Reproductive Politics

I haven't had a chance to read and analyze this study , but I wanted to pass it on to you in the meantime. The study, which compares contraceptive use and abortion rates in Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine, is making pro-life activists happy. From what I can gather on a quick reading, the authors compared declining abortion rates in Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine, and noted that Russia's abortion rate is not declining as quickly as it is in the other two countries and remains high. They also determined that Russian women are more likely to use "modern" methods of contraception than women in Belarus and Ukraine. These observations, taken together, appear to validate the pro-life assertion that more contraceptive use = more sexual activity = more contraceptive failure and unintended pregnancies = more abortions. In other words, the promotion of contraceptives, rather than abstinence as a means of preventing pregnancy, leads to more abortions. Note that, from what I rea...

Reporters, analysts, and advocates are all discussing newly released abortion data from the Centers for Decease Control and Prevention (CDC): After years of holding steady, new Center for Disease Control  data  shows that the United States abortion rate has fallen to an all-time low. It dropped 5 percent between 2008 and 2009, the most recent years for which data is available, the largest decline in the past decade. (Source: The Washington Post )  So, why did abortions go down so much between 2008 and 2009? Analysts and pundits have offered the following explanations: Better contraception = fewer abortions. More women are using more effective methods of contraception. As a result, fewer pregnancies that do occur are unwanted, and therefore fewer pregnancies are terminated. A recent, much-discussed study indicated that, when women have greater access to more effective contraception-- when it was provided for free-- pregnancy and abortion rates went down. From th...

An essay by Jennifer Fulwiler in the National Catholic Register  criticizes the recent Obstetrics & Gynecology  study (the St. Louis study) on the connection between free contraceptives and pregnancy and abortion rates. Her critique does not focus on the methodology of the study or its specific results. Instead, she focuses on the possibility that using certain types of contraception may increase STD rates. She does not describe the causal links, but she is implicitly floating two hypotheses: Women who rely on IUDs or hormonal implants are less likely to use condoms during sex and therefore are more likely to be exposed to STDs. Some studies indicate that hormonal implants increase the likelihood of contracting an STD. Therefore, use of hormonal implants makes STD contraction all the more likely, given hypothesis 1.  Given what Ms. Fulwiler cites as high rates of STD contraction in the study area (St. Louis), she thinks the researchers were ethically irres...

University of Massachusetts economics professor Nancy Folbre, in an Economix ( New York Times ) blog post, nicely combines several observations about the benefit of providing women with free contraceptives. Her observations? "[U]nintended pregnancy costs American taxpayers roughly $11 billion each year." The cost of unintended pregnancies affect poor young women more than others and exacerbates the cycle of poverty for the mother and her child(ren).  Insights from the field of behavioral economics suggest that simply expecting women/couples to engage in perfectly strategic behavior when it comes to preventing unintended pregnancy-- in particular, securing and using contraception effectively-- is unrealistic.  'Pre-emptive' birth control, like LARCs (long-acting reversible contraceptives), that have very low use error (i.e., people don't mess up using it properly), overcome this problem.  As a result, it is not surprising that the recent St. Louis study pu...