Because, generally speaking, that’s what abortion supporters rely on to make their case, since there are quite a few (many, actually) women who would flatly tell you that they feel no remorse over their abortion, don’t regret it and pretty much didn’t bat an eyelash. In fact, as Guttmacher points out, “after an abortion, women frequently report feeling relief and happiness”. Of course, that doesn’t fit into the whole rhetoric so…
I was being facetious on the lying bit. Anyway, ignoring the fact that legalized abortion mitigates contraceptive use, just look at data from Guttmacher. Right off the bat, approximately 46.3% of women who have abortion use no contraceptive method whatsoever. Of the remaining women who were using contraceptives when they became pregnant, 13.6% of them were using the pill, 27.6% of them were using the male condom and 7.3% of them were using the withdrawal method (those are the three most popular methods).
Of course, it’s important to note that 53.7% of women who obtain abortion don’t become pregnant despite using contraceptives. In fact, a large portion of that 53.7% weren’t using contraceptives at the time they became pregnant. For example, for pill users 75.9% reported inconsistent use at the time they got pregnant:
-45.1% simply forgot to take pills
-15.9% were away from home and didn’t have pills, though they had sex anyway
-10.3% ran out of supplies
-7.7% were sick
-2.1% didn’t think they would have sex again, but they did
-1.6% didn’t feel like taking pills
-0.3% reported their partner didn’t want them to take any pill
-0.2% thought they might have wanted to get pregnant
-3.6% report some other, undisclosed reason
For condom users 49.3% reported inconsistent use at the time they got pregnant:
-20.4% didn’t use because they didn’t think they’d get pregnant
-14.3% didn’t have one but had sex anyway
-12.8% didn’t expect to have sex, though that didn’t stop them
-7.1% simply forgot about it
-5.6% didn’t feel like using one
-3.5% reported their partner didn’t feel like using one
-1.0% reported that their partner was supposed to bring one, though they still had sex
-1.0% said their partner wanted me to get pregnant
-0.5% were forced to have sex
-0.5% thought they wanted to get pregnant
-0.5% didn’t care if they got pregnant
Now even granting you the 45.1% of women forgetting to take the pill (we’ll chalk that up to simple human error) and the 7.7% who was sick (as sometimes taking other medicine can interfere with the pill), I think it’s safe to say that approximately 22.9% of pill users and 46.8% of condom users weren’t exactly using the aforementioned methods as their primary form of contraception, since they weren’t using them at the time they got pregnant. If you add them to the other 46.3% of women who obtain an abortion when they weren’t using any type of contraceptives at all, you’d find that to add up to over half of all abortion cases.
Good luck explaining that.
You’re going to be hard pressed to argue this. Consider this. The repeat abortion rate has gone from about 15% in 1975 or so to 48% today. Further broken down, you’d find that approximately 29% of women who obtain abortions for that year are getting their second one, 12% are getting their third one and 7% are getting their fourth or higher one. How do you explain that as anything other than woman using abortion as a form of birth control? Let’s be frank; exactly how serious do you think women are treating abortion when they have two, three, four , five-- sometimes even fifteen abortions (because they’re an abortion addict)-- in their lifetimes? How exactly are women treating abortion as a difficult decision, when the majority of women to have abortions weren’t even using contraceptives to prevent themselves from having to make that decision in the first place? If having an abortion is such a hard decision, then why is a woman less apt to try to prevent a situation when she might need an abortion from occurring the more accessible an abortion is for her? You don’t see the disconnect there?
Indeed it is. High rates of repeat abortions and most women obtaining an abortion when they weren’t using any contraceptives at the time gives a lot of credence to my assertion.
If you do nothing to protect your teeth, one could indeed infer that.
I do, but then you typically construct a straw man.
Sure I care, but that’s not what’s being discussed here.
…And speaking of straw men…
Those are your words, not mine. I’m just pointing out that legalized abortion is met with a change in behavior, that change being that:
(1) Women are more likely to engage in “risky” sex (which leads to higher STD and pregnancy rates) and
(2) Women are less apt to use contraceptives, instead relying on abortion, than they otherwise would be in the absence of legal abortion.
You don’t have to like it, and you can set up as many straw men as you like, but facts are facts and they’re not going to go away no matter how much you dislike them.