This weekend is the 42nd anniversary of Loving v. Virginia. This is particularly meaningful to me because my wife and I are not of the same race.
It’s good to know that despite marriage being the province of the states, the Supreme Court will step in to ensure equality for everybody people who are not gay.
Andrew Sullivan has posted frequently on the murder of Dr. George Tiller. In particular, he has been posting messages from readers who describe some of the tough choices they have faced regarding whether to have a late term abortion. The writers of these letters cut across the ideological spectrum, but one theme does recur:
[A]lthough I believed in the right to choose, I did not think I would ever choose abortion for myself.
To me, this quote captures the only common ground in the abortion debate: the desire to minimize the number of abortions. How might this best be achieved? I don’t know if I can answer that. But I’m interested to see where efforts to reduce abortion might have the most impact.
The latest numbers I could find from the CDC are from 2005 and indicate 1.3% of abortions occur at or after 21 weeks gestation (I will refer to these as “late-term”). The CDC survey claims about 820,000 reported abortions for that year, yielding 10,660 late-term abortions. The Guttmacher institute cites a 2002 study indicating that 8% of women who have abortions do not use birth control. Using the CDC’s numbers, this yields 65,600 abortions (and that number could be higher if the women in this group have more than one abortion per year).
Let’s say that contraception is 75% effective, an extreme lower bound. If 22% of this group of women used contraception, that would reduce abortion more than eliminating all late-term abortions.
I admit that this analysis is shoddy and poorly researched. I think I’ve made assumptions, however, that will not undercut an assertion that the low hanging fruit of abortion reduction is on the side of pregnancy prevention rather than abortion prohibition. I know there is more to this, such as whether the abortion is to terminate an unplanned and unwanted pregnancy, or instead a reaction to news of severe birth defects or potential harm to the mother. Mostly, I was curious to look into these numbers to see where they would lead.