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Where the Rubber Meets RoeThe pro-life case for contraception.

By William Saletan
Updated Saturday, Sept. 30, 2006, at 8:07 AM ET

The issue that never changes is finally changing.

If you're one of the millions of Americans who don't like abortion but also don't like the idea of banning it, good news is on the way. In the last three weeks, two bills have been filed in the House of Representatives. Without banning a single procedure, they aim to significantly lower the rate of abortions performed in this country. Voluntary reduction, not criminalization or moral silence, is the new approach.

How do you stop abortions without restricting them? One way is to persuade women to complete their pregnancies instead of terminating them. The other is to prevent unintended pregnancies in the first place. And there's the rub—or, in this case, the rubber. The two House bills used to be one proposal, backed by an alliance of pro-life lawmakers and organizations. The alliance split because one faction wanted to fund contraception and the other didn't.

In short, the good news is that we no longer have to fight about abortion. The bad news is that we're now fighting about contraception. The old question was abortion as birth control. The new question is abortion or birth control. To lower the abortion rate, we need more contraception. And that means confronting politicians who stand in the way.

In the last two years, Hillary Clinton, NARAL Pro-Choice America, and many pro-choice House Democrats have conceded that abortion is tragic and that its frequency must be reduced. Third Way, a progressive think tank, has pushed hard in this direction.

Meanwhile, Democrats for Life of America, which has eight members of Congress on its advisory board and works with 30 more, has devised a plan to cut the abortion rate by 95 percent "by helping and supporting pregnant women." Rep. Tim Ryan, D-Ohio, was set to lead the charge.

Then Ryan looked at the data and realized that to get anywhere near their target, he and his pro-life colleagues would have to provide more birth control. That's when the squirming began.

Some of Ryan's allies worried that morning-after pills might prevent embryos from implanting, so he omitted such pills from his bill. They opposed requiring private insurers to offer contraceptive coverage, so he took that out, too. They complained that other pregnancy-prevention bills hadn't emphasized abortion reduction, so he put abortion reduction in the title. They wanted sex education programs to emphasize abstinence; they got it. The only troublesome thing left in the bill was birth control.

It broke the deal. Democrats for Life abandoned Ryan and launched a contraceptive-free alternative. With it went Americans United for Life, the National Association of Evangelicals, and 13 pro-life House Democrats, led by Rep. James Oberstar, the Democratic co-chairman of the Congressional Pro-life Caucus. Ryan added his name to their bill, but they refused to add their names to his. Focus on the Family, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Rush Limbaugh, and Rep. Chris Smith, the Republican co-chairman of the Pro-life Caucus, excoriated Ryan's bill. The Catholic Diocese of Youngstown, Ohio, based in Ryan's district, sent him a letter asking him to withdraw it.

The objectors make several arguments. They point out that birth-control pills, like morning-after pills, can block implantation of an embryo. But there's no evidence that this has ever happened. The risk is theoretical, and breast-feeding poses the same risk, so you'd have to stamp that out, too. Critics also note that many birth-control methods can fail. That's true, but it's an argument for using two methods, not zero.

Third, they protest that federal family-planning money supports Planned Parenthood, which performs abortions. In fact, however, only 14 percent of this money goes to Planned Parenthood, and fewer than 9 percent of Planned Parenthood clients go there for abortions. So, even if Planned Parenthood diverted family-planning funds to abortion—which would be illegal—we're talking about a tiny fraction of the money.

Above all, the critics insist that contraception will backfire. As the Youngstown Diocese puts it, "Promotion of contraception leads to more extra-marital sexual intercourse, which leads to more unwanted pregnancies, which leads to more abortions."

There's a thread of logic to this argument. It's facile to assert, as some liberals do, that contraceptives don't cause sex any more than umbrellas cause rain. The belief that you're protected does make it easier to say yes. But denying that contraceptives reduce your risk of pregnancy is as crazy as denying that an umbrella reduces your risk of getting wet.

Does the increased risk from more sex outweigh the decreased risk from more protection? Do the math. On average, contraception lowers your odds of pregnancy by a factor of seven. If you're capable of having seven times as much sex, congratulations. The rest of us will get pregnant less often, not more.

And that's what the data show. Ryan's bill targets women with family incomes below 200 percent of the poverty rate, since they have higher rates of unintended pregnancy and more difficulty finding or affording contraception. Among these women, the percentage using contraception declined from 1995 to 2002. As predicted by contraception opponents, the rate of sexual activity also declined, though only slightly. Even better, from a pro-life standpoint, when these women got pregnant unintentionally, the percentage who chose abortion fell.

Less contraception, less sex, more women choosing life. So, the abortion rate among these women went down, right?

Wrong. It went up. The decline in contraception overwhelmed the decline in sexual activity, resulting in a higher rate of unintended pregnancy. And the increase in unintended pregnancy overwhelmed the increase in women choosing life, resulting in more abortions. From a pro-life standpoint, trading contraception for abstinence and a "culture of life" was a net loss.

That's why Ryan insists on birth control. He's tired of pious slogans and symbolic bills crafted to save more congressional seats than babies. He's had enough of the debate between life and choice. He wants a new abortion debate. "You're either for reducing the number, or you're not," he says. He's made his decision. Now make yours.

A version of this article also appears in the Outlook section of the Sunday Washington Post.

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William Saletan is Slate's national correspondent and author of Bearing Right: How Conservatives Won the Abortion War.
Photograph of birth-control pills on Slate's home page by Burke/Triolo Productions.
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Remarks from the Fray:

It seems that in this case, abortion and contraception are really just the crux points in a larger clash of values.

One point of view suggests that people are evaluated by their economic status, that they are worth what they earn, and that happiness flows from money. As a result, freeing women (and even men) from work that is not rewarded economically is the ultimate way to give them value, pleasure and enhanced 'humanity.' This point of view suggests that people need the most control possible over when they have children, especially restricting it. Even better is to give them control over what sort of children they have, when they do, because a child is such a big purchase that parents should be able to get the maximum pleasure from each child. This logic is also generally combined with 'life begins at the ability to spend money' or something similar - that is, that life is only important so much as it comes with concious communication, perception, and productivity. If a person who is not making much money is worth less than a person who makes lots of money, how much less valuable is a baby who makes no money, an old person who can't work anymore, or a fetus, who doesn't have much relation to money at all? The logical extension is that abortion is only bad in so much as it is inconvenient and risky, causing women pain and lost work days. In reality, any strategy that controls birth is great because it makes all people equal and allows them unfettered access to the pursuit of happiness.

A second set of values is less about economics and more about allowing men and women to have sex with equal degrees of risk. The idea is that freedom from fear of disease and unwanted children will make for free and equal sex lives among both men and women, so both need forms of birth control they can implement, so that their partner has nothing to hang over their heads. It is about making sex risk free, obligation free, enjoyable by all at all times. Further, the idea that unwanted children are unhappy children continues the thought. All of this points to the idea that though abortion may be unfortunate, painful, and cause psychological damage to the parents who have to make that choice, it is an option to be considered - however, it is better to avoid the whole issue and use contraception assiduously, until one wants to 'try to have a baby,' at which point any strategy to have one is acceptable as well.

The third point of view suggests that happiness, sex, family, they all come of one piece. The way to happiness is to be valued as a person, the way to be valued as a person is to value other people. Children need to be welcomed into the world whenever and whereever they arrive, and this is not something to manipulate - because manipulation forces the situation into a position of dehumanizing the child, or even the parents. From this persepctive, the first view dehumanizes everyone by making them into money machines. From this position the second view pursues pleasure instead of happiness because it views people as sextoys, or sex objects, rather than as people to be committed to and sex as a unified mechanism for intimacy during commitment with openness to new life. Basically, this third view is held only by Catholics.

Anyway, because the debate is over anthropology, not really just abortion or contraception, it is impossible to resolve it by simply reasoning about abortion or contraception.

--BenK

(To reply, click here.)

There are other steps that both parties ought to be able to agree on that could help reduce the number of abortions in this country. I'm not suggesting federal programs for all of these, but even at the local level:

-- Better provisions for maternity/paternity leave.
-- Better childcare options.
-- Less stigma to single/unwed parents.
-- Better sex education, and better recognition of the fact that young people, in particular, are sexual beings. Telling them not to do it ain't enough.

And so forth. It seems like a lot of people are far more interested in yelling back and forth at each other about first principles.

I'm not sure the choice is quite so stark as Saletan implies at the end of the article. It seems to me there could be all sorts of morally justifiable arguments for thinking that certain circumstances for abortion/forms of birth control are preferable to others, and thus to have complicated reactions to various policy issues.

--august

(To reply, click here.)

(9/30)

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