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PBP230H: Objections to Anti-Abortion Legislation

“If abortion is illegalized, then…” The objections: alleged bad social effects of legally restricting abortion

Will dangerous back-alley abortions occur?

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

Moral response

  • 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.'”

Historical response

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

Empirical response

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

Will the foster care system be "overrun"?

1. Proactive response: even if anti-abortion laws resulted in an increased amount of children going into the foster care system, this would not invalidate the laws. If legalized abortion helps keep the foster care system numbers low, then why not legalize infanticide to help keep the numbers even lower? Or if a city has a very high rate of homelessness, should we legalize killing homeless people in order to reduce the homelessness rate? If we wouldn't kill born human beings in order to minimize the numbers in the foster care system, then why would it be okay to kill preborn human beings for the same reason? We should be killing problems, not killing people.

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

“Perhaps the main difference between adoption and foster care is that foster care is temporary. Your agency or social worker has the goal of repairing the problems in your child’s home that led to their removal. When biological parents are able to prove that they can support their children financially, emotionally, and socially, then the child will be able to return to them.” https://adoption.com/foster-vs-adopt

  • example from This Is Us: newborn adoption of Randall was simple because his parents relinquished parental rights, versus difficulty in adopting Deja because she was in the foster care system and her mom's parental rights had not yet been relinquished
  • 2a. Percentage of women who actually place children for adoption = very low (citation?)
    • e.g. Laura Klassen from Choice42 said that she's had maybe 1 woman want to place her child for adoption

Will crime rates increase?

See Legalized_abortion_and_crime_effects.

The Argument

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.

The Response

  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 affectionately 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. FIXME Talia citation on actual Freakonomics

Do anti-abortion laws even make a difference?

Objection (separate but related to #1): 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:

1)
Note: Angel of Death…