Truth: we saw more abortions in 2023 than before the overturn of Roe vs Wade and before states established laws that removed abortion access and punished providers of women’s health care.
So what has happened after the pro-life “life begins at conception” group dominated the Supreme Court and resulted in the overturn of Roe vs Wade?
Well, after a decade of a significant decline in the rate of abortions, they immediately began to climb upward again.
The Wrong Measures By Those Who Oppose Abortions
In other words, the draconian measures to regulate the female womb and stop abortions have very much backfired.
It’s not the pro-choice folk who are to blame here. It’s those mostly very good people who want life to be celebrated and cherished from the moment of conception but the measures they chose to make it happen carried multiple unintended consequences.
Here are seven of those consequences, all detrimental to US society as a whole, to women in particular, and contributed to the worst of all outcomes: a rise in the number of abortions after a decade of significant decline.
One: Growing Disrespect for a Woman’s Right to Medical Privacy
By making abortions illegal, the fertile female womb suddenly became a public rather than a private place.
Please do not think I am exaggerating here. I am not. When pregnancy is a matter of public policy, and its termination a crime, there can be zero privacy for the womb of a pregnant woman. Every stakeholder has a right to examine it at will and ensure its work conforms to the law.
Is that really what we want to do to women? To strip them of privacy and agency in their own health-care decisions? What male would want that for himself or even tolerate it for a minute?
2. Those Without Knowledge of Female Health Realities Made The Policies
Sadly, the pro-life movement displayed a seriously inadequate understanding of the impact of pregnancy on a woman’s physical well-being, her emotional health and her ability to maintain financial stability.
Pregnancy affects every aspect of a woman’s life. Many women suffer life-long ailments and dysfunction from pregnancy and too many maternal deaths still take place, even in the US.
In other words, pregnancy can mean a death sentence for a woman. This should not be taken lightly.
Pregnancy hormones, necessary to keep the developing embryo/fetus from being expelled immediately or too soon, also have a very complicated effect on a woman’s brain. Our society gives little or no room or space for pregnancy (or menopausal) hormonal fluctuations but instead insists that all women continue to function like males in the workplace.
The simply unconscionably lack of paid parental leave in the US then makes it nearly impossible for women who do not make much money to fully recover from pregnancy or to fully bond with their babies and give them the best possible health and emotional support for the first few years of life.
Instead, a nearly immediate return to work is mandated, with the added stress of no affordable childcare available. It is the worst possible scenario for keeping healthy mothers or rearing healthy children.
Three: People Had Zero Time For Reasoned Decision-making Concerning Unexpected Pregnancies
The current situation in forced-birth states forces the unexpectedly pregnant to make a decision about the pregnancy before the potential parents are really ready to deal with it. With the draconian “heartbeat” anti-abortion laws on the books, the time for a “legal” abortion passes before women even know for sure they are pregnant.
Once they do find out, at, say, seven weeks gestation, they have a very, very short window to arrange for a medication abortion before their options are reduced to zero.
My guess: too many pregnancies that would have happily been carried to term are now being aborted because there simply is not enough time to consider all the options. In other words, this wrong-headed idea of prosecuting abortion providers and/or anyone who helps a woman find one is now leading to far more abortions than would otherwise have taken place.
This may be the greatest tragedy of all. The decision to carry a baby to term carries life-long implications and obligations and should be entered into carefully and thoughtfully, yet we rip that time from them.
Yes, ideally, all pregnancies are planned and wanted. But that is simply not real life. Never has been, and with the likelihood that access to contraception may soon be on the chopping block, it never will be.
Potential parents, and especially women need time and support to sort out how to manage the unbelievable and growing challenges of bringing new life into the world.
Time has now been removed from the equation. The very thing that might have resulted in more babies disappeared because of poorly thought-through legislation.
Four: Rape and Incest Victims Faced Punishment, Not Compassion
It truly appalls me to see the truly unreal lack of comprehension that girls, even as young as ten, can and do get pregnant, generally by acts of incest and rape.
The time when a girl becomes fertile starts earlier and earlier. But that does not mean bodies and brains are ready to be able to healthily carry a fetus to term and then rear the child.
We see no public outcry from the “pro-life” people against those who force pregnancies upon unwilling women/girls. There is zero effort to imprison the perpetrators of these horrible crimes or force them to offer financial support. Nope, instead, those rapists/purveyers of incest now insist they have parental rights and can dictate the progress of the womb of the one they impregnated.
This is just wrong. We cannot do this to women and girls and expect happy compliance. Instead, they will rightfully rebel and seek abortion even if, with more support, a massive dose of real compassion and the total removal of the violator from public life forever, they might be willing to carry the fetus to term and offer the products of the unwilling conception for adoption.
Five: The Decisions Revealed an Astounding Lack of Understanding of Basic Human Nature
It has long been known that the moment many are told, “Nope, can’t have that” is the same moment the desire to “have that” rises. This is particularly true with human rights.
Humans don’t like being enslaved to the will of another. This is why there have been slave rebellions front the beginning of time.
People also don’t like one group to have privileges that have been denied to them. Even in total “no abortion” states, we may rest assured that the daughters/wives/girlfriends of the rich and famous [white men who impregnated them] have easy access to abortion on demand.
This kind of stuff really irritates those who are left behind, and they’ll find as many ways as possible to catch up.
Six: It Contributed To A Growing Misunderstanding of the Nature of God and Abortions
Let’s assume a God-created natural world, infused with that Holy Presence. Propagation, like it or not, has always been full of waste, i.e., various forms of life or possible life never make it to first base.
Most seeds never see fruit. They either decay in the ground or are eaten as food for others. The vast number of eggs in any woman’s ovaries and the far vaster number of sperm produced by a man with normal fertility never, ever have hopes of reproducing. They simply die away.
Assuming God wants human life, God also indulges in a lot of potential human life waste.
At least 1/4 of all conceptions and possibly more end in death to the embryo. What most laypeople call “miscarriage,” today called “abortion,” is a natural and normal process that could now result in the prosecution of any attending medical personnel and even friends of the woman who has just lost her potential child.
It’s time to recapture our understanding of biological realities, holding even death as holy in a God-infused world.
Seven: Fear Became The Driving Factor for the Hope of Societal Change to end Abortions
Fear definitely works as a short-term motivation. But there is a reason why we find in the Holy Scriptures the self-description of the Holy One as love.
God is Love. God overflows with mercy, with lovingkindness, with a passionate love for humankind, with infinite patience for struggling humans.
We are a mess. We have always been a mess. Yet we are a redeemable mess.
Nonetheless, laws, especially laws that punish what a subset of humankind sees as a moral transgression, have never been a good source of redemption. It works poorly, if at all. Fear may bring outward obedience, but inward rebellion will eventually break through.
Think about the times in your life when you had a profound change of thinking: was it fear that drove you or the kind of freedom undergirded by merciful love?
Shall we indeed seek to see the end to abortion? Then stop the fear/punishment tactics.
Instead, start with genuinely caring about women, about their essential role in the propagation of humankind, about the real physical, emotional, and financial support they deserve to bring forth wanted, healthy children into the world without immense damage to their own well-being.
Then quit giving non-procreative persons, i.e., non-medically-trained male politicians, the power to enact legislation to regulate the female body and its reproductive processes. Otherwise, give only to females the power to regulate male reproductive processes.
Either scenario is ridiculous. Just stop.
Let us respect each other as fully human, made in the image of God, and fully capable of making our own health/reproductive decisions. Give women the support necessary to bear and rear their children.
And then watch the rate of abortions continue the decline that had begun before the law protecting abortion access across the US was negated.
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