Idle speculation: if abortion was illegal...

Without doing research, I couldn't say accurately...

But my guess would be a lot more poverty and overtaxation of social services, for a start.

What I could say fairly confidently is the back alley abortion business would boom, and start a fresh bodycount of young girls as a result.

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Two things sparked my asking...

One was a snippet I read somewhere yesterday and now I can't find it -- it said "the quickest road to poverty is motherhood".

The other was in an editorial by Ellen Goodman:

"After three decades of conflict or more, we still regard child-raising as a lifestyle choice by individuals: You had 'em, you raise'em. We don't think of mothers and fathers as the folks doing the collective job of raising those who'll be paying for your Social Security."

I was curious so I looked up some statistics (the lastest I could find were from 1996):

Quote:

Number of abortions per year: 1.37 Million (1996)
Number of abortions per day: Approximately 3,700

Who's having abortions (age)?
52% of women obtaining abortions in the U.S. are younger than 25: Women aged 20-24 obtain 32% of all abortions; Teenagers obtain 20% and girls under 15 account for 1.2%.

Who's having abortions (race)?
While white women obtain 60% of all abortions, their abortion rate is well below that of minority women. Black women are more than 3 times as likely as white women to have an abortion, and Hispanic women are roughly 2 times as likely.

Who's having abortions (marital status)?
64.4% of all abortions are performed on never-married women; Married women account for 18.4% of all abortions and divorced women obtain 9.4%.

Who's having abortions (religion)?
Women identifying themselves as Protestants obtain 37.4% of all abortions in the U.S.; Catholic women account for 31.3%, Jewish women account for 1.3%, and women with no religious affiliation obtain 23.7% of all abortions. 18% of all abortions are performed on women who identify themselves as "Born-again/Evangelical".

Who's having abortions (income)?
Women with family incomes less than $15,000 obtain 28.7% of all abortions; Women with family incomes between $15,000 and $29,999 obtain 19.5%; Women with family incomes between $30,000 and $59,999 obtain 38.0%; Women with family incomes over $60,000 obtain 13.8%

It is hard to draw any conclusions from this as it doesn't identify what is considered "family income". Mom and Dad's income? Their own income?

Just for arguments sake, let's say that roughly half, 75,000 (each and every year) of these kids grow up in poverty.

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I almost posted earlier but my comments felt disjoint. I think that the number of kids growing up in poverty would increase, as well as the number of infanticides. As a result of the former, public schools in low income areas would suffer. Crime would probably go up. It "feels" like the divide between the haves and the have nots would grow wider.

I reas once that the surest indicator of bankruptcy for a family was whether or not they had children.

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I'm on the same train, Doktor S and FreeDuck, but I'm not really sure.

I think it is interesting that abortion is always discussed in terms of morality but not in terms of social and economic implications.

In a generation, say 20 years, we're talking about an additional 30 MILLION people.

It might behoove some pro-choice groups to research the subject from this standpoint.

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Abortion is becoming the least of the problems. According to the New York Times sunday magazine a week ago, there is a growing and coordinated movement among abortion opponents and evangelical christians to out law birth control.

You ain't seen nothing yet.

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Re: Idle speculation: if abortion was illegal...

boomerang wrote:

... in the USA what would be the social and economic consequences one generation from now?

Many illegal abortions, sepsis and maternal deaths.

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What I am really liking is the idea of pro-choice groups focusing on (among other things) reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies. As in, not dealing with them after the fact, but trying to keep them from happening at all. That's nice and proactive and bi-partisan, and can tap into a real weakness for the pro-life crowd, which is that a large segment of them are evidently shooting for getting rid of contraception (there was a cover article about this in the NYT magazine recently). Contraception! I think that's the kind of issue that will alienate most mainstream voters, and could really help the pro-choice/ Democrat cause.

In terms of this specific question, again the New York Times had a good cover story about this by looking at El Salvador where abortion is in fact illegal. Scary.

One thing from when abortion was illegal in the U.S. is that rich people simply continued to get them, one way or another -- and pay a lot for them -- while the poor people got the back-alley (and very dangerous) versions.

Here are the articles I refer to:

Pro-Life Nation

Contra-Contraception

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Might add, occuring amongst White, middle-class women.

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Acquiunk referred to the same article while I was searching for the url.

Strangely, I found that article encouraging -- I mean, that's just so patently ridiculous that I think it will backfire on them big time.

(Maybe we should start a separate thread on that -- I thought about it when I first read it...)

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Quote:

One thing from when abortion was illegal in the U.S. is that rich people simply continued to get them, one way or another -- and pay a lot for them -- while the poor people got the back-alley (and very dangerous) versions.

And the physicians, who performed them often went to jail.

Many of the "back-alley" abortion were expensive and were performed by
both MDs and RNs.

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sozobe wrote:

Strangely, I found that article encouraging -- I mean, that's just so patently ridiculous that I think it will backfire on them big time.

It is not necessarily ridiculous. Think of the anti smoking campaign of the last 20 years. The idea is not to outlaw smoking but make it difficult and socially unacceptable. It is probably not possible to out law birth control completely so I suspect that a somewhat similar approach will be used with birth control.

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I don't know about "often," Miller. From my understanding, there were a lot of ways to get around the laws for the people who had the money.

I think I'll go ahead and start another thread on the Contra-Contraception thing...

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Why would it be considered ridiculous to practice birth control by abstaining from sex?

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Here's the offshoot:

http://www.able2know.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=74563

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Miller wrote:

Why would it be considered ridiculous to practice birth control by abstaining from sex?

From an individual couple's perspective -- nothing. From the perspective of introducing it as a government policy -- everything. It simply ignores human nature. When people get sexually mature, they'll want to have sex, period. Entrusting birth control to people's sexual abstinence is like entrusting the protection of a booze depot to the abstinence of alcoholics.

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boomerang wrote:

... in the USA what would be the social and economic consequences one generation from now?

You mean, all abortion, from day one, with no exceptions for the mother's life and health? I guess some combination of more unwanted children resulting in more crime and poverty for mothers, more widespread use of contraceptives, more travels abroad, more doctors and mothers going to jail, and less respect for the rule of law in general.

It's a different story if you criminalize only late term abortions, or even second trimester abortions, and abortions to protect the mother's life and health, as they do here in Germany. The consequences of that are barely noticeable here.

PS: A few weeks ago, the New York Times Magazine had an article called "Pro-Life Nation". It's about El Salvador, a country that has criminalized basically all abortions. I guess it's the experimental answer to your question, plus some extra drama owing to Latin American living conditions. But even if you take that drama away, the picture is everything but pretty. Here's a free copy of the article at the International Herald Tribune.

Quote:

It was a sunny midafternoon in a shiny new global-economy mall in San Salvador, the capital city of El Salvador, and a young woman I was hoping to meet appeared to be getting cold feet. She had agreed to rendezvous with a go-between not far from the Payless shoe store and then come to a nearby hotel to talk to me. She was an hour late. Alone in the hotel lobby, I was feeling nervous; I was stood up the day before by another woman in a similar situation. I had been warned that interviewing anyone who had had an abortion in El Salvador would be difficult. The problem was not simply that in this very Catholic country a shy 24-year-old unmarried woman might feel shame telling her story to an older man. There was also the criminal stigma. And this was why I had come to El Salvador: Abortion is a serious felony here for everyone involved, including the woman who has the abortion. Some young women are now serving prison sentences, a few as long as 30 years

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/04/09/america/web.0409abortioncomplete.php

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I certainly need to read those articles, thanks soz and Thomas for the links.

I remember a group called "Common Ground" that thought birth control would be the field where pro and anti choice groups could come together but it went nowhere. Many people held the same hope for Plan B and we see where that's going.

There certainly are groups trying to outlaw ALL abortion in America, Thomas, even pregnancies resulting from rape or incest. South Dakota, I think, has already passed such laws.

Quote:

Why would it be considered ridiculous to practice birth control by abstaining from sex?

It would be considered ridiculous by anyone like me who is married and doesn't want to get pregnant and even more ridiculous to think that young people are just not going to have sex if they can't get birth control.

I remember reading "An American Tragedy" in high school. That was writting in, I think, 1926. I was so surprised to read about Clyde and Roberta going out in search of an abortionist.

When I was in high school a lot of girls went off to visit their "Aunt" in "Arkansas".

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Idle speculation: if abortion was illegal...

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