What I am trying to do in this blog series is separate the issue of whether Roe v. Wade should be overturned from the issue of whether abortion is morally acceptable. I believe strongly (although I will not argue in this blog series) that there is no moral justification for abortion (with all the usual caveat’s – mother’s health, rape, etc). I consider this to be an issue that Christians should be able to agree on. But the issue of overturning Roe v. Wade is a different issue entirely.
A country-by-country comparison turns up some astounding results about the relationship between access to legal abortions and the number of actual abortions, regardless of legality (I'm getting most of my statistics here). Europe is a good test case, since abortion is fully legal throughout the continent. But when you compare Western Europe to Eastern Europe, you will find an enormous disparity between the actual number of abortions. In most Western European nations, the number of actual abortions is 10 or less per 1000 women; in some Eastern European nations, the number goes to 50 or even 80 abortions per 1000 women (our country is somewhere in the middle, like 25/1000).
Now the real shocker for my anti-Roe friends: in countries where abortion is strictly illegal (a list is available here ), the abortion rates are sometimes very high. Look at Latin American countries, such as Brazil, Peru, or Chili. The number of abortions (all forbidden by law) performed there is often 40-50 per 1000 women. You have to go all the way to Israel or Japan to find examples of low abortion rates and no access to abortions on demand (although in both of these countries, abortion is legal for many other reasons, such as a potential defect in the fetus, or if the mother is poor).
Understanding these statistics can be complicated, but the simple point I want to make is that simply overturning Roe v. Wade will not be the ‘silver bullet’ that most Christians are hoping for. It will of course reduce the number of legal abortions, but it is not clear how it would affect the number of actual abortions. Since the abortion rate is tragically high in some areas of the world where abortion is legal (such as Eastern Europe), and also high in areas where abortion is illegal (Latin America), and low in some areas where it is legal (Western Europe), we have to conclude that there is no close correlation between the legality of abortions and how often they happen.
I am pro-life, and I am a liberal. Contradiction? No, because I do not see Roe v. Wade as my enemy. My enemies are those social conditions that lead to unwanted pregnancies and promt women to want an abortion. Those of us who are pro-life simply have to be more resourceful and thoughtful if we truly want to stand up and say “no” to abortion. Talk (and making abortion illegal) is cheap.
