If the goal is to reduce the number of abortions, then do you really think this is the most effective and humane way to do so? The advanced country with arguably the lowest abortion rate is not one with a draconian approach to abortion, but rather the Netherlands – with about 8.6 abortions per 1,000 women between the ages of 15 and 45.
That’s lower than the abortion rate even in states like Texas and Louisiana that have worked to effectively ban abortions.
The Netherlands has a low abortion rate because the Dutch have excellent comprehensive sex education and excellent access to birth control. The upshot is fewer unplanned pregnancies and thus fewer abortions.
In the United States, about 45 percent of pregnancies are unplanned. That’s better than it used to be (51 percent) but still a reflection of low use of reliable contraception.
As best we can tell from surveys, young people have sex at about the same rate as European kids, but get pregnant three times as often.
That’s because the United States lags in both sex education and in contraception access. What’s most important in contraceptive access is long-acting reversible contraceptives, or LARCs, such as implants and IUD’s.
Obamacare did improve access to LARCs, and as a result the abortion rate has gone down in America.
If the anti-abortion lobby wanted to celebrate a president who actually reduced the abortion rate significantly, it should be toasting President Obama. He provided a model of reducing abortion numbers by helping young people reduce unplanned pregnancies – and this is one of the great successes of social policy.
The teen birth rate has gone down 60 percent since the modern peak in 1991, and that in turn has improved high school graduation rates and college attendance rates.
So abortion opponents had a pathway to reduce abortion numbers that would have been effective and wouldn’t have invaded the most private sphere of a couple’s decision making. They didn’t take it
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Won’t there be a backlash at this intrusion into family matters? Some rape victims won’t be able to get abortions and will tell heartbreaking stories of being forced to carry the rapist’s child. Some women won’t be able to get abortions and will die in childbirth.
Some women will be forced to carry to term fetuses with malformations that lead to a child’s painful death shortly after birth.
In Poland, for example, a woman named Izabela Sajbor had a fetus with a severe abnormality that made it unlikely to survive pregnancy.
But under Poland’s restrictive abortion laws, she was not permitted to terminate the pregnancy, even when her water broke at 22 weeks. She knew that without the abortion, she was in danger of sepsis.
“My life is in danger,” she wrote in a searing set of text messages to her mother and husband that were reported by The New York Times. “They cannot help as long as the fetus is alive thanks to the anti-abortion law. A woman is like an incubator.” Hours later, she died.
How can that be pro-life?
That’s why I find today’s ruling so sad. My plea to those campaigning against abortion: Why not work with people across the political spectrum to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies – and thus the number of abortions – by improving sex education, by supporting teen pregnancy prevention programs and by making effective contraception more available?
今天也看到他的發文
真的很生氣且無力