Mike Dwyer

Sometimes the inertia of public discourse is simply too hard to resist…

Ross Douthat asks, “What Reduces Abortion Rates?” Specifically, Douthat is tackling the claim that better access to contraception and legal abortion reduces abortion rates.

In Western Europe, where there’s a great deal of variation in terms of gestational limits and the mix of counseling and waiting periods required of women seeking abortions, the supposedly inevitable correlation between liberal abortion laws and lower abortion rates doesn’t necessarily show up. Yes, liberals can justly claim the permissive Netherlands, with some of the most lowest abortion rates on the continent, as a “safe, legal and rare” success story. But in general Catholic and Catholic-influenced countries like France, Italy, Spain and Germany tend to have somewhat more restrictions on abortion and somewhat lower abortion rates than, say, the Scandinavian nations and Great Britain.

To dig deeper into this issue in the United States it is important to look at the numbers with regards to abortion in more liberal areas of the country versus more conservative areas. In May of 2010 I covered this topic in the context of the “red families, blue families” meme. The popular conversation topic at that time was to point out the higher rates of teens giving births in red states as proof of failed conservative policies. Back then Douthat rightly pointed out that this disparity was mostly made possible through increased reliance on abortion in blue states, not a triumph of liberal policy.

And it really is striking, when you dig into the data, how much of the blue-state advantage in preventing teen births is made possible by abortion. Rhode Island’s teen pregnancy rate is identical to West Virginia’s, but West Virginia’s teen birth rate is 33 percent higher. California’s teen pregnancy rate is higher than Alabama’s, but California’s teen birth rate is 20 percent lower. Kentucky and Maryland have the same teen pregnancy rates, but Kentucky has almost 60 percent more teenage births.

I wanted to explore this phenomenon further so ran a bunch of numbers through Guttmacher and compared them to the way each state voted in the 2008 presidential election. Admittedly not a perfect survey but good enough for my purposes here. The first thing I looked at was the teen (15-19) pregnancy rate for all states. This confirmed Douthat’s comments. What I found was that the top 20 states for teen pregnancies are evenly divided, with ten states having voted for Obama and ten states having voted for McCain. The results look like this: 

What’s extremely interesting is the way the picture changes when you look at two other statistics. I pulled the numbers for the Percentage of Teen Pregnancies Ending in Births and the Percentage of Teen Pregnancies Ending in Abortions.

Here are the top 20 states for Teen Pregnancies Ending in Births and how they voted in 2008:
 

As you can see, red states dominate the list. In those states 66% or more of teen pregnancies end with a live birth. From this we can draw some broad conclusions about conservative attitudes towards abortions.

When we look at the top 20 states for Teen Pregnancies Ending in Abortions we see this: 

All twenty of the top states for teen abortions went for Obama in 2008. Again, we can draw the same kinds of generalized conclusions about liberal attitudes towards abortions.

The narrative from the Left for some time has been that the surest way to reduce teen pregnancies is to have more robust sex ed programs and better access to birth control and legal abortion. But we don’t see any evidence of this when we look at the numbers for blue states. Douthat mentions the regional issue in his recent post:

This is why I keep emphasizing the difference in abortion rates between conservative regions and liberal regions within the United States itself. (If Planned Parenthood were really the pro-life movement’s best friend, then one would expect Massachusetts to have a lower abortion rate than Mississippi, rather than the other way around.)

In 2010 I talked about ‘smoke and mirrors’ surrounding abortion policy. We’re seeing more of the same with the recent contraception debate. Better access to contraception and abortion simply do not reduce teen pregnancy rates and therefore do not reduce abortion rates. My intention here is not to discuss whether or not abortion should be legal. That argument can be waged elsewhere. What I am interested in is discussing the realities of how often it is used and what, if anything, we could actually do to reduce its occurrence in the context of current law.

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The other day, J.L. Wall asked in his post: 

Can we really talk honestly and effectively about growing divisions between the top and the bottom without taking the middle half into account, too?  

I left a cynical comment:

To be perfectly honest, no one really cares about the middle class. As long as you are in there, it’s assumed you’re doing just fine. Their money comes from a magical grove of money trees planted by the WPA during the New Deal.

What people worry about is the bottom and the top because it is assumed that it’s a zero sum game between these two groups. If the rich get richer it was because they stole it directly from the poor.

Well it seems that J.L. was closer to the mark than me, as evidenced by Mitt Romney’s latest case of foot-in-the-mouth disease:

I’m in this race because I care about America. I’m not concerned about the very poor, we have a safety net there, if we need to repair, I’ll fix it. I’m not concerned about the very rich, they’re doing just fine. I’m concerned about the very heart of America, the 90-95 percent of Americans who are struggling, and I’ll continue to take that message across the country.

 A big part of the reason that I am so dismissive of this kind of talk is two things 1) I hate political populism 2) I hate class warfare. Seeing those two omissions in print makes me feel a little bit like I’m stating the obvious. Most wonks have equal disregard for those things in principle. The trick is to maintain our resolve when the message is directed at us. I usually pride myself on disregarding the promises of politicians and try not to see myself in competition with the other classes in America. But then I think back to how excited I was about some of the ideas presented by Ross Douthat and Reiham Salam in their 2005 Weekly Standard piece:

A better way to approach the division between work and family life might be what sociologist Neil Gilbert calls a “life-course perspective,” with measures that would allow a mother (or father, for that matter) to provide child care full-time for several years before entering, or reentering, the workforce. For instance, the government could offer subsidies to those who provide child care in the home, and pension credits that reflect the economic value of years spent in household labor. Or again, Republicans might consider offering tuition credits for years spent rearing children, which could be exchanged for post-graduate or vocational education. These would be modeled on veterans’ benefits–and that would be entirely appropriate. Both military service and parenthood are crucial to the country’s long-term survival. It’s about time we recognize that fact.

I now realize I like these kinds of ideas because they directly reward my demographic group, which is middle class parents with just enough income to allow one spouse to stay at home with the kids (if they want to). Because I think stay-at-home parents do the Lord’s work in many ways then it’s easy to support policies that reward those choices. So I realize that I am just as vulnerable to red meat and making sure my class gets our piece of the pie.

The obvious take-away here is that we all know populism and class warfare are tools that politicians use to manipulate us. The question is, who among us can really resist it when the offer is made?

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I did a quick check of the jukebox archives and saw that is woefully short on country and bluegrass. That ends now.

First one of my favorite standards. JD Crowe and the New South featuring Crowe, Tony Rice, Ricky Skaggs and Jerry Douglas. These guys all went on to become legends in the bluegrass world.

This one is just brilliant. A remake of Loudon Wainright III’s ‘Swimming Song’ by the Earl Scrugs Revue.

And of course I would be remiss if I didn’t share the one bluegrass song that mentions the ‘hometown of my heart’.

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Last night’s speech had plenty of specifics that I could be critical of but I’d rather highlight the moments I enjoyed. The first came about halfway through the speech. President Obama talked about the tone in Washington and dressed down the audience in such powerful fashion that there was about 30 seconds where you could have heard a pin drop. I loved it.

I recognize that people watching tonight have differing views about taxes and debt; energy and health care. But no matter what party they belong to, I bet most Americans are thinking the same thing right now: Nothing will get done this year, or next year, or maybe even the year after that, because Washington is broken.

Can you blame them for feeling a little cynical?

The greatest blow to confidence in our economy last year didn’t come from events beyond our control. It came from a debate in Washington over whether the United States would pay its bills or not. Who benefited from that fiasco?

I’ve talked tonight about the deficit of trust between Main Street and Wall Street. But the divide between this city and the rest of the country is at least as bad – and it seems to get worse every year.

At the end the President couldn’t resist a little lofty rhetoric. I don’t blame him. It’s the frickin’ State of the Union. It was along the same lines of calling for unity. I liked it because it was a good analogy that people could easily understand.

One of my proudest possessions is the flag that the SEAL Team took with them on the mission to get bin Laden. On it are each of their names. Some may be Democrats. Some may be Republicans. But that doesn’t matter. Just like it didn’t matter that day in the Situation Room, when I sat next to Bob Gates – a man who was George Bush’s defense secretary; and Hillary Clinton, a woman who ran against me for president.

All that mattered that day was the mission. No one thought about politics. No one thought about themselves. One of the young men involved in the raid later told me that he didn’t deserve credit for the mission. It only succeeded, he said, because every single member of that unit did their job – the pilot who landed the helicopter that spun out of control; the translator who kept others from entering the compound; the troops who separated the women and children from the fight; the SEALs who charged up the stairs. More than that, the mission only succeeded because every member of that unit trusted each other – because you can’t charge up those stairs, into darkness and danger, unless you know that there’s someone behind you, watching your back.

So it is with America. Each time I look at that flag, I’m reminded that our destiny is stitched together like those fifty stars and those thirteen stripes. No one built this country on their own. This Nation is great because we built it together. This Nation is great because we worked as a team. This Nation is great because we get each other’s backs. And if we hold fast to that truth, in this moment of trial, there is no challenge too great; no mission too hard. As long as we’re joined in common purpose, as long as we maintain our common resolve, our journey moves forward, our future is hopeful, and the state of our Union will always be strong.

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