Republicans seem intent on rolling back time and installing their version of a Christian moral order. Their first target is abortion and their means of attack is the recently enacted Texas abortion law.
What has the Texas abortion law accomplished? Texas legislators passed and Republican Governor Greg Abbott signed SB 8, the United States’s most draconian law restricting abortions. The law went into effect on September 1, 2021. The law deputizes private citizens to sue anyone who “aids or abets” the provision of an abortion after six weeks post conception or after detection of a fetal heartbeat. Successful plaintiffs receive a minimum of $10,000.
According to Texas state data, the number of abortions in Texas dropped by half in the first month the law went into effect (compared to the same month in 2020). However, researchers at the University of Texas (UT) took the Texas state data a step further and counted Texas women getting abortions out-of-state. They found the law only reduced abortions by less than 10 percent.
According to the UT study, “We obtained data on Texas residents who received abortion care between August 1 and December 31, 2021 at 34 of the 44 open (abortion) facilities in Arkansas, Colorado, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Mexico, and Oklahoma—states where we expected Texans to travel based on past reports. In August 2021, the month prior to the implementation of SB 8, 235 Texas residents received abortion care at one of these 34 facilities. Between September and December 2021, an average of 1,391 Texans per month obtained abortions at these out-of-state facilities, with monthly totals ranging from 1,330 to 1,485. These data undercount the total number of Texans receiving care out of state since we did not obtain data from 10 facilities in these states, and it does not include Texans who have traveled to other U.S. states for care since September 2021.” http://sites.utexas.edu/txpep/files/2022/03/TxPEP-out-of-state-SB8.pdf
Besides out of state travel, Texans also used medical abortions. These were not counted in the University of Texas study. Aid Access (aidaccess.org) is an Austrian based non-profit that provides medical abortions through the mail. The actual drugs are manufactured in India. The organization provides consultation and charges $110 for the pills and service.
Aid Access does not specify how many Texas women received medical abortions from their organization. They do report that an average of 1,100 women ordered pills per month from them. That is triple the number of women that ordered medication abortions from them before the Texas abortion law was implemented.
Women are also able to buy medication abortion drugs over-the-counter in Mexico. Mexico legalized abortion last September. For many Texas women, travel to Mexico for an abortion is much easier than going to other US states. Women getting abortions or medical abortion drugs in Mexico weren’t counted in the University of Texas study.
In summary, the University of Texas study documented a less than 10 percent reduction in Texas abortions during their four month study. The UT study did not include:
- Abortions performed at the 10 open abortion facilities in Arkansas, Colorado, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Mexico, and Oklahoma that did not report data on Texas women getting abortions at their facilities.
- Texas women getting abortions at US clinics in states not listed above.
- Texas women getting abortions in Mexico.
- Texas women getting medical abortions from Aid Access or other online providers.
- Texas women getting over the counter medical abortion drugs in Mexico.
People across the country pulled together to help these women. Planned Parenthood built a large clinic in southern Illinois in relatively close proximity to many of the states outlawing or restricting abortions. They have donors covering bus transportation, motels and the procedure. Clinics in New York also have funding for airfare, lodging and abortions. Staff at these facilities make all the arrangements.
So what does this say about the Texas abortion law? Clearly, the drop in Texas abortions is far smaller than the 10 percent figure reported in the University of Texas study. The actual percentage drop in abortions is probably in the low single digits. Even worse for Republicans, the most economically disadvantaged women that weren’t able to travel out of state or use other means to get an abortion are going to have predominately Brown and Black skinned babies. This has to be discouraging to Republicans who spent four years during the Trump Administration doing everything possible to keep America white.
So, if the Texas experiment failed, why are other states rushing to make the same mistake? First of all, I don’t think red state lawmakers can admit the Texas law failed. Worse, they don’t want to admit they were outsmarted and outmaneuvered by Texas women and other women’s groups nationwide. Republicans live in a fantasy state of denial.
The deeper reason these efforts continue may well be that Republican men and women are jealous. They can’t tolerate the reality that women using birth control and with abortion as a back-up enjoy sex as much as men. Even worse, these women have the power to make their own life and career decisions. Maybe these Republicans are jealous of women that enjoy passion and intimacy?
Since SB 8 was unsuccessful, how can we dramatically reduce abortions?
If the goal of SB 8 was to significantly reduce the number of abortions, the effort failed. Another way to measure the impact of SB 8 is to compare results to other efforts to reduce abortions. The table below illustrates the impact of birth control on reducing abortions.
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Annual Abortion Number Changes During Presidential Terms |
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| President | Number of abortions in year before taking office | Number of abortions during last year in office | Percent change during term |
| Bill Clinton – Democrat | 1,528,930 | 1,313,000 | -14% |
| George W. Bush – Republican | 1,313,000 | 1,212,350 | -8% |
| Barack Obama – Democrat | 1,212,350 | 874,100 | -28% |
| Donald Trump – Republican | 874,100 | 930,160 | +8% |
| Source: Guttmacher Institute | |||
More details are at https://www.frugalron.com/republicans-the-real-pro-abortion-political-party/
Here is a quick summary of what caused the dramatic drop in the number of abortions in the US since 1992. During the eight year Clinton Administration, Title X family planning funding was dramatically increased for five million families. Title X is the country’s only national, federally funded family planning program. First created with bipartisan support during the Nixon administration, the program has long provided no-and low-cost contraception counseling and dispensation to those who would otherwise be unable to afford or access it. Clinton also signed legislation requiring federal employees’ heath insurance plans pay for birth control. This impacted 1.2 million women of childbearing age.
During President George W. Bush’s term, his FDA did everything they could to keep the Morning After Pill off the market. They failed. During Bush’s Administration, the Morning After Pill went from being a prescription only product to being sold over the counter to anyone over 18. By the end of Bush’s tenure, Emergency Contraceptives were sold legally over the counter to anyone. Access and use of the Morning After Pill was the primary reason abortions continued dropping during the Bush years.
President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act provided free birth control to all women buying individual health insurance policies. In 29 states (including Texas) and the District of Columbia, employers meeting certain requirements were required to provide free birth control to their employees. This requirement and the wider adaption of Long Acting Reversible Contraceptives (LARCs) were the main reasons for the dramatic 28 percent drop in annual abortions during Obama’s term. (LARCs are 20 times more effective than the birth control pill in preventing unwanted pregnancies. They are close to 100 percent effective. If a woman wants to become pregnant, she can just have the implant removed. Depending on the option, LARCs last from two months to ten years.)
Donald Trump, during his single term in office, implemented a new rule that barred any provider in the Title X network from so much as mentioning abortion, even if a patient asked about it. This resulted in seven states and Planned Parenthood dropping out of the program. The Title X program went from seeing 4 million patients in 2017 to 1.5 million patients in 2020, a decrease of over 60 percent, Planned Parenthood’s nationwide clinics were a major source of free contraceptives and education. https://19thnews.org/2021/10/title-x-contraception-family-planning/
Trump tried but failed to end the Affordable Care Act. However, he did make every effort to sabotage it and the free contraceptive benefit. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2020/10/09/six-ways-trump-has-sabotaged-the-affordable-care-act/
Restricting access to birth control and information during Donald Trump’s term in office resulted in an 8 percent increase in abortions.
This is extremely important. During 30 years of making birth control more available (and often free), annual abortions dropped 44 percent in the US. This changed while Donald Trump was president. The turnaround in annual abortions was not a coincidence. It is a direct result of Trump’s restricting access to contraceptives.
While there are many smaller reasons for the drop in abortions over the last three decades, one effort we know was insignificant are Republican restrictions on abortion access enacted on the state level. The US lowered the number of abortions by 666,600 annually between 1992 and 2017. If this occurred because of Republican abortion clinic closures and abortion restrictions, logically, there should have been an extra 666,600 more babies born in 2017 than in 1992. However, the 3,853,472 live births in the US in 2017 was the lowest in 30 years.
The failure of the Texas abortion law to make any real impact on the number of abortions and the increase in abortions because of Donald Trump’s actions while president underscore what Frugal Ron and readers of this website have known for years. There is no such thing as an anti-abortion Republican. Laws restricting abortion access don’t work. Making contraceptives more available, and in a best case scenario free, dramatically lowers the number of abortions.
As far as morality, making abortions illegal doesn’t make the US more moral. It simply makes hundreds of thousands of women living in red states that never even received a parking ticket before, into criminals for violating their state’s laws on abortion. If Republicans want to restore morality in the US, they should dump Donald Trump as their party leader.
If Texas Republicans just wanted to match the pathetically low drop in abortions that SB 8 obtained, they could make minor tweaks requiring more employers to offer free birth control. Or, they could dramatically slash the number of abortions by offering free birth control, including LARCs, to all women.
The bottom line on the Texas abortion law is this. It failed spectacularly measured by the number of abortions it prevented.
Republican conservatism, a myth
If the Texas abortion law didn’t make a dent in the number of abortions, why are Republicans and their Republican Supreme Court so focused on repeating this foolishness nationwide? It certainly isn’t because of conservatism. The core belief for true conservatives is that individuals can make much better decisions than government can.
What the Bible says about when life begins…
Many Republicans profess that enacting abortion laws (even if they aren’t effective) is doing God’s work in returning morality to the US. They claim life begins at conception. There is no Biblical basis for this. In fact, the Bible makes clear that life begins at first breath.
“Genesis 2:7 is clearest. The first human (Adam) became a ‘living being’ (nefesh hayah, ‘a living breath’) when God blew into its nostrils and he started to breathe. Before taking his first breath, he was just a shell. Human life begins when you start breathing, Biblical writers thought. It ends when you stop. That’s why the Hebrew word often translated ‘spirit’ (ruah) — ‘life force’ might be a better translation — literally means ‘wind’ or ‘breath.”
“Exodus 21:22-25 describes a case where a pregnant woman jumps into a fight between her husband and another man and suffers injuries that cause her to miscarry. Injuries to the woman prompt the normal penalties for harming another human being: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a life for a life. Killing the woman is murder, a capital crime.The miscarriage is treated differently, however — as property loss, not murder. The assailant must pay a fine to the husband. The law of a life for a life does not apply. The fetus is important, but it’s not human life in the same way the pregnant woman is.”
“A few passages talk about someone called by God before birth: ‘The LORD called me from the womb. From the innermost parts of my mother, God named me … and said to me, ‘You are my servant Israel, in whom I’ll be glorified” (Isaiah 49:1-3).
“Here, the one called is the nation Israel, not an individual. A nation of course can’t occupy a womb. The language is figurative not literal. It isn’t describing prenatal biology or pinpointing when human life begins. It’s affirming God’s power and Israel’s calling to a special mission in the world.”
“Other passages make the same point by saying someone’s called by God before they’re even conceived (Genesis 18:9; 1 Samuel 1:17; Luke 1:31). I’ve not heard anyone make the case, based on these texts, that human life begins before conception.”
“It’s hard to ask biblical texts the modern question, ‘when does human life begin?’ because the Bible has a very different understanding of human reproduction. Biblical writers don’t talk about sperm fertilizing eggs. They talk about male ‘seed’ planted in fertile female ground. Just as a seed becomes a plant when it emerges from the ground, so too a man’s planted seed becomes another human being when it emerges from the womb.” https://www.huffpost.com/entry/abortion-what-the-bible-says-and-doesnt-say_b_1856049
The bottom line here pertaining to abortion is that it is impossible to murder someone that was never alive.
What the Bible says about birth control…
As noted above, over the last 30 years, providing free birth control or making it more available resulted in dramatic drops in abortions. Logically, if the goal is to reduce abortions, we should do everything possible to make the most effective birth control more available.
It doesn’t take long to figure out that while there aren’t any anti-abortion Republicans, there are lots of anti-birth control Republicans. While they claim to be fighting abortion, it is evident their big prize is outlawing birth control.
So, for those who believe in Biblical teachings, there are two examples in the Bible Republicans use to show God’s disapproval of birth control. Neither stand up to scrutiny.
The first involves Onan, a minor character in the Bible (Genesis 38). Onan’s brother died before conceiving a child. God commanded Onan to produce a child with his dead brother’s widow, Tamar. Onan opts to preserve his financial advantage and interrupts coitus with Tamar, spilling his semen on the ground. For this, God punishes Onan with death.
So, did God punish Onan for having sex with a very ineffective mode of birth control or did He punish Onan for failing to honor a commandment to produce a child with his dead brother’s wife? The Bible doesn’t’t give us an answer.
For many theologians, since the Bible doesn’t say anything about Tamar giving consent to this whole process, every time Onan had sex with Tamar was a rape. Consequently, this arrangement is a very dubious foundation for any kind of moral argument.
The second example is that God commanded his people, “Be fruitful and multiply”. However, it is easy to “be fruitful and multiply” while still having protected sex other times. If a couple decides to not have children and they use birth control to achieve their goal, the sin is that they made a decision not to have children, not that they used birth control.
The Catholic Church does approve of abstinence and the rhythm method of birth control (abstaining from sex during the woman’s period of ovulation). Other churches have adopted similar rules.
Many women have a difficult time understanding why the rhythm method of birth control (which is not effective) is allowed while the types of birth control that are highly effective are a mortal sin. The Catholic reason is that any type of birth control that stops the sperm from fertilizing the woman’s egg is considered “a grave matter”. There is nothing explicit about birth control being sinful in the Bible. Condemnations of birth control are the rules of man, not God. Different Christian churches have dramatically different interpretations of the same Bible.
Superstitions
Another issue is that many Republican Christians are superstitious. These folks believe that the droughts, severe storms, COVID and all the rest we are experiencing have nothing to do with climate change. In their view, these are just God’s punishment because we allow abortions, birth control, empowered women, false religions and homosexuality.
What they fail to realize is that in the first half of the 20th Century, we had polio, the Spanish flu, consecutive years of drought, the Dust Bowl, locusts, boll weevils, the Great Depression, and two World Wars. During that time frame, abortion was illegal, divorce was illegal, gay sex was illegal, birth control and interracial marriage were illegal in most states and the percent of Americans attending church was at an all time high. In addition, women, homosexuals and coloreds knew their place in society.
While it is fine to long for the good old days, they weren’t great for a lot of people. Especially anyone that weren’t heterosexual, white males.
The bigger picture on Biblical interpretations
Republicans somehow think they are doing the Lord’s work by opposing abortions and birth control. Yet, the Bible makes clear that life begins at first breath. The Bible simply doesn’t make any direct claim that birth control is wrong. Republican Christian arguments rely on ambiguity and guessing what Bible writers meant. Often, church leaders just apply their own interpretations.
Republican Christians make abortion and birth control rules based on ambiguity and conjecture about what is in the Bible. At the same time, on other topics like charity, helping the poor and condemning greed, they ignore the continual and very direct teachings in the Bible. Some examples:
“He who gives to the poor will never want, but he who shuts his eyes will have many curses.” Proverbs 28:27.
Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares. Hebrews 13:2
Certainly, no hidden meaning in these Biblical quotes. However, applying these lessons to Republican policies like taking food stamps, housing and medical care from the poor while giving tax breaks to the rich doesn’t apply to the buffet style of Christianity Republicans follow.
Where do we go from here?
As more and more states pass bills mimicking the Texas abortion bill, women in the affected states will have to travel further for safe abortions. Abortion facilities in sanctuary states will have capacity problems.
While most Texas women circumvented the law by traveling out of state, the future will definitely involve more medical (drug induced) abortions. Currently, buying the pills online means 5-15 days for the drugs to arrive from India. This is an unacceptably long time when medical abortions should be done within ten weeks of conception. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/05/04/abortion-pills-online-telemedicine/
So here’s a way for an enterprising individual to help women keep control of their bodies while earning a decent living. An entrepreneur could set-up a website like doityourselfabortion.com (the domain is still available at this writing) and create an online shop and presence in Mexico. While both Mifepristone and Misoprostol are sold over-the-counter in Mexico, I‘d recommend focusing on just selling Misoprostol since it is a generic and is also used for stomach ailments. A four pill regimen of Misoprostol is 99 percent effective in aborting a fetus.
If worst comes to worst, the most our entrepreneur can be charged with is shipping a drug to treat indigestion into the US. If someone is going to use it for an abortion, that is their business.
I’d also suggest an extra optional box to check on the online order form if the customer wants the pills shipped packed with skin care lotion or some other product. This will work for girls that need the package delivered to their parents’ house and borrowed their parents’ credit card to make the purchase.
If Frugal Ron was willing to move to a new country, learn a new language, start business from scratch and learn which Mexican politicians to make business partners, I’d do this myself. Unfortunately, at this stage of my life, I’ll leave this opportunity to someone else.
More Republican folly
If Texas Republicans were capable enough to pay attention, they would notice it is one thing to pass a law banning abortions. It is another thing to actually enforce it.
Some of the Republican efforts are just plain bizarre. Some states are passing laws making it a felony for a woman to travel to another state to get an abortion. They choose to ignore that it is impossible to determine if a woman had an abortion or a natural miscarriage. No medical facility is going to give up private medical records. Maybe these Republicans expect women to put up an Instagram post, “My trip to Illinois to get an abortion”?
Republican run state legislatures are busy passing laws outlawing the delivery of abortion pills through the mail. These laws are also a waste of time since authorities cannot open mail without a warrant. Getting a warrant is even more difficult for the authorities if the drugs are coming from a country or state where their use and sale is legal. Complicating things more for Republicans, mailing the pills in a plain envelope with no return address would require law enforcement to get a warrant to search every piece of mail coming from India, Mexico or any other country or state that women are getting medical abortions from.
The Catch-22
Polls show 64 percent of US voters do not want to see Roe versus Wade overturned and abortion made illegal the US. Logically, voters should be mobilized and elect enough Democrats to overturn the filibuster in the Senate and send a bill protecting the right to legal abortion to President Biden to make into law.
I doubt this will happen in the near future. Abortion laws are a Catch 22. As long as abortion laws are as ineffective as the Texas law and women with money can readily get a safe abortion when they want, few voters and politicians are going to make an issue of it. However, if Republicans could ever figure out a way to write an abortion bill that was actually effective, the Silent Majority would rise up and kill it in a flash.
Where we go from here?
The demise of abortion laws will actually happen in courts. It won’t be decided by judges, but by people like you and I. When authorities capture an abortionist, or someone sues someone for aiding an abortion, there will be a jury trial. In the US, one of every four women over 40 has had an abortion. Presumably, one of every four women under 40 will want an abortion sometime in the future. Already, the odds are stacked in the favor of the abortion provider. We need to vote for acquittal if given the opportunity.
I expect after a few unsuccessful cases of individuals suing abortion facilitators, (allowed in Texas’s SB 8), the high legal costs associated with bringing these cases will cool people’s enthusiasm.
District attorneys and attorney generals in Republican states have vowed not to prosecute anyone for being involved in an abortion. https://www.washingtonpost.com/crime-law/2020/10/14/coalition-prosecutors-attorneys-general-across-us-vow-not-enforce-antiabortion-laws/
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/31/opinion/prosecutor-abortion-virginia.html
The Canadian example
In Quebec, Canada, Dr. Henry Morgentaler was charged with providing illegal abortions. Morgentaler admitted to performing over 6,000 abortions and just to show his goodwill to prosecutors, he also gave them a video of himself performing an abortion. Prosecutors charged him three times and juries acquitted him three times. Finally, prosecutors deemed the abortion law unenforceable. The Canadian Supreme Court eventually struck down Canada’s abortion law as unconstitutional.
After striking down Roe this summer, I don’t expect the US Supreme Court to revisit abortion until at least two Republican justices have died.
In the meantime, what I expect will happen in other Republican states is what is happening in Texas now. Today’s Republicans are so gullible they will believe anything they are told to believe. If Fox News and Republican politicians tell them that their abortion laws are saving hundreds of thousands of babies’s lives, they’ll buy it hook-line-and-sinker. At the same time, women wanting an abortion will have easy access for traveling to a sanctuary state or ordering an online abortion. This is about the best we can expect in the next few years.
Wrapping up
Today’s Republican Party and the Republicans on the Supreme Court are living in a world that doesn’t exist anymore. These people think the Supreme Court can make laws outlawing abortion, same sex marriage and contraception and that people will blindly obey them. Then, there is the ridiculous notion that the Republican Party, led by Donald Trump, will make the US a “moral nation”.
The saddest part of all this foolishness of trying to outlaw abortion is that we are wasting time and resources that should be applied in figuring out how to make the most effective means of birth control available to any woman of reproductive age that wants it. The facts from the last 30 years show that without a doubt, free and more available birth control dramatically reduces the number of abortions. Outlawing abortions does virtually nothing to reduce abortions.
The part of this whole argument about abortion that is missing is the gut wrenching decision it forces on women and their families that are confronted with an unwanted pregnancy.
Getting an abortion, or carrying a baby to full-term, is a life changing choice. Abortion is undoubtedly the greatest social issue our country faces. Fortunately, we have the technology and the means to dramatically reduce the need for abortion. We just need the political will to make it happen.
