PBP230H: Objections to Anti-Abortion Legislation

The objections: alleged bad social effects of legally restricting abortion

Objection #1: Illegalized abortion = back-alley abortions = MORE dead people (babies still dying, moms dying along with them)

https://www.endthekilling.ca/classroom/legal/

https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/05/opinions/supporting-abortion-is-pro-life-opinion-campoamor/index.html

• We don't legalize violence to make violence “safer” e.g. we don't give boxing gloves to abusive husbands
• Equal Rights Institute:
• Alissa Golob's interesting response, something like this: “When pro-choice people say that back-alley abortions will happen, let's think about that. Who would be performing the back-alley abortions? Certainly not pro-life people. It would be pro-choicers, abortion supporters, performing back-alley abortions. So when pro-choicers say 'Keep abortion legal or women will die in back-alleys,' what they're really saying is 'Let us kill babies or we're going to start also killing women.'”

• See Bernard Nathanson, falsified data on illegal abortion rates, etc.
• many illegal abortionists then became legal abortionists…e.g. Morgentaler

https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/10.2105/AJPH.2013.301378?fbclid=IwAR0ccGHfzR6wLd-_sfquRoYvAb6mJ4nlUCCvQrJo9Qngzzit3A-4PjNbk-8

Objection #2 (separate but related): Do [legal] abortion rates remain constant, or even increase, under anti-abortion legislation?

Effects of anti-abortion legislation on lowering abortion rates – need to review these:

• https://lozierinstitute.org/how-the-legal-status-of-abortion-impacts-abortion-rates/
• “P. Levine’s 2004 paper in the Journal of Law and Economics: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/380475
• his 2003 paper in the Journal of Health Economics: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0167629603000638
• New’s 2011 study in State Politics & Policy Quarterly: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1532440010387397
• …all of which show that restrictions on abortion lower abortion rates”
• This article, #8: http://blog.secularprolife.org/2019/02/responding-to-8-common-pro-choice.html?fbclid=IwAR3SKUnuL3eRy1AvsfRZ6F09U-6B50mU5CM6ImhI-Jp4-cDaXlKXbTrrrqk
  • https://www.bustle.com/p/i-got-abortion-in-one-of-the-most-restrictive-states-this-is-what-i-went-through-15870247?fbclid=IwAR18hajyH3QVVf1MX-066LlYrGerrcpbofu8pvm-dSfxG1g3IJjkp5kWm9M
    • Secular Pro-Life comments: “Again, abortion restrictions decrease abortion. This woman isn't saying “if a heartbeat bill was in effect, I would have had to get an illegal abortion.” She's saying “if a heartbeat bill was in effect, I wouldn't have gotten an abortion.” Because when you make an action more difficult to take, fewer people take it.”
• http://blog.secularprolife.org/2018/07/link-collection-evidence-that-pro-life.html?fbclid=IwAR3-nky5IPt8SUbjhWSGDv2dWcUIiOpUxPCvLZj9TWdrAjHkjdtFqYAxKcA&m=1
• http://blog.secularprolife.org/2018/07/more-evidence-that-abortion.html?m=1 and http://blog.secularprolife.org/2018/07/more-evidence-that-abortion.html?m=1
• acknowledging that we also need the educational and pastoral arms in order to drive down the abortion rates – each arm is necessary but not sufficient, because politics is downstream from culture. BUT the law is also a teacher itself

1. Proactive response

2. Explain difference between foster care and newborn adoption https://blog.equalrightsinstitute.com/foster-care-fallacy/

2a. Percentage of women who actually place children for adoption = very low (citation)

See Legalized_abortion_and_crime_effects.

OITNB S03E01 conversation between Big Boo and Pensatucky to highlight how the argument is made, how it's taken as scripture in popular culture.¹⁾

(lots of cursing)

See also Freakonomics.

1. First, being proactive: even assuming the Freakonomics thesis is 100% true, does reducing future crime justify killing babies who might be criminals in the future? Wouldn't it follow that crime could be reduced even more if we killed newborns who weren't aborted but were still in prime crime-producing scenarios? (“Meth head white trash pieces of shit” as Jenji Kohan affectively puts it.) Shouldn't we kill newborns or toddlers in that same scenario then if it will reduce crime further? This is a classic trot out the toddler case – even if legalized abortion reduces crime, that isn't a justification for killing if pre-born children are human beings, otherwise it would also be a justification for killing toddlers.
2. Second, it might not even be true. Donohue/Levitt have been fending off substantively academic criticisms of their findings since 2001. The data is messy and incomplete. There might be a correlation between legalized abortion and reductions in violent crime, but when controlling for other crime-associated factors, that effect seems lessened, or some argues even disappears entirely. Point is: it's not entirely clear to what extent, if any, legalized abortion actually reduces crime. It might. It might not. There is open debate happening on the question.
3. Talia citation on actual Freakonomics