[Whether he responds effectively or not, you decide.]
Washington Post, 3/14/10
Universal health care tends to cut the abortion rate
T.R. Reid
Countless arguments have been advanced for and against the pending bills to increase health-care coverage.
Both sides have valid concerns, which makes the battle tight. But one
prominent argument is illogical. The contention that opponents of
abortion should oppose the current proposals to expand coverage simply
doesn't make sense.
Increasing health-care coverage is one of the most powerful tools
for reducing the number of abortions -- a fact proved by years of
experience in other industrialized nations. All the other advanced,
free-market democracies provide health-care coverage for everybody. And
all of them have lower rates of abortion than does the United States.
This is not a coincidence. There's a direct connection between
greater health coverage and lower abortion rates. To oppose expanded
coverage in the name of restricting abortion gets things exactly
backward. It's like saying you won't fix the broken furnace in a
schoolhouse because you're against pneumonia. Nonsense! Fixing the
furnace will reduce the rate of pneumonia. In the same way, expanding
health-care coverage will reduce the rate of abortion.
At least, that's the lesson from every other rich democracy.
The latest United Nations comparative statistics, available at http://data.un.org,
demonstrate the point clearly. The U.N. data measure the number of
abortions for women ages 15 to 44. They show that Canada, for example,
has 15.2 abortions per 1,000 women; Denmark, 14.3; Germany, 7.8; Japan,
12.3; Britain, 17.0; and the United States, 20.8. When it comes to
abortion rates in the developed world, we're No. 1.
No one could argue that Germans, Japanese, Brits or Canadians have
more respect for life or deeper religious convictions than Americans
do. So why do they have fewer abortions?
One key reason seems to be that all those countries provide health
care for everybody at a reasonable cost. That has a profound effect on
women contemplating what to do about an unwanted pregnancy.
The connection was explained to me by a wise and holy man, Cardinal
Basil Hume. He was the senior Roman Catholic prelate of England and
Wales when I lived in London; as a reporter and a Catholic, I got to
know him.
In Britain, only 8 percent of the population is Catholic (compared
with 25 percent in the United States). Abortion there is legal.
Abortion is free. And yet British women have fewer abortions than
Americans do. I asked Cardinal Hume why that is.
The cardinal said that there were several reasons but that one
important explanation was Britain's universal health-care system. "If
that frightened, unemployed 19-year-old knows that she and her child
will have access to medical care whenever it's needed," Hume explained,
"she's more likely to carry the baby to term. Isn't it obvious?"
A young woman I knew in Britain added another explanation. "If
you're [sexually] active," she said, "the way to avoid abortion is to
avoid pregnancy. Most of us do that with an IUD or a diaphragm. It
means going to the doctor. But that's easy here, because anybody can go
to the doctor free."
For various reasons, then, expanding health-care coverage reduces
the rate of abortion. All the other industrialized democracies figured
that out years ago. The failure to recognize this plain statistical
truth may explain why American churches have played such a small role
in our national debate on health care. Searching for ways to limit
abortions, our faith leaders have managed to overlook a proven approach
that's on offer now: expanding health-care coverage.
When I studied health-care systems overseas in research for a book,
I asked health ministers, doctors, economists and others in all the
rich countries why their nations decided to provide health care for
everybody. The answers were medical (universal care saves lives),
economic (universal care is cheaper), political (the voters like it),
religious (it's what Christ commanded) and moral (it's the right thing
to do). And in every country, people told me that universal health-care
coverage is desirable because it reduces the rate of abortion.
It's only in the United States that opponents of abortion are
fighting against expanded health-care coverage -- a policy step that
has been proved around the world to limit abortions.
T.R. Reid, a longtime correspondent for The Post, is the author of "The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care."
Many MOJ readers may want to read pages 1278-1290 of the March issue of the Harvard Law Review: "The State Action Doctrine and the Establishment Clause" ... which is part of a long Developments Note: "Developments in the Law--State Action and the Public/Private Distinction," 123 HLR 1248 (2010).
Michael agrees (I gather) with the following statement of Cardinal Hume:
“If that frightened, unemployed 19-year-old knows that she and her child will have access to medical care whenever it’s needed, she’s more likely to carry the baby to term. Isn’t it obvious?”
Is the suggestion that, because this observation is "obvious", that the current health-insurance-reform proposal(s) will / might / could reduce abortions and -- putting aside non-abortion-related doubts about the wisdom / efficiency / costs of these proposal(s) -- should / may / must therefore be supported s about the wisdom of the bill?
I agree with Michael that "the facts matter" -- in this and all other debates -- and so I would love to know the answers to questions like, for example, "How does the marginal increase in the number of 'frightened, unemployed 19-year-old(s)' who do not at present have "access to medical care", who know that (several years from now, under the current proposals) '[they] and [their] child[ren] will have access to medical care', and who therefore might choose not to abort their children compare to the marginal increase in the number of women who will abort their children -- and who otherwise might not -- if those abortions are (directly or indirectly) subsidized?" I do not know the answer to this question.
Not, I think, what Archbishop Chaput is doing. But decide for yourself: read this article.
... Seana Valentine Shiffrin, who is a distinguished philosopher at
UCLA and also the Pete Kameron Professor of Law and Social Justice at
UCLA Law, has a masterful essay in the March issue of the Harvard Law Review: "Inducing Moral Deliberation: On the Occasional Virtues of Fog," 123 HLR 1214.
Tim Jost (who is a devout Mennonite) and I overlapped at Ohio State during the 1981-82 academic year. dotCommonweal is emphasizing Tim's response to the USCCB:
Jost answers the USCCB’s prolife office
March 15, 2010, 6:36 pm
Posted by Matthew Boudway
Until today, this memo by
Timothy Stoltzfus Jost of Washington and Lee law school, was the best
analysis of the Senate bill’s abortion language I had seen. Now the
best analysis I’ve seen is his response to the USCCB’s critique
of that memo. (Strangely, the USCCB’s critique was posted not on their
own Web site but on that of the National Right to Life Committee.)
Jost’s response is a model of courtesy, scruple, and analytical
sobriety. He looks at every feverish speculation advanced by prolife
opponents of the Senate bill and heads it off at the pass. He offers
the economic and historical context without which it is impossible to
understand what’s really at stake. He offers good prolife reasons to
support the Senate bill (now the only bill worth talking about). And
all the while he manages, quite remarkably, not to lose his temper with
those who have made and repeated dubious claims even after they’ve been
corrected.
[Read the rest, here.]
[This, from Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog.]
I
meant to post something several weeks ago about the Supreme Court's
outrageous decision striking down limits on corporate spending on
elections, but other events overtook my efforts. The best explanation of the decision and the issues I have seen comes from my colleague Geoffrey Stone, a leading First Amendment expert. Senator Feingold (Wisconsin) has a straightforward commentary. This statement is quite fair about the import of the decision and about its radical character.
It is obviously a disaster for a country that, qua putative
democracy, is already a mess. It's hard to imagine that the U.S. could
become more of a naked plutocracy than it already is, but I guess we're
about to find out.
March 15, 2010, 3:51 pm
Posted by Grant Gallicho
“If
that frightened, unemployed 19-year-old knows that she and her child
will have access to medical care whenever it’s needed, she’s more
likely to carry the baby to term. Isn’t it obvious?” — Cardinal Basil
Hume to T. R. Reid, as reported in Reid’s Washington Post column, “Universal Health Care Tends to Cut the Abortion Rate.”
