by

Daniel Clark

As every good liberal pretends to know, the cause of high abortion rates is religious conservatives' refusal to cooperate with "family planning" advocates, toward the supposedly common goal of reducing the number of abortions. If only those snake-handling bumpkins would see the wisdom in making abortion "safe, legal and rare," the argument goes, fewer abortions would be "necessary." Thus, the liberal media explain, those simple-minded anti-abortion activists are unwittingly defeating their own cause.

It follows, then, that abortion rates should be lowest in places where social conservatives have the least influence. Then why aren't they? According to New York City's Department of Health, 41 percent of all pregnancies there end in abortion. Planned Parenthood, feigning displeasure with that figure, is blaming it on the city schools for not embracing its preferred sex education curriculum. So you see, even in one of the most liberal cities in America, the frequency of abortion is the fault of those meddlesome right-wing Christians, as usual.

But wait a minute. The same week that the NYC health department report was published, the Alan Guttmacher Institute released its figures on the state-by-state abortion rates for 2008, the most recent year on record. The Guttmacher Institute was originally created as the research division of Planned Parenthood, and was named after a former president of that organization, so the pro-abortion side presumably wouldn't dispute its findings. The five highest per capita abortion rates were in the decisively blue states of Delaware, New York, New Jersey, Maryland and California. The five lowest were in Wyoming, Mississippi, Kentucky, South Dakota and Idaho.

How can the "don't call us pro-abortion" crowd look at those statistics, and still claim with straight faces to be striving to lower the abortion rate? If they say the carnage in New York City is due to a lack of liberal sex education, then how do they explain abortion rates being lowest in the Southern and Western red states, whose schools are not likely to invite Dr. Ruth Westheimer as a guest lecturer? It turns out they don't have to, because few in the media ever examine the pro-abortionists' claims, regardless of how counterintuitive they may be.

Only by indulging in mindless go-along-to-get-along bipartisan feelgoodism could anyone possibly expect abortion advocates to cooperate in lowering the abortion rate. Planned Parenthood owns and operates the largest chain of abortion clinics in the world. When their employees "counsel" pregnant women, they do not merely present abortion as one among several options, let alone as being less desirable than the others. Their job is to sell abortions. Crisis pregnancy centers that counsel women against abortion are stealing their customers. It should be needless to say that this arrangement precludes any cooperation between the two sides.

The only thing that disturbs the abortionists and abortion salesmen about a 41 percent abortion rate is the fact that it has been made public. That number represents not only a great deal of money to them, but also the fulfillment of their purpose, which is not "women's health" or "reproductive freedom," but population control. Sure, they promote contraception and sterilization for the same reason, but the effects of those things cannot be quantified. There's no way for them to know when they've prevented the birth of a child who's never existed. Only abortion provides them with affirmation of their success.

Considering the eugenic origins of Planned Parenthood, and the unabashed bigotry of its founder Margaret Sanger, that group must take New York's 60 percent abortion rate among blacks to be neither a surprise nor a cause for concern. Sanger once waged a birth control campaign she entitled, "The Negro Project." Its legacy evidently lives on.

For all the "safe, legal and rare" lip service that liberal Democrats give, they must be quietly pleased with the New York numbers as well. To a politician who views the role of government as provider for the people's every need, each new life is a managerial burden. Every abortion means one fewer person to feed, clothe, shelter, educate and insure. If you look at it that way, maintaining a high abortion rate is just sound management. Therefore, in parts of the country where big-government liberalism dominates, abortion faces few restrictions, receives lots of taxpayer funding, and runs rampant.

There's no such thing as an unintended consequence that has persisted for four decades. If abortion rates continue to boom in liberal cities and states after all these years, the only rational explanation is that liberals want it that way.

Return to Shinbone

 The Shinbone: The Frontier of the Free Press 

 Mailbag . Issue Index . Politimals