Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Abortion: Unintended consequences

Over at OpinionJournal.com today, Freedomnomics author John R. Lott, Jr. writes about the unintended consequences of legal abortion:

• A sharp increase in unplanned births -- even outweighing the reduction in unplanned births due to abortion.

• A drop in the number of children adopted by two-parent families. "Before Roe, when abortion was much more difficult, women who would have chosen an abortion but were unable to get one turned to adoption as their backup. After Roe, women who turned down an abortion were also the type who wanted to keep the child."

• A decline in marriages that occur after the woman is pregnant. "Many men, feeling tricked into unwanted fatherhood, will likely wash their hands of the affair altogether, thinking, 'I never wanted a baby. It's her choice, so let her raise the baby herself,'" Lott writes. "What is expected of men in this position has changed dramatically in the last four decades. The evidence shows that the greater availability of abortion largely ended 'shotgun' marriages, where men felt obligated to marrying the woman."

Click here to read more on the social pathologies of legalized abortion (other than the 40 million+ dead babies, that is.)

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