The claim that pro-life laws do nothing to reduce abortion is nothing new from abortion supporters. On Thursday, the Wausau Daily Herald states:
If you want to reduce and prevent abortions, common sense tells us that one needs good medically accurate, age appropriate sex education and good access to contraception. These things are most effective at reducing unintended pregnancies, and thus reducing the demand for abortions. Yet by attacking providers and denying funding, Republicans are working to eliminate good reproductive education and to make it more difficult to obtain contraception and other reproductive care.
However, there are statistics that say otherwise. Last year, the Washington Examiner investigated data from the Guttmacher Institute and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from 1985 to 2005. They found that “public funding restrictions reduce abortion rates 10 percent to 15 percent.”
-Regarding parental consent, these laws for minors have found a reduction in abortions ranging from 13 to 42 percent.
-With informed consent laws, which required counseling for a woman seeking an abortion the day before, they found a reduction from 7 to 12 percent.
They concluded:
All of this is to say that pro-life laws save lives by reducing abortion rates — and the pro-life movement is on a roll. States have passed a whopping 226 pro-life laws since 2011.
In 2009, Dr. Michael J. New at National Review came to a similar conclusion:
Among the 47 states reporting abortion data in both 1990 and 2005, the number of abortions had fallen by 22 percent. Many states that passed pro-life legislation have experienced even larger declines.
As a result, we have seen annual abortions peak at about 1.5 million in the 1980’s, which began to decrease almost every year after 1990. And while abortion supporters claim ending funding would be disastrous, it has been found that Medicaid funding for abortion has increased abortion rates.
The evidence speaks for itself: Pro-life laws directly contribute to reducing abortions. The sad part about it is that this should not be a partisan issue. Protecting life should not have to have a Republican or Democrat label to it.
All we hear from abortion supporters is that pro-lifers are waging a “war on women” and want to take away birth control when it comes to discussing abortion. However, this is not true and it is significant to point out that most of these states enacting pro-life laws, if not all of them, have Republican majorities in their state assemblies.
To claim that Republicans are responsible for actually increasing abortions is irresponsible to say the least.
