4 Major Lies About Abortion That Have Made Their Way Into Our Laws
4. Banning abortion is effective and won’t lead to unsafe procedures.
Legislation is, of course, intended to accomplish policy goals, and abortion opponents have been clear about their objective of lowering the number of women who have abortions. But the actual data suggests they’re not accomplishing this. Anti-abortion administrations have not successfully lowered the abortion rate despite advancing policies that restrict access to the procedure. Multiple studies have found that harsh abortion bans don’t lead to a fewer number of abortion procedures. In fact, restricting abortion is simply associated with a higher number of unsafe procedures.Even so, lawmakers are able to get people on the witness stand to argue otherwise. For instance, Michael J. New, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, has testified before Congress in support of imposing additional restrictions on minors seeking abortions — which he argues will protect public health by lowering the number of teens who go through with the procedure. And proponents of new state laws frequently cite dubious research conducted by Elard S. Koch, an epidemiologist in Chile who has argued that his country’s harsh abortion ban has no relationship to maternal mortality.
The lack of real evidence in this area hasn’t prevented this from becoming a major theme in the way that the anti-choice community talks about abortion policy. Lawmakers almost always suggest that their proposed restrictions will ultimately lead fewer women to choose to end a pregnancy. And right-wing activists claim that the data about botched back alley abortions in the years before Roe v. Wade has simply been inflated.
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