The partisan struggle over abortion is escalating.
Republican legislators in Oklahoma, Florida, and Kentucky recently finalized severe restrictions on abortion. The Supreme Court is currently weighing a case that many think could overturn at least parts of the landmark abortion ruling in Roe v. Wade. While this pleases many conservatives, liberals — especially women — are angry and afraid. Much of the fear surrounding the possible repeal of Roe centers on this question: What will women who want an abortion do if they can’t have one? Won’t banning abortion just create millions of more back-alley abortions?
Not necessarily. If parts of Roe were overturned, abortion laws would simply return to the states. Specific laws would thus vary state by state.
Ireland offers an example of what might follow.
Abortion did not become legal in Ireland until 2018. Ireland went from having 15 reported abortions in 2017 — there were exceptions for when the mother’s life was at risk — to 6,666 in 2019, a mind-boggling increase. Abortion became legal due to growing popularity elsewhere and stars like U2 signaling their support for repealing Ireland’s ban on abortion. But what had women been doing in Ireland before abortion became legal?
Well, when abortion was not a legal option, Ireland became a world leader in medical care for women and babies. Studies show Ireland was one of the safest countries to have a baby. The maternal death rate was extremely low compared with the United Kingdom and the United States. Ireland’s abortion ban encouraged neonatal medicine to flourish: The survival rate of babies born prematurely rose. Irish women also had more babies.
Ireland is a tiny country compared to the U.S., so the correlations are not exact, of course. But the data demonstrate that as abortion restrictions slowly extend to other states, the workaround for abortion might be more positive than people think. It could force medical care for women and babies to improve. It could lower the maternal death rate. It could increase the survivability rate of premature babies.
This does not mean mothers will not be left to raise a baby solo either — a talking point often used in favor of abortion rights. It’s true, conservatives have often focused too much on the unborn and not on the worried mother. That has shifted in the last decade. In Texas, where abortions have drastically declined, clinics helping new mothers and their babies now outnumber abortion clinics.
These are all positive features reinforcing a culture of life that go far beyond just banning abortion.
Nicole Russell is a contributor to the Washington Examiner‘s Beltway Confidential blog. She is a journalist in Washington, D.C., who previously worked in Republican politics in Minnesota.
