Do these people learn nothing? Do they open history books at all? Have they heard about critical thinking or, at least, common sense? Do they ever pause to think about how their bans influence people’s life?
The history tells us over and over that abortion ban leads to disastrous consequences for the nation where it’s introduced. Romania under Ceauşescu is the most tragic example of how the ban destroys rather than saves lives. As New York Times wrote in its Romania’s Communist Legacy: ‘Abortion Culture’ article:
“For more than two decades, contraception and abortions were strictly forbidden by Mr. Ceausescu in an attempt to build his country into a colossus through population growth. His government was overthrown in 1989, and one of its legacies was orphanages filled with unwanted and neglected children.
Another legacy of those horrific years, for Romania’s women, is abortion. Some 10,000 women are believed to die between 1965 and 1989 from complications of illegal or self-induced abortions, and many more were permanently maimed.”
Here is a short list of what abortion ban results in:
- Economic losses. People, who, for multiple reasons including financial situation and medical conditions, can’t afford a child, but can afford an abortion will find ways to do it. They will either travel to places where abortion is legal or invest into local illegal market of service providers. In both scenarios, the country endures economic losses because “abortion” money either leaves its economic system altogether or, being spent in the “black market”, fails to generate tax revenue.
- Damage to the general health of the population and a risk to undermine its reproductive capacity. As it happened in Romania, in countries with exiting abortion ban more women will die or have left with permanently damaged reproductive system due to complications of self-induced abortions or abortions provided by unauthorized and unregulated service providers.
- Decrease in quality of the population. The only people whose unplanned pregnancy will result in birth will be the ones who won’t be able to afford abortion, i.e. the poor. A child they can’t afford to educate or even feed will bring them to even deeper poverty. It will result in more family becoming poor or poorer and more kids born to poor families with limited or zero opportunities to raise healthy and educated citizens.
In short, abortion ban leads to economic losses, a decrease in quality of population, and a higher risk to the health and life of fertile women, an exact group within population that any country wants to preserve because the nation’s reproductive capacity depends on this group more than on any other groups.
Now, the big question is “Why?”. Why do politicians or, in this case, religions leaders, want to introduce abortion ban? What do they want to achieve? Is it to decrease the number of abortions to satisfy their supposedly existing humanistic impulses? Or, is it to force the growth of population, exactly what Stalin and Ceauşescu did in their time? In both cases, problems they are trying to solve are too complex, they have a systemic nature, and can’t be solved via such a straightforward, narrow-minded, and coercive methods like abortion ban.
And in general, banning as a method rarely helps to solve any problem because it tries to eliminate symptoms of the problem but never addresses the root causes of it. The problem of abortions is not abortions but the lack of access to birth control means and family planning help.
If our politicians and religion leaders do want to decrease the number of abortions, then they need to implement birth control programs, make oral and other types of contraceptives freely available, and open family planning centers and consultations.
If they want to promote population growth, then they need to implement state-sponsored assistance in the form of childcare centers, accessible medical care, maternity leave, and work protection so that women could combine raising families with work outside the home.
Unless you have these two things covered, enforcing abortion ban is irresponsible, short-sighted, and an act against humanity. If introduced, it will harm more lives than it will save.
I even think it should become an international law. Before a country can enact abortion ban, it has to show that (1) rape has been eliminated in the country and (2) family planning programs with guaranteed access to birth control contraceptives to women of all ages have been implemented throughout the country. Only after that can politicians and religions leaders enact abortion ban if they so please. But most likely there won’t be much to ban.