Yep, that's right. Seems counter productive, I know. But I'm going to explain why, so hear me out.
Making abortion illegal will not end or lower abortion rates. What it does is make abortion unsafe for women.
In countries where it is illegal, women are punished and jailed if they're suspected of having an abortion, even if they're having a miscarriage.
One thing that bothers me is many pro-lifers (not all) are also against birth control and teaching children about how to have sex. They'd rather avoid that discussion and teach children abstinence only until marriage. However, this is ineffective and unethical.
True, if you don't have sex, you're not going to get pregnant. However, completely relying on abstinence leaves you unprepared and it is incredibly irresponsible as it doesn't actually stop people, especially young adults, from having sex.
It is not only unrealistic, but it leaves young adults without important information and skills they need to be smart about sex and how to do it safely. We fail our youth when we don't prepare them with medically accurate information.
Another reason why abstinence until marriage doesn't work is because people are either marrying later, or not at all. The average person starts having sex at the ages of 17-18 and the average person gets married around the age of 26.
We can also see, as presented here, that States with the most religious background, and therefore, teaching abstinence only, are the least successful in actually lowering abortion rates as well as avoiding unwanted/teen pregnancies.
Expecting people to just not have sex? Not going to happen. Humans are sexual beings and when it comes to the heat of the moment, they're going to give in which is why it's important to prepare them with being safe beforehand.
Abortion rates drop because of sex education, abortion legality, and contraception availability.
When we take a look at Switzerland as an example, they're one of the countries with the lowest abortion and unwanted pregnancy rates.
https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/fertility-matters_the-secret-of-switzerland-s-low-abortion-rate/33585760
The Netherlands also have low abortion and unwanted pregnancy rates.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7971545
What do they have in common? They teach sex education rather than abstinence and abortion is legal.
When it comes to difficult subjects such as this, pro-lifers and pro-choicers takes their sides and argue back and forth which is counter productive. It doesn't get anyone anywhere, it doesn't make anyone happy, and it creates tension.
What we need to be doing is educating self responsibility. First off, if you're going to have sex, you need to be responsible for the consequences of that choice if they be good, or bad. When you have sex, you are indeed risking pregnancy and possible STD/STIs. This needs to be taught so that we can be informed and prepared when it comes to being faced with our instinctive/primal needs and desires.
If you want to lower abortion rates, you need to step out of your comfort zone and choose education and teach about sexuality rather than being embarrassed about it. We need to be teaching how our reproductive organs work. We need to be teaching that there's consequences to our choices. We need to do this without suppressing sexuality and education.
So what are you going to do about it? I know for me, I'm going to encourage education because I know it's effective.
Remember, United we stand, Divided we fall. Let's take a stand together and use education to get to the goal we all want.
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