Monday, August 10, 2015

Belief in the birth control fairy

At Bloomberg View Megan McArdle shows how
Extremely high abortion rates can coexist with extremely comprehensive health-care systems and liberal social norms.



You see a similar pattern in the U.S. when you look at the variation in abortion rates between states: Liberal blue states with liberal abortion laws and liberal attitudes about birth control seem to have the highest, not the lowest, rates of abortion. What drives this? I can come up with a number of plausible theories, but I couldn't tell you which one is right. On the other hand, I think we can reject the hypothesis that liberal attitudes toward sex and birth control are a surefire way to get the abortion rate down.

Instead of forcing a hard moral choice between the autonomy of the woman and the value of the potential life that is terminated, belief in the birth control fairy lets us off the hook. It would certainly be lovely if programs such as the Colorado Family Planning Initiative could make abortion so rare that it no longer required us to make those moral and political choices. But hoping for something to be right doesn't make it so -- and neither does bad data.
Read more here.

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