produces lower rates of divorce and teenaged motherhood, but also falling fertility and more people living alone.

    The red-state, conservative ethic has always been suspicious of sex education.  Evangelical Christians, who are the most militant proponents of the red-state ethic, are three times as likely as non-evangelicals to believe that sex education should not be taught in schools.  (108; all page references are to Cahn and Carbone’s book.)  Government support for contraception, especially contraception provided to teenage girls without their parents’ knowledge or consent is anathema.  Such girls should not be having sex at all.  Contraceptive information is likely to encourage them to flout moral norms with impunity.  Unwanted pregnancy is unfortunate but valuable as a deterrent to premarital sex.

      It was this ethic that produced the move to abstinence-only sex education, which is now the predominant approach in a third of American schools.  (110)  But there is no evidence that such education makes abstinence until marriage more likely (96% of Americans have sex before they marry, see 175), or produces a decline in teen or nonmarital births, and some evidence that it produces an increase in both, because it is more likely that a girl will not know how to contracept at the time of her first sexual experience.  (3, 111)  The effect is particularly pronounced with respect to black and Latina girls, who are disproportionately exposed to abstinence-only education.  Two-thirds of white women, but fewer than half of black women, have received instruction about contraception before their first sexual encounter.  (111)

     It is no accident, then, that the United States has the highest rate of unplanned teen pregnancies in the industrialized world.  (8)  Three in ten teenaged girls become pregnant before they turn 20, and four-fifths of these pregnancies are unplanned.  (91)  In 2006, half of all pregnancies were unplanned, and these were concentrated below the poverty line.  (90)  The rate of unintended pregnancy is 69% for African-American women, 54% for Latinas, and only 40% for white women.  (173)

     Here is where abortion comes in.  Among African-Americans, 43% of conceptions end in abortion, compared with 25% of Latinas and 18% of whites.  It should be no surprise that the rate of abortion correlates heavily with the rate of unplanned pregnancy.  African-American teen births dropped in the 1990s, but this was true in large part because abortion rates, which fell for white teens, remained higher for minority teens (172).

     If you want to lower the abortion rate, then, the most obvious way to do it is to provide better information about contraception to the women who now are experiencing high rates of unintended pregnancy, in schools and also by providing comprehensive sex education to women over 18 (173).

     The Republican leadership, however, has opposed any such funding.  Most recently, they succeeded in pressuring Obama to strip out expanded funding for family-planning services from the stimulus bill.  House Minority Leader John Boehner emphasized that any such funding would benefit Planned Parenthood, which delivers abortion services.  He did not mention that such funding would lower the rate of abortions.

    Republicans worry that sex education will lead to more premarital sex.  There’s not much evidence that this is true of any particular sex ed program.  The major effect of such programs is to prevent sex that was going to happen anyway from leading to pregnancy and disease.  (It is true that the birth control pill helped bring about the sexual revolution of the 1960s, but it’s too late to reverse that.)  But even if keeping girls ignorant would reduce the rate of premarital sex to some extent, how many abortions would be too high a price to pay for that?

      The argument I’ve just been making is, of course, a classic blue-state argument.  I’m not really the one who can make it effectively to pro-lifers, since I’m a strong supporter of abortion rights:  I still endorse the much-reviled argument that such rights are required by the Thirteenth Amendment. 

     But somebody on the religious right ought to be reflecting on the now-obvious fact that the policies that they have been supporting are directly responsible for millions of abortions.  If leadership is now going to be exercised in order to reduce the abortion rate, it will have to come from them.  Opposing contraceptive education is politically popular in the red states.  But how can a politician who sincerely believes that abortion is the killing of a person, and who is aware of the data I’ve just described, ethically take advantage of this opportunity?

    

 

Comments

[casual reader]

I think the answer to this question is obvious: "the Right" is more concerned with the culpability of the individuals performing abortions, and the culpability of society for permitting such acts to occur, than the actual number of abortions performed. In other words, the main issue to the right is: "Should we, as a society, permit a mother to kill an unwanted child?", not "What is the most effective way for us, as a society, to minimize child killings?"

Honestly, I think the first question is much more fundamental, difficult, and relevant than the second. It makes sense that the Right focuses on it, and failure to focus on the second doesn't appear (to me) to undermine their support for the first. Also, because the two are separate questions, I don't think that failure to focus on the second evidences any sort of hypocrisy...although the charge, I'm sure, will be leveled.

[Willy]

Widespread dissemination of artificial forms of contraception has been a great success for mysogynists who want to use women for pleasure, allowing them to have (supposedly) consequence-free out-of-wedlock sex and pre-marital sex, both of which lead to abortion (as the article above correctly points out). It seems odd to now promote contraception as the best solution to our present situation.

A better approach is the one that young Catholics (on both the left and right) are now embracing: fertility awareness and natural family planning. There are many well-developed, scientific, natural models of family planning (e.g. Creighton and Billings models) that are based on "fertility education" and which help men and women appreciate their fertility and understand it. The goal is not to "keep women ignorant," but to give them the knowledge they and their spouses need to appreciate the gift of their fertility and use it responsibly.

The statistical evidence supporting fertility education are overwhelming. The statistics indicate that women and men who are educated in the Creighton model and other similar systems (i) are more likely to delay sex until later in life, (ii) more likely to delay sex until marriage, (iii) have significantly lower divorce rates, (iv) significantly lower numbers of sexual partners and sexually-transmitted diseases, and (v) significantly lower rates of abortion.

There are many appealing features to the fertility awareness model of education. First, it actually educates those involved in sexual activity about their fertility, rather than selling them a product (contraception). Second, it appeals to both liberals, who want to have sex naturally and without the health risks posed by oral contraceptions or the cost, and conservatives, who appreciate the moral teaching of the Church. Third, it is a wholistic approach that addresses more than just the physical act of sex, but also speaks to the other important issues involved in sex, such as chastity, communication, and emotional closeness. Fourth, fertility care is not about abstinence only; it is about sex done naturally, safely, and with the knowledge of its power.

The Church has the solution to these problems, if only we would listen. These fertility care models are scientifically well developed and are not the old rhythm method.

If we really want to empower women, lower the abortion rate, and restore marriages, fertility education is the key. Let's give women and men the knowledge they really need to make safe, natural, healthy, informed choices about sex.

[More Hopeful Than Koppelman]

What evidence is he basing his theory that widespread contraceptive use reduces abortion rates on? I'm not sure I've ever seen hard evidence on this fact, but would be willing to read it.

More importantly, this essay is too pessimistic, in my opinion. It basically says that it's too late now to stop our children from having sex. They are all going to do it anyway. We might as well give them the Pill to help. I can't be on board with this. Also, people treat the Pill like it's made of magic fairy dust that always prevents conception. Half of all unwanted pregnancies occur while the woman is using contraception. Look it up.

[More Hopeful Than Koppelman]

http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/journals/3002498.html

This is the article saying that 53% of unwanted pregnancies occured while the woman was using contraception. Despite this, the overall conclusion is that the decline in unwanted pregnancies is "probably due to more widespread contraception." Well, ok, then, probably it is :)

[More Hopeful Than Koppelman]

Sorry for the multiple posts, but I forgot to make one other point. The link above also indicates that of people with unwanted pregnancies, 58% of contraceptive users go on to have an abortion, versus 49% of non-users. So people using contraceptives are MORE likely to get an abortion if the become pregnant.

[Matt Bowman]

Contraception and government funding thereof is ubiquitous and has been for decades. Every society and locality to increase it has seen an increase rather than a decrease in abortion. To say that abortions exist for the lack of this, and that the religious right's opposition is causing abortion, is patently absurd, especially when the religious left has itself opened abortion floodgates by making abortion an untouchable legal right.

[Michael Perry]

There's a great comment on Andy's post, by June Carbone--the fourth comment--at Law, Religion, and Ethics, here:

http://lawreligionethics.net/2010/04/how-the-religious-right-promotes-abortion/#comments

[jimbino]

It is silly to treat marriage as if it were about rearing of children. Very few of the more than 1000 benefits accorded to married people, like the right to burial decisions, are in any way related to their having children.

As long as that's the case, civil marriage represents a form of discrimination against singles and gays, whether or not they have children.

Catholics or anybody else interested in fairness or civil rights should promote the abolition of civil marriage and, if they wish to protect children, promote rules that protect children!

Logic and life experience dictate that sex, love, commitment, cohabitation, breeding and child-rearing are in no way contingent on civil marriage and are often, indeed, made worse because of it!

Why, for example, should a child of a single woman sharing a home with her brother be severely disadvantaged by our tax, insurance, healthcare, pension and other laws?

Christian leftists might begin to do some good if they started worrying more about life after birth.