July 22, 2006
Abortion as social engineering
The Wall Street Journal has a feature article in today's Weekend edition (sorry, subscription only, so no-link-for-you) about the role of a anti-teen-pregnancy sex education program in South Carolina in dropping teen pregnancy rates there. An adjacent county without a similar program has also seen its teen pregnancy rates decline, but not as quickly as its neighbor, and still boasts one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in the state.
The article points out that teen pregnancy rates have fallen dramatically across the country starting in 1990. We're talking a 25% drop at minimum, across ethnic boundaries. The article suggests that a tighter job market, stricter child support laws, increased use of condoms and the injectable contraceptive Depro-Provera are responsible for this drop.
I, for one, ain't buying it. I would argue that while each of those may have some small role to play, the kind of person who screws around at 14-17 years old and can't manage to avoid getting pregnant isn't the kind of person who is likely to be affected by economic or legal concerns, let alone responsible enough to use contraception regularly.
No, I would argue that the decline in teen pregnancy is due to the legalization of abortion in the early 1970s.
"Ah, but wait, Ryan," you say, "We're talking about pregnancy rates here, not live-birth rates, so even if a girl has an abortion, that doesn't decrease the teen pregnancy rate." This is, of course, true. But it doesn't take into account that the kind of people who have abortions are largely poor, irresponsible (they got pregnant after all), etc. More to the point, they didn't want to have a baby. So the kind of children who are largely aborted are the ones who would have been born into low-income, troubled households with significantly underprivilaged parents, should the father even be in the picture. Sounds like a perfect candidate for teen motherhood if you ask me.
So just as an entire generation of criminals has been aborted, so an entire generation of teen mothers has as well. If the male output of pathological families are young criminals, the female output of pathological families would be young mothers.
Do you think the article mentioned abortion as a possible cause for the change? A better and more plausible question might be, "Is Hezbollah going to unilaterally disarm and return its hostages?" No, we couldn't have abortion being made out to be the ultimate racial profiler, now could we?
