Win-Win

I think Matt has exactly the right reaction to this Douthat op-ed : what Douthat prevents as a “tradeoff” is just a strong case that providing women access to abortion increases both individual freedom and family stability. Call me crazy, but reducing unwanted births for teenage mothers is…a good thing!

I should also note that the data cited by Douthat also make a complete hash of his frequent assertions that the United States has an “absolutist” pro-choice legal regime. Rather, state governments are allowed to regulate abortion in a lot of ways, and while these regulations don’t have huge effects on overall abortion rates they do make it much harder for women from whom the consequences of being forced to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term are most dire to obtain abortions. I think this explains why Douthat needs to be dishonest about what Casey actually holds; he’s certainly not going to opposed these kinds of regulations, but the desirability of “the status quo with more teenage mothers and desperately poor mothers” outcome Douthat is implicitly supporting is…far from self-evident.