<br><h1><font size="6">Let's get real about abortions</font></h1>
<div class="cnn_stryathrtmp">
<div class="cnnByline">By <strong>David Frum</strong>, CNN Contributor</div>
<div class="cnn_strytmstmp">updated 9:12 AM EDT, Mon October 29, 2012</div>
</div><br><br><p class="cnnEditorialNote"><em><strong>Editor's note:</strong> David
Frum, a CNN contributor, is a contributing editor at Newsweek and The
Daily Beast. He is the author of seven books, including a new novel,
"Patriots," and was a special assistant to President George W. Bush from
2001 to 2002.</em></p>
<p><strong>(CNN)</strong> -- When <a href="http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2012/10/24/gop-senate-candidate-pregnancies-from-rape-gods-will/?iref=allsearch">Richard Mourdock</a>
delivered his notorious answer about rape and abortion, I was sorry
that the debate moderator failed to follow up with the next question:</p>
<p class="cnn_storypgraphtxt cnn_storypgraph2">"OK, Mr. Mourdock, you
say your principles require a raped woman to carry the rapist's child to
term. That's a heavy burden to impose on someone. What would you do for
her in return? Would you pay her medical expenses? Compensate her for
time lost to work? Would you pay for the child's upbringing? College
education?</p>
<p class="cnn_storypgraphtxt cnn_storypgraph3">"If a woman has her
credit card stolen, her maximum liability under federal law is $50. Yet
on your theory, if she is raped, she must endure not only the trauma of
assault, but also accept economic costs of potentially many thousands of
dollars. Must that burden also fall on her alone? When we used to draft
men into the Army, we gave them veterans' benefits afterward. If the
state now intends to conscript women into involuntary childbearing,
surely those women deserve at least an equally generous deal?"</p>
<p class="cnn_storypgraphtxt cnn_storypgraph4">That question sounds argumentative, and I suppose it is.</p>
<p class="cnn_storypgraphtxt cnn_storypgraph5"><a href="http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/24/opinion/avlon-mourdock-rape-remark/index.html" target="_blank">Opinion: Mourdock's rape remark and extremism</a></p><br><p class="cnn_storypgraphtxt cnn_storypgraph8">
As a general rule,
societies that do the most to support mothers and child-bearing have the
fewest abortions. Societies that do the least to support mothers and
child-bearing have more abortions.</p>
<p class="cnn_storypgraphtxt cnn_storypgraph9">Germany, for example, operates perhaps the world's plushest welfare state. <a href="http://www.zuv.uni-heidelberg.de/international/hilfen_engl.html" target="_blank">Working women receive </a>14
weeks of maternity leave, during which time they receive pay from the
state. The state pays a child allowance to the parents of every German
child for potentially as many as 25 years, depending on how long as the
child remains in school. Women who leave the work force after giving
birth receive a replacement wage from the state for up to 14 months.<br></p><p class="cnn_storypgraphtxt cnn_storypgraph8">As a general rule,
societies that do the most to support mothers and child-bearing have the
fewest abortions. Societies that do the least to support mothers and
child-bearing have more abortions.</p>
<p class="cnn_storypgraphtxt cnn_storypgraph9">Germany, for example, operates perhaps the world's plushest welfare state. <a href="http://www.zuv.uni-heidelberg.de/international/hilfen_engl.html" target="_blank">Working women receive </a>14
weeks of maternity leave, during which time they receive pay from the
state. The state pays a child allowance to the parents of every German
child for potentially as many as 25 years, depending on how long as the
child remains in school. Women who leave the work force after giving
birth receive a replacement wage from the state for up to 14 months.<br></p><p class="cnn_storypgraphtxt cnn_storypgraph10">Maybe not
coincidentally, Germany has one of the lowest abortion rates, about
one-third that of the United States. Yet German abortion laws are not
especially restrictive. Abortion is legal during the first trimester of
pregnancy and available if medically or psychologically necessary in the
later trimesters.</p>
<p class="cnn_storypgraphtxt cnn_storypgraph11">Even here in the United
States, where parental benefits are much less generous, abortion
responds to economic conditions. In the prosperous 1990s, abortion rates
declined rapidly. In the less prosperous '00s, abortion rates declined
more slowly. When the economy plunged into crisis in 2008, abortion
rates <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704458204576074251590376210.html" target="_blank">abruptly rose again</a>.</p>
<p class="cnn_storypgraphtxt cnn_storypgraph12">These trends should not
surprise anyone. Women choose abortion for one overwhelming reason:
economic insecurity. The large majority of women who chose abortion in
2008, 57%, reported <a href="http://www.guttmacher.org/media/nr/2012/08/21/index.html" target="_blank">a disruptive event</a> in their lives in the previous 12 months: most often, the loss of a job or home.</p>
<p class="cnn_storypgraphtxt cnn_storypgraph13"><a href="http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2012/10/24/obama-on-mourdock-male-politicians-shouldnt-make-abortion-decisions/" target="_blank">Obama on Mourdock: Male politicians shouldn't make abortion decisions</a></p>
<p class="cnn_storypgraphtxt cnn_storypgraph14">Of the women who choose
abortion, 58% are in their 20s. Some 61% of them already have a child.
Almost 70% of them are poor or near poor.</p>
<p class="cnn_storypgraphtxt cnn_storypgraph15">Three-quarters say they cannot afford another child.</p>
<p class="cnn_storypgraphtxt cnn_storypgraph16">Pro-life and pro-choice
debaters delight in presenting each other with exquisitely extreme moral
dilemmas: "Would you ban abortion even in case of rape?" "Would you
permit abortion even when done only to select the sex of the child?"</p>
<p class="cnn_storypgraphtxt cnn_storypgraph17">These dorm-room hypotheticals do not have very much to do with the realities of abortion in the U.S. and elsewhere.</p>
<p class="cnn_storypgraphtxt cnn_storypgraph18">Here's an interesting
example of those realities: The Netherlands has one of the the most
liberal abortion laws in the world. Yet for a long time, the Netherlands
also reported one of the world's lowest abortion rates. That low
incidence abruptly began to rise in the mid-1990s. Between 1996 and
2003, the abortion rate in the Netherlands jumped by 31% over seven
years.</p>
<p class="cnn_storypgraphtxt cnn_storypgraph19">What changed? The Guttmacher Institute, the leading source of data on reproductive health worldwide, <a href="http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/journals/3310607.html#17" target="_blank">cites "a growing demand</a> for terminations from women in ethnic minority groups residing in the country." <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=wN-nXmH4FooC&pg=PA294&lpg=PA294&dq=abortion+immigrants+netherlands+teenager&source=bl&ots=rLM1tT1N-Y&sig=F2Hrr74Fw4QHr3qnAegs3bLKxbE&hl=en&sa=X&ei=NSSNUO2xBebI0AHEm4HIDQ&ved=0CCEQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=abortion%20immigrants%20netherlands%20teenager&f=false" target="_blank">Well over half of all abortions</a> performed on teenagers in the Netherlands are performed on girls of non-Dutch origins.</p>
<p class="cnn_storypgraphtxt cnn_storypgraph20">These girls and women
weren't being raped. They weren't selecting for the sex of their child.
They chose abortion because they had become sexually active within
male-dominated immigrant subcultures in which access to birth control
was restricted, in which female sexuality was tightly policed, in which
girls who become pregnant outside marriage are disgraced and in which
the costs and obligations of childbearing loaded almost entirely on
women alone.</p>
<p class="cnn_storypgraphtxt cnn_storypgraph21">Abortion is a product of poverty and maternal distress.</p>
<p class="cnn_storypgraphtxt cnn_storypgraph22">A woman who enjoys the
most emotional and financial security and who has chosen the timing of
her pregnancy will not choose abortion, even when abortion laws are
liberal. A woman who is dominated, who is poor and who fears bearing the
child is likely to find an abortion, even where abortion is restricted,
as it was across the United States before 1965.</p>
<p class="cnn_storypgraphtxt cnn_storypgraph23"><a href="http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2012/10/24/santorum-mourdock-criticism-gotcha-politics/" target="_blank">Santorum: Mourdock criticism 'gotcha politics'</a></p>
<p class="cnn_storypgraphtxt cnn_storypgraph24">So maybe at the next candidates' debate, a journalist will deflect the discussion away from "what if" and instead ask this:</p>
<p class="cnn_storypgraphtxt cnn_storypgraph25">"Rather than tell us
what you'd like to ban, tell us please what you think government should
do to support more happy and healthy childbearing, to reduce unwanted
pregnancies and to alleviate the economic anxieties of mothers-to-be?"</p>
<p class="cnn_storypgraphtxt cnn_storypgraph26">Those are the questions that make the difference. It's amazing how little we talk about them.</p><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)<br><a href="mailto:art.deco.studios@gmail.com" target="_blank">art.deco.studios@gmail.com</a><br>
<br><img src="http://users.moscow.com/waf/WP%20Fox%2001.jpg"><br><br>