Good news about abortion and life

Published 10:30 pm Thursday, February 6, 2014

We’re just a few days past the grim anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision, but the news is good. Abortions are at their lowest rates since 1973, when the Supreme Court legalized the practice.

It’s not necessarily because pro-life legislators have changed the law (though many good and faithful lawmakers have worked tirelessly toward this, including in Texas). The evidence shows it’s because we’ve changed hearts.

“The U.S. abortion rate is at its lowest point since 1973,” reports Timothy Stanley for CNN. “In 2011, there were fewer than 17 terminations for every 1,000 women; a fall of 13 percent since 2008 and only a little higher than when the Supreme Court handed down Roe v. Wade.”

What has caused the decline? It’s not what you might think.

“Some might be tempted to assume it’s the various Republican-led state measures to restrict access to abortion; these include compelling abortion clinics to maintain the same standards as ambulatory surgical centers, which is for many clinics almost impossible to achieve,” Stanley writes. “But most of those state efforts only started recently, so they can’t explain a long-term trend against abortion since a peak of 29 terminations per 1,000 women in 1980.”

Instead, the reason seems to be a shift in culture — in how we think about life.

“According to Gallup, in 1996 some 56 percent of Americans self-identified as pro-choice and 33 percent as pro-life,” Stanley writes. “By 2013, only 45 percent called themselves pro-choice while 48 percent said pro-life. Part of the reason may be greater awareness of what a termination involves. Improvements in technology have made it easier to visualize and comprehend the fetus early on in development. The debate over late-term abortion has encouraged some to think of that fetus’ potential.”

Interestingly, Hollywood has played a part.

“Anti-abortion activists have talked about a ‘Juno effect,’ crediting the movie Juno, which is about a pregnant teenager who chooses to keep the child, with persuading many girls to see adoption or motherhood as better options than termination,” Stanley explains. “Likewise, the Twilight series (bear with me here) promotes chastity, a borderline terror of male sexuality (if a vampire bites you, he just can’t stop) and its lead character chooses to keep her baby even though the pregnancy nearly kills her.”

Even feminism has played a part.

“Movies like ‘The Ides of March’ present abortion as something that occurs entirely for the convenience of men (a political handler learns that an intern with whom he’s just had a one-night stand already is pregnant from a one-night stand with his candidate boss, drops her off to have an abortion and she later kills herself),” he adds. “It’s uneven, to be sure, but youth culture is witnessing at least some blending of conservative and feminist values that encourage — not necessarily pressure — girls to choose either to hold out or embrace motherhood.”

Overall, as a culture, we value life more (that’s shown in crime statistics, too).

That’s the good news. It doesn’t mean life no longer needs defending; but means the defense is working.