I'm going to warn you: once I get started talking about abortion, it's not something I'm likely to let go
Basically, my position is this:
abortion is an irrelevant issue -- at least in terms of the way politicians talk about it. Both liberals and conservatives are to blame for this. It's an easy political tool to manipulate. You mention abortion, and people have instinctual, gut-reaction answers to the question. It's an
incredibly easy issue to politicize. And people fall for it because almost
everyone has an opinion on it.
What people need to do is stop having such a narrow focus on simply abortion, and look at the bigger picture. Yes, a nation with a high rate of abortions has a problem. But this problem is just a symptom of an even bigger problem that liberals
and conservatives simply fail to address.
The reason the abortion rate in the United States is so high is because
The United States has the highest rate of teen pregnancies in the developed world. Here's a pretty good
source on that, if you need one. Yes, the U.S. has a high teen abortion rate. But it's also got a high teen birth rate. You can't just look at abortions, because that's a very narrow focus on a very widespread problem. Teens have abortions because teens get pregnant. If we reduce the number of teenage pregnancies in a country, we effectively reduce the abortion rate
AND the teen birth rate -- a problem very few politicians seem to care anything about (because we all know an epidemic of teens having babies would be much better than an epidemic of teens having abortions :roll
Simply making abortion illegal, though a high minded endeavour, wouldn't accomplish squat in terms of reducing the teen birth rate. Okay, abortions aren't a good thing. But are teens with babies a good thing? I'm not going to say which is a better thing because we
shouldn't have to. It's presumptious of us to simply combat teen birth with making abortions more widely available, or combating abortions so that more teens have kids. It's a pointless judgement call between two not-good answers, and unfortunately they're the only two arguments politicians ever make.
What we need is to reduce
teen pregnancies. Fighting simply one or the other is pointless. Fight both by reducing the source of the problem in the first place. The reason countries like Belgium have a teen pregnancy rate of about 17 per 1000 (I know that's not in that link, but it's in a book I'm holding -- you'll have to trust me) compared to the U.S.'s 84 or so is because of
education and
availability of contraception. Contraception is stigmatized in the U.S. Sex education exists, but it's mostly about anatomy and lessons about abstinance (which, though affective among teens who follow it, is completely irrelevant to the many,
many who won't). Teenagers need to be taught about condoms, birth control, etc. and have these things
available. All this talk lately about pharmacists who refuse to dispense the pill --
Does anyone really see that as a step in the right direction? The United States has a very severe problem on its hands in the form of teen pregnancy, and it's not recognized. People merely attack abortion because it's a much more clear-cut, right-or-wrong type of issue.
I don't like abortion either, but the way politicians, religious leaders, and organizations like planned parenthood talk about it, the issue is absolutely irrelevent. You
can't just focus on abortion. It's not that simple. And ultimately, it's probably the worst way to fight it.