People are divided on the individual morality of abortion.  Some believe it is morally little different from cutting one’s hair, others that it is nearer to murder.  Most of our beliefs lie somewhere between these extremes.  

This is why we should oppose prohibition, but also object to subsidising abortion via taxation.  Abortion should be permitted on fairly broad grounds, but that those who want it should pay.  Those who worry about poor women being able to afford it, can set up abortion charities. 

"Pro-choicers" object that this would increase unwanted pregnancies.  More likely it would encourage people to be more careful to avoid pregnancy so that abortions would fall without having much effect on overall pregnancies.

A recent analysis from the National Bureau for Economic Research by Phillip B. Levine, and Douglas Staiger, (NBER Working Paper No.w8813, February 2002) supports our view.   Modest restrictions reduce the total number of abortions but there is no overall rise in pregnancies.

Here is the abstract:

"This paper views abortion access as an insurance policy that protects women from unwanted pregnancies. Within this framework, we present a theoretical model where greater access provides value in the form of insurance against unwanted births and also reduces the incentive to avoid pregnancy. This model predicts that legalized abortion should lead to a reduction in the likelihood of giving birth. It also predicts that if abortion access becomes relatively inexpensive (including both monetary and psychic costs), then pregnancies would rise and births would remain unchanged or may even rise as well. We review the evidence on the impact of changes in abortion policy mainly from the United States and find support for both predictions. Then we test these hypotheses using recent changes in abortion policy in several Eastern European countries. We find that countries which changed from very restrictive to liberal abortion laws experienced a large reduction in births, highlighting the insurance value. Changes from modest restrictions to abortion available upon request, however, led to no such change in births despite large increases in abortions, indicating that pregnancies rose as well. These findings are consistent with the incentive effect implications of our model."

Click here for the full text

Jim Thornton 16 March 2002