The Prevention
Deception: How Not to Reduce Abortions
(Pamphlet Version)
Richard M. Doerflinger
It sounds almost plausible at first.
According to some members of Congress, we should
agree to reduce abortions by reducing the unintended pregnancies that often end
in abortion through increased access to contraception.
This “Prevention First” agenda has gained more
prominence with the new Democratic leadership in Congress. Even Catholics may be
tempted to ask: If this approach reduces abortions, can it be all that bad?
Of course, that is what advocates of Prevention
First hope we will say. At a time when half of Americans identify themselves as
pro-life, Prevention First advocates see a negative side to being considered
pro-abortion— and they want to finesse the issue in a way that may divide many
Catholic laypeople from their Church and its teaching.
There are at least four reasons to reject the
“Prevention First” approach.
1. Confusion about the
pro-life goal
The aim of the Church’s message is not just to
reduce the number of abortions by any means necessary. Our primary goal is to
promote respect for human life, before and after birth. Historically, there is
much evidence against contraceptive programs accomplishing this goal. Growing
use of the contraceptive pill in the 1960s helped usher in an era of what
proponents called “free love.” The result was an increase in premarital and
extramarital sex, divorce, sexually transmitted disease, and (ironically)
out-of-wedlock childbearing. The family that provides a fitting context for
welcoming new life was weakened, and abortions increased.
In the early 1960s even Planned Parenthood
insisted that its goal had nothing to do with abortion. But Planned Parenthood’s
clients found that contraceptives are not always effective in real life, and
abortion became the obvious “backup” solution. A rededication to this
contraceptive agenda could have the same impact on acceptance of abortion, this
time on an even larger scale.
2. Modes of action: How
and when do contraceptives work?
Even in the 1960s, medical experts found that
some contraceptive drugs and devices may work not only by preventing
fertilization, but also by preventing the newly conceived embryo from implanting
in the womb and surviving. Some experts recommended redefining the word
“conception” to be synonymous with implantation instead of fertilization – so
devices like the IUD could be called “contraceptive” even if they work after
fertilization, causing a very early abortion. This campaign was so successful
that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration now calls “contraceptive” even drugs
that it admits can act by interfering with implantation. However, from a
Catholic moral perspective (and the perspective of biological reality), an
intervention to prevent the survival of a new embryo is abortifacient in nature.
No one is certain how often a given drug may have
this effect. But it is difficult to claim that we can reduce abortions by
promoting drugs that may sometimes cause an early abortion.
This problem is especially acute in the case of
“morning-after” pills or “emergency contraceptives” (ECs), sometimes taken only
after sperm and egg have already had a chance to meet, and would only interfere
with pregnancy by the abortifacient effect. Yet the Prevention First agenda
includes a mandate for all hospital emergency rooms to provide ECs on request in
all cases of rape.
3. Coercing consciences
Prevention First has been marketed as a
“non-punitive” way to reduce abortions. But its mandate for contraceptive
coverage in all health plans punishes religious employers and their employees,
by making it impossible for them to purchase drug coverage that is morally
acceptable to them. The proposed bill requiring hospitals to provide ECs is
enforced by denying federal funds to any hospital that does not comply,
essentially forcing the hospital to close.
The contraceptive mandates imposed by state laws
sometimes include a religious “conscience clause” that defines a religious
organization as one that employs only those of its own faith, serves only those
of its own faith, and takes the inculcation of religious doctrine as its chief
activity. This excludes almost all Catholic schools, hospitals and charitable
institutions.
Invoked to support this topsy-turvy legal
approach is the claim that any employer’s refusal to provide contraceptive
coverage is itself a form of discrimination against women, because only they can
become pregnant. Such a “sex discrimination” argument was accepted by the Equal
Employment Opportunity Commission in 2000; but in March 2007, the 8th Circuit
Court of Appeals ruled that Union Pacific Railroad’s exclusion of contraceptive
coverage was not sex discrimination. With a good deal of common sense, the court
found that the employer did not cover birth control drugs or devices used by men
or women, so “the coverage provided to women is not less favorable than that
provided to men.”
The new call for government to enforce women’s
access to reproductive procedures is a far cry from the abortion movement’s
original slogan of “freedom of choice.” Those who object to these procedures
will have no freedom and no choice.
4. Failing to reduce
abortions
The Alan Guttmacher Institute, research affiliate
of Planned Parenthood, often announces that contraceptives have “prevented” so
many thousands of pregnancies and abortions. But these are projections based on
a flawed mathematical model, not genuine findings. In 2006, when the Institute
issued a report card ranking the 50 states by how aggressively they promote
contraceptives, the embarrassing fact emerged that New York, California and
other states receiving the highest grades also had some of the highest abortion
rates in the country; some states ranked near the bottom for contraceptive
services have the lowest abortion rates.
Studies from a variety of countries have shown
that contraceptive programs do not reduce abortion rates. In fact, says one
recent overview, “[m]ost studies that have been conducted during the past 20
years have indicated that improving access to contraception did not
significantly increase contraceptive use or decrease teen pregnancy.”
Perhaps the most surprising finding is that
programs promoting ECs do not reduce abortions. Yet when leading experts who
favor EC programs recently summarized 23 studies gauging the effect of such
programs, they had to admit that not one of the 23 found a reduction in
unintended pregnancies or abortions.
Conclusion: What reduces
abortions?
One clue lies in the Guttmacher data mentioned
above. Abortions are lowest in “heartland” states with a more traditional
culture of honoring marriage and discouraging premarital sex. New studies show
that an increase in the number of teens nationwide who delay initiating sexual
activity is responsible for a large part of the reduced abortion rate in recent
years.
Second, these and other states place modest legal
restraints on abortion, which have a well-documented and significant effect of
reducing abortions.
Third, offering life-affirming services to
pregnant women and their children, as proposed in federal bills like the
“Pregnant Women Support Act” (H.R. 6145), could make a substantial impact on the
number of abortions.
These strategies can reduce abortions without
creating any moral or social problems, and could be the true common ground in
the abortion debate. Will Congress seize this opportunity?
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Mr. Doerflinger is Deputy Director, USCCB
Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities.
The full-length version of this article is posted
at
http://www.usccb.org/prolife/programs/rlp/doerflinger.pdf
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