The abortion rate has fallen yet again, according to a new study published in the American Journal of Public Health, dropping by 25 percent from 2008 to 2014. Thanks, Obama! Or really, thanks to the widespread use of contraception, which researchers Rachel Jones and Jenna Jerman of the Guttmacher Institute argue is the largest single factor in the drop in the abortion rate. And in fairness, the Obama administration did significant work to expand contraception access through the Affordable Care Act.
Fewer abortions is what Republicans and conservatives claim they want, which is why they are constantly passing arcane restrictions on abortion access. So why is the Trump administration ramping up the war on contraception? A leaked White House budget memo, published Thursday by Brian Beutler of Crooked Media, exposed the far-reaching anti-birth-control agenda of the Trump administration.
It seems the administration would prefer a world where the primary and perhaps sole method of preventing pregnancy is the no-kissy, no-touchy method that has been proven throughout history to be an utter failure. News flash: People like having sex.
The anti-choice movement wants people to believe that the drop in the abortion rate is strictly due to its nonstop shaming campaign and relentless war on abortion access. "Abortion Rate Drops 25% Over Last 6 Years as More Babies Saved From Abortions," blares a headline on LifeNews.com.
That's pure nonsense. If the abortion rate were declining because women were giving birth more, then wouldn't there be more births overall in the United States? But births have been declining, too. Women simply are getting pregnant less, and how and why that's happening is not much of a mystery.
“Abortion rates went down across the board, in states that are supportive of abortion rights and states that aren’t," Jones, one of the study's authors, told Salon.
She agreed that some women who wanted abortions were unable to get one legally because of new restrictions, but believes the larger part of the drop in the abortion rate was because people are choosing to use more and better forms of contraception.
This also helps explain why, even though the abortion rate dropped across the board, low-income women are drastically overrepresented in the abortion statistics. Nearly half of women getting abortions have incomes below the federal poverty line, up from 30 percent in 1987.
"We do know that among abortion patients, especially those that are economically disadvantaged, they just have more disruptive life events," she added. "Having to focus on getting your Depo shot or getting your Pill refill is second priority to putting food on the table."
"I see every day how access to contraception improves my patients’ lives," Dr. Kristyn Brandi, a Los Angeles doctor who works with Physicians for Reproductive Health, told Salon. “Contraception plays a huge role in how women control their lives and help plan their pregnancies, and that helps improve their economic status, as well as their overall satisfaction with their lives."
In sum, better-off women are more likely to have access to affordable contraception and thus have lower abortion rates. So it would appear that the key to reducing the number of abortions is increasing access to contraception — assuming that reducing abortion is actually the Republican goal.
Instead, the Trump administration has spent an inordinate amount of energy trying to reduce access to contraception, both by limiting health care access more generally and by way of specific attacks on contraception access through insurance plans and government programs. In the memo leaked to Crooked Media, it becomes clear that these attacks aren't about "small government" or "religious liberty" but an ideological opposition to contraception.
The memo recommends cuts to family planning programs and suggests requiring "equal funding for fertility awareness methods" in foreign aid programs. "Fertility awareness" is pseudo-scientific jargon for the rhythm method, beloved by anti-choicers both because it doesn't really work and because its mechanism requires refraining from sex at certain times. If they can't make you celibate, they'll settle for reducing the amount of sex you can have.
While the administration's stated ideal is the rhythm method for everyone, the memo indicated a special eagerness to foist this unreliable, inconvenient and unpopular approach on the population least likely to use it successfully: teen girls and young women.
"No other family planning programming for girls should be provided except fertility awareness methods," the document reads at one point.
In another section, the memo recommends shutting down all teen pregnancy prevention programs, and replacing them with "sexual risk avoidance and fertility awareness methods." ("Sexual risk avoidance" is right-wing-speak for celibacy.)
“There are some patients that really don’t want to become pregnant, and want to use a method that will really help them prevent pregnancy," Dr. Brandi said. “The evidence shows that [fertility awareness method] is not a great method for contraception for most women, particularly teenagers.”
She noted that the rhythm method has three times the failure rate of the birth control pill when it comes to typical use rates, which means about one in four women who use "fertility-awareness"-based methods will get pregnant within a year.
One shouldn't even need the statistics to see how ridiculous the administration's position is here. Consider when you first became sexually active. (For the average American, that's around age 17 or 18.) Were you really capable of tracking your periods and vaginal mucus levels, or your partner's, to determine when ovulation is unlikely? Would you have successfully abstained from sex the rest of the time?
It's OK if readers need a moment to stop laughing.
Even if young people were capable of such a thing, there is no reason to make them go through such an elaborate charade when there are many more effective, exponentially easier and less disruptive ways to prevent pregnancy. Unless, of course, preventing pregnancy is not actually the goal. For instance, one could speculate that the real goal is to raise the rates of unintended pregnancy, as part of a larger cultural backlash against feminism manifesting in an attack on women's reproductive autonomy.
Which is what is likely going on with the Trump administration and the religious right generally. Spoiler alert! The increased amount of attention that conservatives have paid to birth control in recent years, with the attacks on funding and the concerted efforts to end insurance coverage of contraception, begin to make more sense in light of declining abortion rates.
Abortion access is important for women to achieve full equality in the United States, but access to contraception is arguably even more important. Up to three-quarters of women will never even need an abortion now, because contraception works so well. For these "Handmaid's Tale" advocates of compulsory motherhood, however, stopping abortion is not good enough. So conservatives are coming for your birth control.
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