Who Says Why?

Ed Kilgore says that “a critical plurality of Americans don’t much like abortion but care a whole lot about when and why abortions occur.” Assuming that this is true — and there’s some evidence for it — the obvious answer is that since there’s no way of inscribing “women should get abortions only when a Mythical Abortion Centrist says they’re appropriate” into a legislative enactment, the best way of addressing this majority is to leave the decision to women rather than to, say, panels of doctors enforcing inherently arbitrary standards.

Ross Douthat, conversely, simply pretends that random regulations have this abortion have the effect of reducing “abortions of convenience,” while failing to adduce any evidence that the regulations actually have these effects. (Tellingly, he cites Glendon, but one of the crucial flaws in her book is that she focuses on the abortion laws in statute books but makes little attempt to find out how these laws actually operate in practice.) Of course, this is a somewhat difficult question for the same reason that it’s an appalling suggestion on the merits: who says what an “abortion of convenience” is? (One would think that it would be an even more meaningless and offensive term to a pro-lifer than it is to me, but I guess not.) At any rate, there’s no reason to believe that putting up arbitrary barriers in front of women seeking abortions has much effect on why women choose abortions; rather, they just make it more difficult for some classes of women (poor, rural, single mothers, inflexible working hours) to obtain them. Similarly, Douthat argues that “In a similar “no abortions of convenience” vein, you could also imagine a law that banned repeat abortion.” Omitted is any justification for assuming a priori that a second abortion is an abortion “of convenience.”

Basically, attempts to tie various random regulations to mythical abortion “centrism” is a giant scam. Making women wait 24 hours to obtain an abortion isn’t going to stop educated women who live in major cities from obtaining an aboriton no matter what the reason, and they make it more difficult for a poor women who lives 150 miles from an abortion provider to obtain one even if William Saletan himself would bless her choice. Which is why — even leaving aside the question of why we should care what Ross Douthat or William Saletan thinks about a woman’s reasons for obtaining an abortion in the first place — leaving the choice to the affected women with a minimum of pointless restrictions is the right policy choice.

…UPDATE: To emphasize what Ed says in comments, I certainly didn’t mean to suggest that he supported silly regulations as a response to the public opinion data he (accurately) identifies.