Conventional wisdom -- please do not disturb!

Clayton Cramer notes that there were plenty of abortions before Roe v. Wade -- and that there may have been more than there are now.

....even before Roe v. Wade (1973), Oregon theoretically made abortion unlawful except to save the life or health of the mother--and yet still had 199 abortions per 1000 live births in 1970. Does anyone really believe that 1/6th of all pregnancies in Oregon required an abortion for the life or health of the mother? You can pass laws, but if a large fraction of the population strongly disagrees, that law will be disobeyed unless you have a very powerful police presence trying to enforce it. Think back to the national 55 mph speed limit, or most restrictive gun control laws.
I'm reminded of the situation in Pennsylvania, which had similar laws to Oregon's, as did most states. I don't know what the Pennsylvania statistics from the period are, but I do know that as a practical matter it was very easy to obtain an abortion -- provided the individual woman (or her family) had the money to pay for it.

The key operative word here is "health" -- which doctors were free to interpret in any way they wanted. Most "therapeutic abortions" were done for MENTAL health reasons. A psychiatrist's opinion would be obtained through a referral (fee splitting of course occurred in those days), and all he needed to do was state that the abortion would prevent damage to the woman's mental health. (Emotional distress would result from pregnancy, arguably more than would result now because of the stigma and resultant family pressures.)

Cramer also links his earlier post on the same topic, in which he concluded that the pre-Roe statistics were "disturbing to the conventional wisdom":

If you believe that Roe v. Wade started a deluge of murdering babies, then why was the abortion rate so high in states that pro-lifers would consider civilized? Does anyone seriously believe that 16% of Oregon pregnancies required an abortion for the life or health of the mother? It should be obvious that a lot of those were elective abortions, disguised as being for "the life or health of the mother."

If you believe that before Roe, America was a barbarous place where women had to get backstreet abortions (except for the five "enlightened" states of Alaska, California, Hawaii, New York, and Washington), then you need to explain why the abortion rates in some of the states with severe abortion restrictions were higher than the abortion rates in the states that allowed abortion on demand.

I find this data fascinating, and disturbing to the conventional wisdom.

I don't think either side in the abortion debate especially wants any of this publicized, and I think it's worth examining why.

The pro-abortion people like to paint the pre-Roe world as a patriarchal hell in which oppressed women were either forced to bear unwanted children or else resort to "coat hanger abortions." The anti-abortion people paint the pre-Roe world as governed by the type of values often portrayed in 1930s movies (aka "traditional values" -- but never mind the less traditional 1920s), in which those few women who might get pregnant out of wedlock would never have had abortions because a Godly America would not allow it.

The truth is unpalatable to both of these "conventional wisdoms."

Conventional narratives is what they are.

More accurately, they're activist narratives. Over time, such narratives come to dominate all discussion and debate, because it's risky for non-activists to contradict activists. Once the narratives have taken over, they become the conventional wisdom. (The more conventional the wisdom, the less wise it is to dispute it.)

UPDATE: Clayton Cramer stresses in the comments below that he did not say that there were more abortions before Roe than there are now. What he said was "there were more abortions per 1000 live births than in the five states that had made abortion available on demand."

Last year, Megan McArdle discussed the statistics -- which are surprisingly difficult to come by.

UPDATE (07/19/07): Instapunk has done a huge amount of research into the actual numbers, concluding that this post was seriously in error to state that "there may have been more than there are now." Correction noted.

My main point in writing this was to state what I remember personally about therapeutic abortions being easy to obtain in Pennsylvania. They were. As to the statistics, how accurate they are or were, and how well they were kept, I simply don't know. (In those days, doctors were able to do a lot of things off the record in ways that would be impossible now.)

The ever-reliable Clayton Cramer cleared up what I had misunderstood yesterday, and I updated my post last night to reflect that. The Instapunk post (while critical of Clayton Cramer, M. Simon, and me) is huge, and worth a detailed examination, which I do not have time for right now. Last night, though, I noticed that there are statistics all over the place in this debate.

Right now, I retract my statement that "there may have been more than there are now," because unless Instapunk's data are way off, he has showed that the rate and number of abortions increased -- and substantially -- after Roe v. Wade.

All who are interested in the data, be sure to read Instapunk's post. Anyone with anything to add, feel free to chime in.

(BTW, I have no particular axe to grind in this debate, as I am a states' rights type who is morally opposed to abortion, but uncomfortable with the idea of imprisoning women. I just enjoyed Cramer's post and added my mistaken thoughts.)

UPDATE: In a later post, Clayton Cramer notes correctly that I misread his earlier post, which is true. However, I did not read it as a "defense of Roe v. Wade (1973)." Not only do I know very well that Cramer is against Roe, but as a federalist, I'm against it too! What I did read into Cramer's thoughts were my own very hurried speculations (triggered by my memories of the "therapeutic abortion" phenomenon in Pennsylvania). I do not think it is possible to obtain accurate data on pre-Roe abortions, though, (which has nothing to do with the advisability of Roe v. Wade).

I have already noted my mistake, and I can only offer my sincere apology to Clayton Cramer, whose excellent research should not be in any way besmirched by my hurried misreading of it!

posted by Eric on 07.17.07 at 01:47 PM





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"If we can't stop abortion when it's legal, we'll never stop it when it's illegal."

A good friend of mine--deeply conservative, religious, and pro-life--said these wise words to me a few years ago, and I agree.

Abortion will never go away, period. To reduce it to tolerable levels (that is, to eliminate most or all of the abortions that are performed for what are essentially "convenience" reasons) will require a change of heart by the American people as a whole.

There are two models for this that come to mind: slavery, and smoking.

Prior to the Civil War, there was no solution to the problem of slavery. But once the war was over, slavery wasn't on the table anymore: whereas as late as 1861, a national politician could plausibly argue for some solution that allowed slavery to exist in at least part of the Union, afterwards, this simply wasn't on the table, *even in the Deep South*. Notwithstanding the awfulness of the black codes, notwithstanding the horrors of the vioence against blacks in the post-bellum south, there were never again going to be slaves. The laws protecting the freedmen might have been enforced badly or not at all, but they were there, slumbering against the day when they'd be used.

That took almost a century.

Smoking, on the other hand, used to be considered "cool": everyone did it, it was glamorous, you were making a fashion statement by smoking. That was the way things were as late as the 1960s when I was growing up. Today, smoking is almost extinct, not because of the silly anti-smoking laws that have been passed in various jurisdictions, but because it's now considered vulgar, in bad taste.

Here's wishing, hoping, and praying that--as technology, and popular awareness of the humanity of the unborn progress, often hand in hand--the day may come that abortion for other than valid lifesaving necessity will be considered vulgar and in bad taste.

David Hecht   ·  July 17, 2007 02:46 PM

Might could be that the "abortion" statistics from back in the day included miscarriages (for which the technical term is, I believe, "spontaneous abortions").

One in five seems awfully high for elective abortions, especially if it was illegal. (It may still be high if one includes miscarriages, but I don't know one way or another).

In any event, it is worth someone checking out these alleged facts before drawing many conclusions from them.

rodander   ·  July 17, 2007 05:29 PM

rodander,

I'm told drugs are illegal in America.

I also hear that there are 10 or 15 million regular dug users in America and about 1/2 the population under 60 has dabbled.

How is that possible?

I mean, don't Americans obey the laws any more?

We are the sons and daughters of rebels and misfits. In America no one is going to behave in any way other than to do what s/he sees fit.

It is what makes America great.

M. Simon   ·  July 18, 2007 11:27 AM

Uh, no. Those were therapeutic (doctor performed) abortions.

It is very fashionable in some circles to say that laws don't change anything. If that were true, pro-choice groups would not object to passing abortion bans or restrictions.

I'm not advocating a general ban on abortion--but it would definitely make a huge difference in the number of abortions. Even though there would be women that would seek out and have illegal abortions, it would not come even close to the number of legal abortions.

1. No one could advertise abortion services.

2. Doctors would be risking prison and loss of their license if caught and convicted. Even doctors who are very committed to abortion are going to think long and hard before setting up an abortion practice if it is unlawful.

3. There are women who right now might think long and hard about an abortion now, and get one, who would decide that the risks of having it done illegally are too high. What if there are complications, and she ends up in an emergency room? It will be obvious what happened.

Laws do change behavior. Sometimes they create problems that are even larger than the problems that the law was trying to fix, but laws change behavior.

Clayton E. Cramer   ·  July 18, 2007 10:13 PM

Just to be clear on this: I have not claimed that there were as many or more abortions before Roe v. Wade as there were after. But in some states where abortion was theoretically illegal except to save the life or health of the mother, they had very high rates of abortion.

Abortion rates definitely rose after Roe v. Wade--although there is some evidence that they were already rising, even in places like Oregon that supposedly made abortion hard to get.

Another point: while abortion ended an enormous number of pregnancies, there was a pretty big rise in all pregnancies after Roe v. Wade. It wasn't enough to compensate for the rise in abortions, so there was still a net reduction in birth rates. The increase in pregnancies suggests that with abortion available as backup birth control, a lot of men and women became a bit less careful about contraception than they had before.

Clayton E. Cramer   ·  July 18, 2007 10:24 PM

Instapunk has a long and detailed entry about this post. You and your commenters should read it and give it some thought:

http://www.instapunk.com/archives/InstaPunkArchiveV2.php3?a=1081

sigmazrn   ·  July 19, 2007 04:15 PM

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