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Saturday, January 16th, 2016

Who’s Driving High Abortion Rates? It’s the Religious Right

Author:     George Monbiot
Source:     Alternet (U.S.)
Publication Date:     January 13, 2016
 Link: Who’s Driving High Abortion Rates? It’s the Religious Right
Stephan:   The media rarely addresses what happens in Red value states compared with Blue value states but the facts are very straightforward. Red value states which prat on about family values, abstinence, and abortion actually do much worse than Blue value states. In Red value states there is more sexually transmitted disease, more teen pregnancy, more divorce, more child abuse than in Blue states. And this report tells the truth about abortion.
Credit: Shutterstock

Credit: Shutterstock

Here is the fact that everyone debating abortion should know: there is no association between its legality and its incidence. In other words, banning abortion does not stop the practice; it merely makes it more dangerous.

The abortion debate is presented as a conflict between the rights of foetuses and the rights of women. Enhance one, both sides sometimes appear to agree, and you suppress the other. But once you grasp the fact that legalising women’s reproductive rights does not raise the incidence of abortions, only one issue remains to be debated: should they be legal and safe or illegal and dangerous? Hmm … tough question.

There might be no causal relationship between reproductive choice and the incidence of abortion, but there is a strong correlation: an inverse one. As the Lancet’s most recent survey of global rates and trends notes: “The abortion rate was lower … where more women live under liberal abortion laws.”

Why? Because laws restricting abortion tend […]

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