by 
What are you talking about? Is that what you’re asking yourself? How could something that could prevent having more children running around actually raise the illegitimacy rate?
The reason is because of what we have to believe about sex in order to permit ourselves to accept abortion. In an article for the Wall Street Journal, John R. Lott Jr explores this in an article entitled It’s Not Enough to be ‘Wanted’
As to the first puzzle, part of the answer lies in attitudes to premarital sex. With abortion seen as a backup, women as well as men became less careful in using contraceptives as well as more likely to have premarital sex. There were more unplanned pregnancies. But legal abortion did not mean every unplanned pregnancy led to abortion. After all, just because abortion is legal, does not mean that the decision is an easy one.
He goes on to say that abortion gave justification to the man in the picture to not stick around. How does that work? Well, if the woman that is bearing the child wanted to, she could get an abortion. However, if she chooses to keep the child, why should he remain in the picture?
And how about abortion’s effect on adoption? Well, if a woman in the past was pregnant and didn’t want the child, she would give it up to adoption. Now, she can abort it– which means that if the woman’s going to go through the pregnancy now, she’s much more likely to keep it.
But all these changes–rising out-of-wedlock births, plummeting adoption rates, and the end of shotgun marriages–meant one thing: more single parent families. With work and other demands on their time, single parents, no matter how “wanted” their child may be, tend to devote less attention to their children than do married couples; after all, it’s difficult for one person to spend as much time with a child as two people can.
So, chalk up another victim for abortion. Not only has it killed the child and wounded the mother, but it has also hurt the children that are born to single parent families by robbing them of a stable home life from which to grow.
One could also say that women having all the rights to choose whether to keep the child, abort it, or whatever is a genuine disincentive for the man to be involved. Let’s face it – the woman holds all the rights, while the man’s only choice is whether to marry her or not.
Good point, Rebecca. Especially when you take into account that the man had a part in conceiving the child as well!
No matter how you look at it, abortion has become an easy way out of responsibility for men and women. It gives them permission to sleep with whomever they choose and if a child happens to be conceived in that union they have the legal right to murder that unborn child.
What a wonderful we live in. *sigh*
Now if we can just figure out a way to connect The Terrorists and The War On Terror to abortion….
I had trouble finding the comment window last time I visited!
Anyway, you touch a great point here. The entire attitude towards sex: lack of commitment, easy access to birth control and abortion on demand – all of this is has given us a fatherless generation. I’m one fatherless child. I can tell you that my father walked away precisely because of this. He tried to pressure my mother to have an abortion, and when she refused, he walked away with an easy heart, justifying himself by saying, ‘well, it’s HER fault. It was so easy to get rid of our little problem, so why didn’t she do that?’
What problem did you have finding the comment window? Did you get confused by the new click to comment icons?
I’m sorry that you grew up without a father, Anna. I’m even more sad because I believe your analysis to be true– and that means more children without dads.
Such a good post! And all those who said abortion would lower child abuse rates were wrong, too, since those rates have skyrocketed since abortion became legal. 🙁
It’s funny because abortion has done the exact opposite of everything it was supposed to do– as far as empower women, lower child abuse rates, create children that are wanted, etc. It’s actually led to the opposite. It is sad!