Abortion Is Now As Rare As When Roe v. Wade Was Decided

"E.J. Dionne: On Abortion And Conservative Opposition To Universal Healthcare"

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/11/ej-dionne-on-abortion-and-conservative.html

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It's about as rare for an American woman to have an abortion today as it was before the Supreme Court's decision in Roe v. Wade 31 years ago. As David Frum notes in a commentary at The Atlantic, that's apparently because unmarried women are no longer afraid of bearing children out of wedlock.

Having a baby as a single woman used to be socially unacceptable, but it's become a fact of American life. About 41 percent of children born in the United States in 2012 were born to unmarried mothers, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a tenfold increase from 4 percent in 1940. It seems unwed women would now rather carry pregnancies to term than seek abortions.

Frum ascribes this change to conservative political strategy on abortion. He argues that pro-life activists have made their case convincingly without also making a case for marriage, with the result that women are choosing to have children but not to marry. That might be giving the conservative movement too much credit.Public attitudes about abortion have held steady in recent years, even as the rate of births to unmarried mothers has continued its steep climb. It looks as though unmarried women are making decisions about pregnancies more or less on their own.

Whatever the explanation, Frum's conclusion seems sensible: the best way to get people to create and stay in families is with policies that make raising a family genuinely easier. Here are a few ideas:

-- Frum suggests wage subsidies, which would make parents more attractive to employers.

-- Expanding the child tax credit would help families financially. Another approach would simply be to send mothers a monthly check.

--  Offering universal pre-kindergarten would also ease the cost of child care for young families.

--  Guaranteeing paid leave for new parents couldn't hurt.

--  Finally, Obama's executive action on immigration will keep many immigrant families together.

Frum opposed that last one on the principle of the separation of powers, while the others would be costly to implement. In all, these aren't the kind of policies that conservative lawmakers would usually consider, but they might have to give these ideas some thought anyway if they're serious about promoting family values.