The abortion debate usually centers on the morality of the act itself, today lets look at it from a different angle.
- Legal abortions just didn’t start with Roe, or even with the five states that liberalized abortion laws in 1969 and 1970. Prior to Roe, women could have abortions when their lives or health were endangered. Doctors in some states, such as Kansas, had very liberal interpretations of what constituted danger to health. Nevertheless, Roe did substantially increase abortions, more than doubling the rate per live birth in the five years from 1972 to 1977
- A sharp increase in pre-marital sex with the start of Roe. With abortion seen as a backup, women as well as men became less careful in using contraceptives as well as more likely to have premarital sex. There were more unplanned pregnancies. But legal abortion did not mean every unplanned pregnancy led to abortion. After all, just because abortion is legal, does not mean that the decision is an easy one.
- An significant rise in out-of-wedlock births since Roe. Many academic studies have shown that legalized abortion, by encouraging premarital sex, increased the number of unplanned births, even outweighing the reduction in unplanned births due to abortion. In the United States from the early 1970s, when abortion was liberalized, through the late 1980s, there was a tremendous increase in the rate of out-of-wedlock births, rising from an average of 5% of all births in 1965-69 to more than 16% two decades later (1985-1989). For blacks, the numbers soared from 35% to 62%. While not all of this rise can be attributed to liberalized abortion rules, it was nevertheless a key contributing factor. With legalization and women not forced to go through with an unplanned pregnancy, a man might well expect his partner to have an abortion if a sexual encounter results in an unplanned pregnancy. But what happens if the woman refuses? Maybe she is morally opposed to abortion; or perhaps she thought she could have an abortion, but upon becoming pregnant, she decides that she can’t go through with it. What happens then? Many men, feeling tricked into unwanted fatherhood, will likely wash their hands of the affair altogether, thinking, “I never wanted a baby. It’s her choice, so let her raise the baby herself.” What is expected of men in this position has changed dramatically in the last four decades.
- There was a sharp drop in the number of children placed for adoption when Roe became law.
- A decline in marriages that occur after the woman is pregnant began with the start of Roe. The evidence shows that the greater availability of abortion largely ended “shotgun” marriages, where men felt obligated to marrying the woman. What has happened to these babies of reluctant fathers? The mothers often end up raising the child on their own. Even as abortion has led to more out-of-wedlock births, it has also dramatically reduced adoptions of children born in America by two-parent families. Before Roe, when abortion was much more difficult, women who would have chosen an abortion but were unable to get one turned to adoption as their backup. After Roe, women who turned down an abortion were also the type who wanted to keep the child.
From the beginning of the abortion debate, those favoring abortion have pointed to the social costs of “unwanted” children who simply won’t get the attention of “wanted” ones. But there is a trade-off that has long been neglected. Abortion may eliminate “unwanted” children, but it increases out-of-wedlock births and single parenthood. Unfortunately, the social consequences of illegitimacy dominated. Children born after liberalized abortion rules have suffered a series of problems from problems at school to more crime. The saddest fact is that it is the most vulnerable in society, poor blacks, who have suffered the most from these changes.
Liberalized abortion might have made life easier for many, but like sex itself sometimes, it has had many unintended consequences.
The problem I have with “facts” like this is that when you say that there was, for example, a significant rise in out-of Wedlock births since Roe, you are making a correlation that suggests Roe directly influenced that. Maybe, but we don’t really have proof of that– at least not in the information given here.
Roe could have been a byproduct (like the increase in pre-marital sex) of the “free love” hippies movement, sexual liberation for women– a movement that was largely financed and promoted by Hugh Hefner less than ten years before the Roe verdict, and a sudden drop of people using oral contraceptives (in 1965, the US Supreme court struck down state laws that made birth control pills illegal, finding that the law violated a couple’s privacy and birth control pills became extremely popular– but then, in 1972, it was determined by the FDA that oral contraceptives cause blood clots and ignited a scare among women — many of who stopped using the pill, switching back to a less effective means of birth control– hence, more pregnancies).
That’s just one example. But I think it’s difficult to simplify an issue this much because there are so many things that are connected to why and how it came to be– factors that also influence the outcomes as well.
I agree with Christine. Though these statements COULD be fact, that doesn’t mean that the Roe case affected it…society has changed and so have people. Even if Roe might have influenced slightly
By the way, I have been reading your blog for a LONG time, just have never commented it, and i just want to say that this blog is amazing, not to mention the interesting articles you guys write! Hilarious!!! :d
Thanks Raven!
We apprecaite the cool words.
LOL
But in this case, Christopher is 100% correct…
What else is new..
I’m always interested in assertions about the increase in pre-marital sex and particularly what constitutes a sharp increase. I suppose my issue is really whether the increase in pre-marital sex is really an increase or if people self-report it more. The idea that most women were virgins until they were married seems to be somewhat of a myth.
I don’t know if a recording deviation could really represent a doubling of any of the above situations. It is logical to assume that Roe did in fact influence all of the above assertions the most however other social aspects were also at play. The end result however is that now that abortion laws are stricter looser we have more kids being born into poverty. I think it is ill responsible to ignore that fact or why it may be happening. I think Christine is clouding an issue here.. I was talking about year to year trends or even 5 years trends we are talking 20 + year trends that when something doubles and that double happens to correspond with Roe and it doesn’t ever undoubled then it is likely that Roe was the main cause. Yes laws, fads, false information influenced trends on a year by year basis but rarely over the long term. It is plausible maybe even likely that Roe has lowed the standard of living for millions of Americans and that would be a completely unforeseen consequence. I’m sure the ideas above are very scary to hard-line abortion supporters because it takes away the social-economical support from abortion.
Christopher, I wasn’t even debating all of that. The statement about the increase in pre-marital made me think of something more general and unrelated to abortion — the fact that history shows pre-marital sex was a lot more common than people seem to think. A lot of grandmothers and great-grandmothers, despite the societal expectation, were not virgins on their wedding nights. So when the studies talk about an increase, I wonder how MUCH of an actual increase there was.
Within the context of this discussion though, I wouldn’t say that Roe had no influence on sexual behavior but I would say that you couldn’t attribute any of statistics (increase in children born out of wedlock, etc — which by the way I don’t see the big deal unless marriages create more stable relationships for children and in the age of no fault divorce, that is debatable — that’s a separate topic for discussion though – perhaps you could start a separate post on that) solely to Roe.
You wrote: ” I think it is ill responsible to ignore that fact or why it may be happening. I think Christine is clouding an issue here.. I was talking about year to year trends or even 5 years trends we are talking 20 + year trends that when something doubles and that double happens to correspond with Roe and it doesn’t ever undoubled then it is likely that Roe was the main cause.”
That Roe was likely the main cause is an assumption of gigantic proportions. You’ve concluded something that has yet to be proven and that is that the increase directly corresponds to Roe. It may or may not. It is more likely that the climate of the culture at the time, birth control, Roe and what was going on socially and politically (particularly within the black community) are all factors that contribute and not just Roe alone.
Christopher also assumed that I found flaws in his post because the “facts” were too scary to face since I am very much an advocate of a woman’s right to choose. But the truth is… he is the one who is seeing something that simply isn’t there because of his anti-abortion beliefs. Regardless of what you believe, there simply is no proof– from that post– that Roe was responsible for any of those five “facts.”
Facts are facts. The theory’s I draw from my facts could certainly be flawed by they are better then theories drawn from no facts. It is simply very difficult to find studies that support Roe from an economical / family point of view. If 5 major changes happen in society that correspond with a major law change it is illogical to assume that major law change was not the main reason.
It’s like street parking on Christine’s street. They changed the law so it’s illigal to park on both sides of the street on Tuesdays.. and now a lot more people get tickets. It is illogical for me to assume that people just go more dumb overnight, logic says.. no the change in law was the major reason people got more tickets.
Talk about oversimplifying things. It goes back to the study that was done where they found that people who cohabitate before marriage are more likely to get divorced. That “fact” was believed for years until they realized the real reason that was happening was a bit more complicated. The major cause of divorce was issues regarding money and the majority of people who decided to live together before getting married did so because they were having financial problems (therefore, they were– in general– a larger percentage of people who started out with financial problems) so it made sense they were the ones more likely to get divorced because they were already having financial issues before they even got married. You can’t just pick two things that seem to correlate and assume one was directly responsible for the other without considering everything else that was happening at the time.
Is that really such a difficult concept to get?
I would agree if there just wasn’t so much overwhelming connected supporting evidence that support this simplification. Usually when there are many possibilities of why something happens it is usually the simplest. Your example is a flawed study that is not basing it against old data, they drew the wrong conclusions on why something was happening, but not why 5 things suddenly started happening. I’m really trying to keep it simple because over complicating this is clouding the issue. We have 5 things that changed when Roe went into affect, there were other things that happened in different year and at different times but it is the one constant variable in the change.
Is that really such a difficult concept to grasp?
“I would agree if there just wasn’t so much overwhelming connected supporting evidence that support this simplification.”
The connection isn’t overwhelming and there is no evidence to support your assertion. In fact, the evidence says otherwise. You’re ignoring all of the other variables (the culture, birth control, etc) and assuming everything can be attributed to Roe. It can’t. You’re trying to force something that simply isn’t there.
“…but not why 5 things suddenly started happening. I’m really trying to keep it simple because over complicating this is clouding the issue. We have 5 things that changed when Roe went into affect, there were other things that happened in different year and at different times but it is the one constant variable in the change. ”
You’re trying to simplify what is inherently a complicated issue. First of all, if at the time Roe had been decided, and you had a culture that looked more like the 50s, you’d have a point. The correlation would be much stronger or at least, you’d have a stronger argument that Roe was directly responsible. You cannot ignore the social and political climate of the 70s and say that those changes were all because of Roe. They weren’t. In fact, more than anything, Roe is a product of the sentiment of the day rather than the cause of it. Had that case come before the Supreme Court 20 years earlier, it would have come out very differently.
That last post was from me.
I agree with 100%, Mara. That’s exactly what I was trying to explain to him earlier.
o.k ladies