The Guttmacher Institute has announced that 2017 marked the nation’s lowest abortion rate since before Roe v. Wade. It’s not just because more women have chosen life for an unwanted pregnancy. It’s also because fewer women are getting pregnant unintentionally in the first place.
Even though a number of red states enacted more stringent abortion restrictions that were active as of 2017, the abortion rate fell by 8% from 2014 in the overwhelming majority of states. And Guttmacher, formerly a research arm for Planned Parenthood, reports that the greatest declines didn’t come from states that enacted new restrictions. Southern states, for example, saw the same 6% decline as states in the Northeast did. The largest decline came in the West, which saw a 14% decline in large part because California saw a 16% decline.
Policy, it appears, has had a limited effect on our declining abortion rate. The main changes have been a cultural shift combined with increased education and access to contraception, as well as the improvement of contraception methods themselves.
Although Obamacare’s contraception mandate made insurance companies cover oral contraceptives, the mandate hasn’t resulted in a marked increase in contraception use. However, the research points to a 23% increase in the use of one specific kind — long-acting reversible contraception, largely hormonal and copper IUDs — as a possible reason for decreased abortion rates.
In short, science is helping the pro-life cause, perhaps much more than law, and pushing our abortion rate lower than nations that have taxpayer-funded contraception. It’s not just about restricting abortion, but about a cultural change assisted by the free market and medical innovation.
