Last year, 1.3 million pregnancies, or roughly one-fourth of all conceptions, ended in abortion. This statistic should bother people on both sides of the issue, pro-life or pro-choice. Thirty-three years after Roe v. Wade was decided, many Americans still struggle with a woman’s right to choose.
This past week I was having a political discussion with a University student who said his number one reason for voting Republican was that he is anti-abortion. Perhaps it was because I’d never heard the pro-life point of view described as “anti-abortion,” but his comment immediately struck me. While I had assumed it went without saying, I responded to him by saying, “no one is ‘pro-abortion.’” Everyone, both sides of the aisle, can agree that we all aim to reduce the number of abortions.
This seemingly self-evident fact appeared to strike him as a sort of revelation. After thinking about it for sometime, he responded by asking what Democrats do to decrease the number of abortions. I answered this question with two points. I first asked him what Republicans are doing to address this universal concern. We both agreed that Republicans generally address the abortion issue by attacking Roe v. Wade (the 1973 landmark case that ensured a woman’s right to an abortion). This is one way to go about decreasing abortions.
However, despite talk of their desire to see the law overturned, are Republicans really committed to reversing Roe v. Wade? When this decision was penned, the court was composed of six Republican appointed justices (who voted 5-1 in favor of Roe) and three Democrat appointees (who voted 2-1 in favor). Since then, the court has always maintained a majority of Republican appointed justices. During the past 33 years Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush as well as our current president George W. Bush have spoken of their desire to see this law struck down. My question is, “What’s stopping them?” Each of the aforementioned presidents have served under a Republican-dominated court. It’s clear that Republican leaders have no real intentions of seeing the law reversed, but rather intend to continue using it as a divisive wedge issue.
For the sake of argument however, we should examine the probable effects of reversing this landmark case. Overturning Roe v. Wade would return control of abortions to individual states. We can safely assume that the states that would make abortion illegal are the states that already heavily restrict access (South Dakota, Idaho, Utah, Mississippi, etc.). The 15 or so states likely to outlaw abortion should Roe be overturned perform only about 10 percent of the abortions annually in this country.
Overturning Roe v. Wade is one way to reduce the number of
abortions performed in this country. However, it also criminalizes women. This weekend, while attending the State Democratic Convention held here in Eugene, I spoke with House Candidate Phil Philiben who brought up an insightful question: If we overturn Roe, what is the proper sentence for a woman who gets an abortion? Do we send her to jail for five years? How about 10?
While overturning Roe may reduce abortions, as Democrats, we feel there are better ways to address this issue without criminalizing women. During the Clinton years, the number of abortions performed was reduced dramatically even while access to abortions increased. This was largely due to the decrease in the poverty rate as there is a strong correlation betweenunemployment/poverty and abortions. Increases in graduation rates, health care and employment can also be credited for this decline.
As I said earlier, if we overturned Roe v. Wade, abortions would decrease by only 10 percent. However, if we decreased the poverty rate by 10 percent, we can gather from historic evidence that abortions would decrease by roughly 30 percent. This solution seems to address two real concerns: Decreasing abortions and simultaneously decreasing poverty. Plus, it has the added benefit of not criminalizing women.
For the sake of fairness, it’s worth noting that abortions have also
decreased during President Bush’s term in office. As a society committed to the same goal of decreasing abortions, we should reserve our ideological rhetoric and look at what has occurred during the president’s tenure that has led to this positive record.
If for a moment we could stop calling each other baby killers or
sexists (or using pictures of the Holocaust to make our argument), we’d realize that people on both sides hold the same ultimate goal. By stepping away from our inflammatory insults we could look at what has occurred in the over the past 15 years that has led to these positive gains and find real solutions.
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