I hardly have to introduce this blog post. The United States is heated, the world is buzzing, and you have come with a variety of arguments, and are expecting me to hit specific points that you’re ready to fight against. Well, chances are you’re unfamiliar with me since I’m a nobody blogger, so let me just say I might not be completely unbiased but I do approach things logically and I could care less about political affiliations.
I’m neither pro-choice, or pro-life, because its really none of my business as a gay man. Unfortunately, other men can’t seem to be as humble and gracious as me so let me pull up the numbers for both sides and help people get some perspective. Here I’m going to bring up a lot of the common arguments and see if the numbers line up. Spoilers, most of the incorrect arguments come from the Right, so I’m going to be covering those.
P.S. I’m going to be speaking specifically about straight women because the studies I linked listed less than 5% of pregnant patients getting abortions were lesbian, bisexual, and/or non-binary (trans people were not listed at all), but yes, more than just cis straight women can get pregnant.
Religion
The Christians are loudest, as always, so I feel required to speak about their greatest issues with abortions. First, they believe its a sin committed by godless people, yet according to the Guttmacher Institute, 24% of abortions were received by Catholic women, 17% by mainline Protestant, 13% Evangelical, and 8% other. I’m not like most media though, I’m not much for hiding information to drive my point or spark fear, so I will disclose this was data collected in 2014 from a pool of 11,000 abortions. I use more recent data from a much larger sample size later in this blog but I thought this was an important starting point.
I understand that for some religions intercourse before marriage is a sin as well, but 14% of the total 11,000 abortions previously mentioned were also married, so it’s hardly single sinners out there that are getting abortions. Many other religions also require people put the mother’s life above the child’s, and I’m pretty sure there are protections for religious freedoms for more than just Christians.
I can’t say much for saying its a sin to murder these fetuses, but about half of abortions are done at or before six weeks according to the CDC (2019, 600,000+ abortions). The egg and sperm have barely began to form into an embryo (because its scientifically not considered a fetus at this point), and more life is lost in an ejaculation from masturbation than an embryo that isn’t even guaranteed to survive past this stage.
I’m not here to attack any religion, like I said Christians are the loud minority in the United States, but this seems to be one of the biggest driving factor for people so I just wanted to explain that they aren’t fighting against atheists who refuse to abstain from sex. Most often the demographics of who are getting abortions would shock people who want to make it illegal to get one.
Who are getting abortions?
I’m not really sure why this would matter, but for a lot of people it does. People seem eager to smack down the promiscuous godless millennials for getting repeated abortions. We already covered how the religion-less aspect wasn’t true, but just to drive the point home, only 38% of the Guttmacher Institute’s pool of 11,000 patients didn’t put any religious affiliation. To add onto the previous 14% who were married, 31% were “co-habiting” meaning a whopping 45% were monogamous and in a serious relationship. Yes, 60% were in their 20’s, but according to the CDC (again, this is 2019 data!) 8.8% of abortions were had by girls 19 or younger (1,410 were younger than 15).
Additionally, this idea of somehow abusing abortions repeatedly just isn’t true. 58% of abortions in 2019 were women who were having their very first abortion, with about 24% having their second, 11% their third, and only 8% fourth or higher (all percentages rounded up, obviously, for those of you ready to say that adds up to 101%). I should also mention that while 40% had zero previous live births, 25% had one previous live birth, 20% had two, 9% three, and 6% four or more.
The numbers clearly show that abortions aren’t being used by the demographic pro-life seems to think. In fact, its quite ironic that their stance is they want to protect babies when 38.4% of 2019’s abortions were by black women, and 21% by Hispanic. The Guttmacher Institute’s study also showed that three-fourths of abortions are low-income patients. All in all, it seems these babies would only be protected in the womb and quickly forgotten by pro-lifers once they are born.
Unfortunately there aren’t any stats I could find on if an abortion was needed due to medical complications with the pregnancy, or if the pregnancy was due to rape, but you should be aware that these are factors in these kinds of issues.
Democracy
Since Roe V Wade was overturned, you might suspect that there’s a majority of people who wanted abortion to be illegal. According to Pew Research Center, more than 58% of and 63% of women believe abortion should be legal, at least in most cases. These numbers aren’t perfect, because I certainly wasn’t polled about this, but overwhelmingly numbers anywhere will show you that the Supreme Court did not take majority into consideration.
We are supposed to be a nation of democracy where majority rules, yet this decision was made despite the majority being firmly against it. Catholicism is also not the majority in the U.S. and even within the religion there are people who are pro-choice. For as “anti-tyrannical government” the Right claim to be, they certainly are letting the government be very tyrannical.
Solutions
People immediately jump to adoption, but its pretty common knowledge that our current foster care system is in shambles. Overpopulated, understaffed, terrible homes. I recommend doing some research if you don’t believe me, but these aren’t the numbers we’re here to talk about today.
The other obvious solution is abstinence, but as previously mentioned, many women who get abortions are partnered and even married. To tell married couples to abstain from intercourse because they don’t want children, or worse can’t afford children, turns intercourse into a luxury for the wealthy or those able to avoid pregnancy. Yes, there are preventative measures (for now, it seems the Right might be targeting those next) but those aren’t 100% effective and there are also alarmingly high cases of rape. Women of all demographics are at risk of being raped, I also recommend looking those numbers up. Therefore simply abstaining from intercourse, or using protection, just isn’t a solution for a majority of abortions.
The only real solution is to leave abortion legal, because not only is it healthcare that saves lives, but the CDC shows that abortion has been on the decline in the past couple decades. Sex education and accessible birth control and protection have helped with preventative care, making abortions less needed.
In conclusion, all the arguments I’ve seen from pro-lifers have been incredibly misinformed and driven by anger and malice. They want to take away rights from people who they see as abusing the system or something, and its simply not true. Most women have even been show to pay out of pocket for abortions, so it literally doesn’t affect pro-lifers at all. Your tax money isn’t being used for abortions, people aren’t murdering children for fun, and believe what you want of your religion but you have no right to say if someone “sins” or not. There are clearly actual evils going on in the world that you are much better fighting against, like rape (which is especially prevalent in the churches).