Roe Destroyed Many Social Institutions That Are Unlikely To ReturnBY: JOHN R. LOTT, JR.
MAY 09, 2022
With the news that the U.S. Supreme Court will likely overturn Roe v. Wade, commentary has largely concentrated on the moral issues, women’s desires to not bear a child to term, and the soundness of the original court decision. However, the current discussion also provides a chance to evaluate how liberalizing abortion rules from 1969 to 1973 ignited profound long-term social changes in America and whether the court’s decision will reverse those changes.
One often misunderstood fact: Legal abortions didn’t start with Roe or even with the five states that liberalized abortion laws in 1969 and 1970. Before Roe, women could have abortions when their lives or health were endangered. Even in some conservative states, such as Kansas, doctors had very liberal interpretations of what constituted a danger to health.
Nevertheless, Roe substantially increased abortions, more than doubling the rate per live birth in the five years from 1972 to 1977. But many other changes occurred at the same time, among them: a sharp increase in premarital sex; a sharp rise in out-of-wedlock births; a drop in the number of children placed for adoption; and a decline in marriages that occur after the woman is pregnant.
Many of these changes might seem contradictory. For example, why would both the number of abortions and out-of-wedlock births go up? If there were more illegitimate births, why were fewer children available for adoption? When examined closer, however, one can make sense of these changes.
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Source:
https://thefederalist.com/2022/05/09/roe-destroyed-many-social-institutions-that-are-unlikely-to-return/
