More Evidence of Abortion Declines Among America's Youth

By Michael J. New, Ph.D.

 

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One of the most heartening trends for pro-lifers has been the steady, consistent decline in the number of abortions being performed in the United States. While the number of abortions increased steadily throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the numbers have declined almost every year since 1990.

 

Overall, among states consistently reporting data, the number of abortions has declined by an impressive 20% between 1990 and 2003.

 

Although the decline in the overall incidence of abortion during the 1990s and the early part of this decade has been reported, scant attention has been paid to the incidence of abortion among minors, which has been declining at an even faster rate. According to the 37 states reporting minor abortion data to the Centers for Disease Control in both 1990 and 2003, the number of abortions performed on minors fell by almost 40%.

 

Data from the Alan Guttmacher Institute--Planned Parenthood's think-tank--tells a similar story. Overall, it appears that teenagers today are about 40% less likely to have abortions as their predecessors were 15 years ago, a stunning decline which has received much less fanfare that it ought to have.

 

What is the cause for this dramatic decline? There are many possible reasons. Numerous studies, including one from the Centers for Disease Control, indicate that young people are becoming more likely to abstain from sex or to delay sexual activity until later in life. This has undoubtedly played a role in the abortion decline among teens.

 

However, another key factor that cannot be overlooked is the impact of pro-life legislation at the state level. During the 1990s, the number of states with parental involvement laws increased from 20 to 32.

 

Parental involvement laws are especially relevant to the teen abortion decline. Such laws require minors seeking abortions to either notify a parent (or parents) or receive permission from their parents before having an abortion, or obtain a judicial bypass.

 

Many mainstream media outlets have called into question the effectiveness of parental involvement laws. On March 6, 2006, for example, the New York Times ran a front page story claiming that six recently passed parental involvement laws in Arizona, Idaho, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia had done little to reduce the incidence of abortion among minors.

 

However, the analysis conducted by the Times was very superficial. In fact, the Times' reporters considered very little data from the states they were analyzing.

 

Virtually the same day a study appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine that demonstrated that among Texas teenage girls, abortion rates dropped significantly after the enactment of a parental notification law.

 

In June 2006, the Heritage Foundation released my detailed analysis of the six parental involvement laws under-analyzed by the Times. When I collected more data from each of the six states and analyzed it in a more rigorous way, there was solid evidence to suggest that each of these parental involvement laws was effective at reducing the incidence of abortion among minors.

 

Furthermore, last month, the Heritage Foundation released a more comprehensive study of mine, which provides further evidence of the positive impact of parental involvement laws. This study analyzed teen abortion rates from 40 states from every year from 1985 to 1999 and held constant a variety of demographic and economic factors. (See www.heritage.org/Research/Family/cda07-01.cfm.)

 

The results indicate that parental involvement laws reduce the number of abortions performed on minors by around 16%. Furthermore, the results also indicate that other pro-life laws, especially restrictions on Medicaid funding of abortions, also substantially reduce the number of abortions performed on minors.

 

Critics argue such laws really do not affect the number of teen abortions--that it's all due to other cultural factors. But we have a ready-made, "natural" test: Compare states whose parental involvement laws went into effect with states whose laws were blocked by judicial rulings.

 

The Heritage study compared those laws that were nullified by judges to laws that actually took effect. Nullified laws have only a negligible impact on the number of abortions performed on minors. Enacted laws resulted in substantial declines of around 16% or 17%.

 

This provides further evidence that parental involvement laws are actually causing these abortion declines and not changes in values or mores that happen to be correlated with the passage of these laws.

 

Overall, the progress that the pro-life movement has made in the 1990s has continued into the current decade.

 

Data has not yet become available on the impact of all of these laws. However, my research provides solid evidence that state legislation has certainly been effective at protecting women, minors, and their unborn children.

 

Michael J. New, Ph.D., is an assistant professor at the University of Alabama.
 

Please send your comments and questions to Dave Andrusko at daveandrusko@hotmail.com.