It turns out that laws protecting the unborn save lives, regardless of what liberal skeptics say.
In the two months following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade on June 24, the United States saw the number of legal abortions performed drop by 10,000 — a 6% decline, according to a report detailed by the New York Times.
MAJOR CORPORATION TACITLY WITHDRAWS THREAT TO PUNISH PRO-LIFE STATE
The report said states that outlawed elective abortions or enacted heartbeat bills saw 22,000 fewer abortions, while states where abortion is legal saw an increase of about 12,000 abortions. Even when factoring in illegal chemical abortions performed in states that prohibit elective abortions, the publication admitted these laws are working as intended.
“But even with those increases, thousands of abortions appear to have been prevented by the new state laws,” the New York Times report said.
Laws influence behavior? What a shocking revelation.
For years, liberals have said that outlawing abortion fails to prevent abortions from happening. The data now show this is false. Banning elective abortion alone will not stop all abortions from happening, especially when it, unfortunately, remains legal in most states. However, along with preventing unintended pregnancies and increasing support for women and families with children, outlawing abortion plays a role in reducing the number of abortions that occur in the country.
And when a country legalizes abortion, the opposite happens.
When Ireland legalized abortion via referendum in 2018, the number of abortions spiked. In 2018, the final year when abortion was generally illegal in Ireland, the high estimates said that about 5,000 Irish women had abortions. These women generally either traveled to the United Kingdom or the Netherlands to have an abortion or had an illegal chemical abortion in Ireland. The following year, 7,041 Irish women had abortions, according to the Iona Institute. That means at least 2,000 more innocent lives were lost due to Ireland legalizing abortion in one year alone.
Instead of looking at cause and effect, liberals will often point to research from organizations that support legal abortion such as the Guttmacher Institute and the World Health Organization. These liberal organizations conclude that because countries where abortion is legal and countries where abortion is illegal have similar abortion rates, that means banning abortion doesn’t reduce the abortion rate. However, this is a dubious conclusion because these studies compare poor, developing countries in Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East to rich, highly developed countries with widespread access to contraception and robust social safety nets.
The pro-life movement still has a lot of work to do, but this slight decline in the number of abortions occurring in the United States is a positive sign. It’s a reminder that while banning abortion isn’t the only step necessary to ending abortion, it is a useful one.
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Tom Joyce (@TomJoyceSports) is a political reporter for the New Boston Post in Massachusetts.
