Aborting abortion rights

[lwcon]

Blogger Digby sees more and more liberals running from their traditional role of protecting abortion rights.

Before they throw the right not to have babies out with the bathwater, maybe they should read a little Freakonomics:

Perhaps the most dramatic effect of legalized abortion, and one that would take years to reveal itself, was its impact on crime.

In the early 1990s, just as the first cohort of children born after Roe v. Wade was hitting its late teen years-the years during which young men enter their criminal prime-the rate of crime began to fall. What this cohort was missing, of course, were the children who stood the greatest chance of becoming criminals. And the crime rate continued to fall as an entire generation came of age minus the children whose mothers had not wanted to bring a child into the world. Legalized abortion led to less unwantedness; unwantedness leads to high crime; legalized abortion, therefore, led to less crime.

People are imperfect, and abortion is not a tasteful option for everyone. But don't we have a better world when women aren't forced to choose between unsafe abortion methods and raising children they are unprepared to offer anything better than neglect?

If those who would ban abortion gave a damn about helping solve poverty, about providing healthcare to all, about providing high-quality social services, about ending the badly backfiring War on Drugs, and so on, maybe we'd have that idealized country where every child would have a proper home to look forward to. Until that day, many pregnant women face a painful choice, one that will become more painful if the Left won't stand up and fight for an important, if controversial, right.

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[jody]

1. Does that mean women most likely to have an unwanted pregnancy are the most

likely absent abortion to have children that are a burden on society therefore it's cost effective for society to pay for and encourage those women to have abortions?

[lwcon]

2. "Encourage" is a loaded idea

But abortion has been a fact of life for a long time -- legal or otherwise, safe or otherwise -- and a movement that has little to offer poor women but sanctimony doesn't seem to be improving their lot or society in general by taking away an option that the Supreme Court has upheld for the last few decades.

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Hey, the liberal light is always on at the Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy. Please stop by and say "hi!"

[jody]

4. OK, I'll replace "encourage" with "easy opportunity" in my post above. n/t

[CTyankee]

5. Well, abortion isn't really an "easy opportunity" because of the cost

and while some states pay for Medicaid abortions, many (probably most) do not.

What I would say, as a former staffer for Planned Parenthood, is that LEGAL abortion is necessary for a whole variety of reasons, not the least being that those women who feel they cannot raise a child can legally choose NOT to continue a pregnancy.

This argument makes some sense. I'm fairly sure that wanted, cared for, nurtured children do not grow up to be murderers, rapists or violent thugs. We have seen the dismal outcomes with the lives of unwanted, abused children. They become abusing adults, and the cycle continues.

There are many reasons that women have to end a pregnancy. This is an important one.

[jody]

6. I said "it's cost effective for society to pay for" abortions using Freakonomics as a premise. n/t

[CTyankee]

8. Of course it is. It saves the human cost of lives of people

victimized by crime, by violence. But it must be premised by "choice." Society cannot look upon an individual woman and say "You must have an abortion." There must be choice.

But what is great about this study is that women made their OWN DECISION about the choice to abort, not government.

[renie408]

3. Haven't I read somewhere that 80% of Americans don't favor ANY change

in abortion laws? It seems to me that abortion is used by the right to lure the nuts out of the woods, why would LIBERALS run from it as an issue? The nuts aren't going to vote for them anyway and it would just alienate the people who might be inclined to vote their way.

[Ilsa]

7. I've argued with anti-choice people about solving the problems

that lead to abortion, and it is a waste of time if they were indoctrinated with the "life comes first above all else" approach to problem solving. Nothing else matters to them politically because if you "don't protect life, nothing else is worthwhile". So they have learned this "logic" to argue their stance, which is set in stone. They are a waste of time, even if you show them the poor, homeless, suffering children, taking care of them first isn't a good enough reason to switch gears away from attacking abortion rights.