I found this article in NewScientist by Claire Wilson interesting:
When US foreign aid for abortion providers stopped in 2001 for eight years, the number of pregnancy terminations in parts of sub-Saharan Africa went up, new figures show.
The rise may have happened because many health clinics that offer abortions also provide contraception services, so more women got pregnant without meaning to, says Eran Bendavid of Stanford University in California. …
Bendavid’s team analysed the provision of contraception and abortion services in 26 African countries between 1995 and 2014, spanning periods when funding was on, then off, then on again. Half the countries were highly affected by the funding changes, but the rest were less dependent on US aid in this area.
Compared with the less dependent countries, the highly affected nations had a 40 per cent rise in abortions when funding for clinics was withdrawn. Contraception use was also lower during this period. “I imagine that many people who support the policy would have a preference for a world with fewer abortions,” says Bendavid. “I would say the policy is counterproductive.”
Suggesting that the demand for control of birth rates is not an elastic, but inelastic quantity. If a family that desires to limit its size at a given point in time cannot obtain proper contraceptives, then it’ll use abortion. Certain religious sects prohibit the use of contraception, thus making the disobedient even more dependent on abortion when they can’t get contraceptive education or supplies because funding has been cut off.
Abortion is the great carrot and cudgel of the conservative side of the spectrum, but the persistence of human need vs fallacious human myth, or reality vs delusion, continues to end in reality’s favor.
