Where Is Everybody?

It's been looking a little thin over at Desperate Houseflies recently. But, I must soldier on. Today I saw two interesting articles by William Saletan, whose work on abortion I've cited previously. One examines the "loophole" in South Dakota's recently enacted abortion ban; the other talks about moving beyond Roe v. Wade in order to break the stalemate (now we all know how well that will work, but nice try, Will). The former underscores my concern that pro-lifers are more interested in punishing women for having sex at non-approved times with non-approved people than they are with life, however you define it. The latter suggests the kind of compromise that Naomi Wolf and others have suggested: draw the line at the end of the first trimester. This is an interesting idea that would work really well for women who have money and self-awareness -- but those women aren't having second-trimester abortions anyway. I would be willing to bet that second-trimester abortions are caused primarily by three things other than fetuses with developmental problems detected then: (1) lack of money; (2) restrictions, such as waiting periods and notifications, that pose additional obstacles; and (3) lack of self-awareness, or denial, in women who are incredibly out of touch with their bodies and minds (and let me tell you, in my experience one would practically have to be on another planet from her own body not to know she was pregnant). And these things have a disproportionate impact on those with lower socioeconomic status, who are, not coincidentally, the very people who can least afford to bear the costs of unplanned children. So even though from an ethical standpoint I would be comfortable drawing this line, I'm not sure that it would have much of an actual effect in terms of numbers of unplanned pregnancies, which I think is the number we want to reduce. It's the same lack of self-awareness that prevents a woman from realizing she's pregnant until several weeks in, that helps to prevent that same woman from using contraception to begin with. I hate to sound like such a cliche liberal, but what we need most is universal, comprehensive sex education and access to free contraception for all. That won't prevent every unplanned pregnancy, but it would help.

And just to stir up controversy, check out this article from The American Prospect about a 2001 study by two professors that purported to show that the legalization of abortion was a significant factor in the precipitous crime drop of the 1990s. (This ended up as a chapter in Freakonomics, since Stephen Levitt was one of the two). I had such a nonreaction to the data that I was kind of surprised (although I shouldn't have been) that people were so incensed by it. I mean, doesn't it stand to reason that unwanted children have worse lives than wanted ones, and therefore are more likely to commit crime? Seems like a fairly straightforward conclusion to me. What moral conclusions to draw from the data is a conversation that should be had, but it doesn't change what they show.

Okay, that should be enough inflammatory content for this week. Sorry to be such a broken record by writing on this topic so much, but this is interesting stuff and very timely at the moment.

Correction: The Naomi Wolf article linked above is not the one in which she proposes a ban on abortion after the first trimester. I'm not sure if that article, reported on by Katha Pollitt in the Nation, was ever actually published. But Wolf was quoted in this article, originally published in Glamour magazine (I know, I was shocked too), on the subject. The article is also interesting in its own right.