Restricting abortion access isn't about women or protecting innocent life | Opinion

No one likes the idea of abortion or thinks it should be used as primary birth control, but most Americans still believe it should be legally accessible in many circumstances. As a constitutional right, the 1992 Casey decision further expanded a woman’s freedom in this circumstance over Roe v. Wade, so her basic access to this safe pharmacological or interventional medical procedure should have been settled law.

Almost half of pregnancies are unintended and more than 60% of these end in abortion — a service that one in four American women will obtain.

More restrictive abortion laws do not decrease the number of abortions. They just become more expensive or more dangerous. According to the Guttmacher Institute, over the last three decades, the proportion of unwanted pregnancies ending in abortion has increased where more restrictive laws are in place.

Five times as many women who live in poverty have unintended pregnancies as those with twice the income. If easy access to abortion services is lost, two and a half Black women would be affected for each white woman, and they are at least three times as likely to die in childbirth in the U.S., which has the highest maternal mortality rate among rich nations.

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Decreasing unintended pregnancies are associated with increases in economic growth, socioeconomic development and public health. IUDs and implants are up to 10 times as effective as birth control pills and as cost-effective over the long run, but only 12% of women on contraception use them, mostly because of increased up-front procedure costs. This is an example of terrible governance.

Restricting access to abortion is not about women or protecting innocent life. It has become a proxy issue for perpetuating paternalistic values by the conservative religious right.

If this issue was about children, the U.S. childcare budget would not be $500 per capita when the average for rich nations is $14,000. Twenty percent of American children would not be living in poverty and the U.S. would not be ranked 24th among rich nations in academic development by age 15.

Ninety percent of abortions occur before 12 weeks gestation in most developed countries, and no state allows abortion after fetal viability at about 24 weeks unless the mother’s life is in danger, so the issue has become about the sanctity of the fertilized egg. If it is God’s plan that all these cells become children, then what of the more than one in five pregnancies that ends in spontaneous abortion? Did God change his mind?

If Americans want to decrease the number of abortions and protect innocent life, they need to uncouple the issue from religion. It will require a dramatic increase in funding for women’s reproductive services, including birth control and childcare services throughout a woman’s pregnancy and at least through the first several years of a child’s life.

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According to The Economist, the most efficient government program is the earned income tax credit, which gives the working poor get a check to help them get by. This costs taxpayers just 13 cents for each dollar of savings. Expanding it to better accommodate women and their young children in this vulnerable time would be an easy start.

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Now that Roe v. Wade has been overturned, men who care about the women in their lives should be outraged and speak out. Would they turn their wives or daughters over to an uncertified or underground provider for a surgical procedure or allow all their future hopes and dreams to be destroyed by a few unelected hyper-religious ideologues in robes?

Do we men undervalue women in our society so much?

Dr. William Culbert is a family physician in group practice in Clinton. He lives in Oak Ridge.

This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: Restricting abortion access isn't about protecting innocent life