The danger that Obamacare poses to the pro-life movement is twofold. First, if abortion is listed as a federal health benefit, that could easily nullify or weaken a number of important state level pro-life laws including parental involvement laws, waiting periods, and informed consent laws. Second, Obamacare provides federal funds to insurance plans which cover abortion. This should concern pro-lifers for several reasons. There is plenty of evidence that government subsidies for abortion increase abortion rates. Additionally, one reason why the abortion rate in the United States has fallen is the substantial decline in the number of abortion providers. In fact, the number of abortion providers has declined by nearly a third since 1982. A steady flow of federal funds to abortion providers could stem or even reverse this trend.

As such, the repeal of Obamacare has to be the top priority for the pro-life movement. And the news is not all bad.   Even though supporters of health care reform succeeded in enacting Obamacare this past spring, it is fair to say that the pro-life movement offered the most effective opposition.  As such, the pro-life movement is in a unique position to offer effective support for its repeal. Indeed, the least popular aspect of Obamacare was the federal subsidies for insurance plans which covered abortion. Many Americans — even many who do not consider themselves pro-life — are opposed to any government funding for abortion. As such, the pro-life movement needs to keep abortion funding at the forefront during the upcoming debates over the repeal of Obamacare.

Indeed, during the deliberations over health care reform the Obama administration and its allies were well aware of the potency of the pro-life movement. They quickly realized their pro-choice political allies would never support an explicit ban on federal funds to insurance plans which included abortion. As such, they launched a concerted campaign to convince the general public that Obamacare would not increase the abortion rate in America. Among the claims that they made were that 1) increasing funding for contraception would lower the abortion rate 2) the experience of Commonwealth Care in Massachusetts provided evidence that the abortion coverage would not increase abortion rates and 3) some countries with more extensive public health benefits had lower abortion rates than the United States.

Now these claims were all, to put it mildly, weak empirically.  A 2002 Guttmacher Institute study found that a very small percentage of sexually active women forgo contraception due to either cost or lack of availability.  Regarding public health care benefits and abortion rates, there is virtually no peer reviewed evidence indicating that more generous public benefits of any kind reduces the incidence of abortion. The specific example of Commonwealth Care in Massachusetts was unpersuasive since a high percentage of Massachusetts residents already possessed health insurance prior to the enactment of Commonwealth Care. Finally, while it is true that some European countries with single payer health care have lower abortion rates than the United States, it should be noted that our abortion rates are falling while theirs are increasing.

The pro-life movement, and most Americans in general, did not find these arguments put forth by supporters of Obamacare compelling. As such, as President Obama struggled to find the votes in the House of Representatives necessary to pass Obamacare, he shifted strategies. President Obama pledged to sign an executive order that would purportedly ban federal funds from going to insurance policies that would fund abortion. Obamacare supporters hoped that this would purchase some political cover for pro-life Democrats and convince some Americans that Obamacare did not actually fund abortion.

Of course, nearly all analysts, both pro-life and pro-choice agree that the executive order is close to meaningless.  Cecile Richards of Planned Parenthood called it a “symbolic gesture.” Additionally, after the executive order was announced, NARAL, NOW, and other groups that support legal abortion did not call for the defeat of Obamacare. Furthermore, in the months after the passage of Obamacare, the National Right to Life Committee found that the Department of Health and Human Services agreed to fund high risk insurance plans in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and New Mexico all of which included abortion coverage. The outcry did prompt a policy change from the Obama administration. But the policy change was due to the outside scrutiny, not the legal weight of the executive order. Furthermore, the Obama administration vowed that this policy change “is not a precedent.”

As the debate over the repeal of Obamacare takes place this year, the Obama administration and its allies are sure to recycle last year’s arguments again. They will make a concerted effort to legitimize the executive order.  Additionally, they will spin Obamacare as something that pro-lifers should support, or at least not oppose. However, the pro-life movement needs stay on message and publicize the fact that Obamacare will result in federal funding for abortion.

Moving forward, the pro-life movement has some legislative options. On Thursday, two pieces of pro-life legislation were introduced in Congress, H.R. 3 “The No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act.” and H.R. 358 “The Protect Life Act.”  H.R. 3 was introduced by Congressman Chris Smith (R-NJ). This bill would create universal, permanent ban on federal taxpayer funding of abortion. Furthermore, unlike the Hyde Amendment it would not have to be annually renewed.  “The Protect Life Act,” introduced by Congressman Pitts (R-PA) would rewrite multiple provisions of Obamacare in order to prohibit federal subsidies for abortion.  Enacting either of these pieces of legislation would be an important first step.

However, the pro-life movement cannot stop there. Ultimately, greater federal control over health policy may succeed in removing abortion from public debate. This is a goal that supporters of legal abortion are likely to pursue.  After all, abortion rights advocates typically try to achieve their policy objectives via administrative or judicial fiat — instead of the democratic process.  As such, as pro-lifers return from the March for Life we should rightly celebrate the important incremental progress that we have made. More importantly, however, pro-lifers also need to realize that future progress may well hinge on our ability to repeal Obamacare.


Michael New is an Assistant Professor at The University of Alabama and a Fellow at the Witherspoon Institute in Princeton, NJ.

Copyright 2011 the Witherspoon Institute. All rights reserved.

Become a fan of Public Discourse on Facebook, follow Public Discourse on Twitter, and sign up for the Public Discourse RSS feed.

In the beginning of the book Forsythe discusses the philosophy of prudence. He describes the thoughts of a number of philosophers, including Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas, on prudential reasoning and prudential judgment. While the philosophical arguments are interesting, Forsythe’s main interest is trying to make a practical case for prudence. He does this through analyzing the history of two important political movements—the efforts by William Wilberforce to abolish the slave trade in Great Britain in the 1800s and efforts by President Lincoln to abolish slavery in the United States.

Specifically Forsythe chronicles Wilberforce’s career in public service and favorably comments not only upon his strategic decisions, but on Wilberforce’s charisma and winsome nature. He also describes the legislative steps Wilberforce advocated which ultimately led to the abolition of the slave trade in Great Britain. Wilberforce promoted three types of incremental legislation, bills that prohibited slave exports from specific parts of Africa, bills that prohibited the importation of slaves to specific foreign colonies, and bills that would require more humane treatment of slaves, such as those that reduced the number of slaves that could be carried per ship.

Forsythe also details how Lincoln used prudential judgment in nine of the most important decisions of his Presidency. These include the decision to use force to restore the Union, his 1861 decision to resupply Fort Sumter, and the timing of the Emancipation Proclamation. Throughout the book, Forsythe rightly notes that these incremental measures advocated by both Wilberforce and Lincoln were helpful in allowing both men to achieve their respective long term goals of ending the slave trade in Great Britain and abolishing slavery in the United States.

Forsythe then uses these historical examples to defend the strategy of incrementalism that has been pursued by a number of pro-life groups. Specifically, in the years following the Roe v. Wade decision, many in the pro-life movement realized that it would be politically impossible to enact a constitutional amendment that would ban abortion. As such, many pro-life groups pushed for incremental legislation that would either prevent abortion in certain circumstances or create obstacles that would abortions more difficult to obtain. Such legislation included bans on the public funding of abortion, parental involvement laws, and partial birth abortion bans.

Those promoting this strategy of incrementalism have always argued that it will advance the long term goal of providing legal protection for all unborn children. However, this strategy of incrementalism has still been controversial. Some pro-lifers feel that the passage of incremental laws regulating abortion legitimizes the practice of abortion. Some also think that incremental legislation providers political cover for elected officials who want to court pro-life voters while still keeping abortion legal.

However, in his book Forsythe presents a robust defense of incrementalism. He argues that pro-life efforts to enact incremental laws have accomplished a number of worthwhile objectives. For instance, the debate over incremental laws has served, and continues to serve, an important educational purpose. For instance, the debate in the 1990s about banning partial birth abortion informed millions of Americans about the extreme nature of abortion policy in this country. Incremental laws have also kept the abortion issue alive politically. Most importantly, some incremental pro-life laws, such as parental involvement laws and public funding bans, have been effective at lowering abortion rates.

While Forsythe’s book contains important lessons for all civically engaged citizens, his main audience is clearly people involved with the pro-life movement. Since the Roe v. Wade decision, the pro-life movement has certainly had a tumultuous history. Early on, one could certainly argue that many decisions made by some pro-lifers lacked prudence. Most notably, the bitter fights during 1970s and early 1980s on the proper way to design a Human Life Amendment crippled pro-life progress and caused long-term damage to the pro-life movement.

In the years after the Roe v. Wade decision, many people who joined the pro-life movement had little previous involvement with either politics or policy. To a certain extent, some previous mistakes can be excused due to the lack of political experience of these newly minted pro-life activists. However, in the past 35 years, the pro-life movement has achieved a greater degree of experience, maturity, and sophistication. Good incremental progress has been made on a number of fronts.

In particular, the pro-life movement has made some impressive gains in public opinion with a number of surveys indicating that for the first time, more Americans are willing to describe themselves as “pro-life” rather than “pro-choice.” More importantly, these public opinion gains have been the largest among America’s youth. Planned Parenthood is receiving more scrutiny because of the recent GAO investigation and Lila Rose’s undercover investigative reporting. More states are enacting incremental pro-life laws. Most importantly the number of abortions is declining, between 1990 and 2005 the number of abortions performed in this country fell by 22 percent.

Despite this incremental progress, many pro-lifers are frustrated. Furthermore, while the divisions in the pro-life movement are less visible today than they were 30 years ago, they still exist. As such, imprudent strategies and proposals which hold the promise of big gains can often find a welcome audience, even when a substantial number of veteran pro-lifers express serious skepticism.

In his book, Forsythe diplomatically tries to engage those pro-lifers who are either hostile or skeptical toward an incremental strategy. He ably shows that many leading philosophers and theologians find nothing objectionable about incrementalism. Practically speaking, Forsythe also demonstrates that incremental gains helped bring about the end of both the slave trade in Great Britain and slavery in the United States.

Overall, the pro-life movement is neither blessed with abundant material resources nor substantial influence in elite circles. For this reason, unity is important, and pro-lifers should cooperate as often as they can. Furthermore, pro-lifers should always make an effort to be diplomatic to other pro-lifers pursuing strategies that some might find questionable. However, as we continue our efforts to restore legal protection to all unborn children, all pro-lifers would do well to heed Forsythe’s advice and pursue their work with prudence.


Michael J. New is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at The University of Alabama and a Fellow of the Witherspoon Institute in Princeton, NJ.

Copyright 2010 the Witherspoon Institute. All rights reserved.

He even took things a step further, saying that the policy positions of the religious right—namely the unwillingness of pro-lifers to support contraception funding—are actually promoting abortion. In his essay, Koppleman approvingly cites Naomi Cahn and June Carbone’s book Red Families vs. Blue Families, which argues for government policies that would make contraceptives more widely available.

In their book, Cahn and Carbone draw a distinction between a red family model, which emphasizes sexual restraint and early marriage, and a blue family model, which is more sexually permissive and contraceptive-friendly. Cahn and Carbone argue that the contraceptive-friendly blue family model offers a number of benefits. These include higher levels of education, low divorce rates, lower teen birth rates, and high incomes. These all may be worthwhile goals. However, one benefit that the blue family model clearly does not offer is lower abortion rates.

Cahn and Carbone are clear about this in their book. They report that the states with the lowest abortion rates tend to be red states in the Midwest, while states with the highest rates are blue states in the mid-Atlantic.[i] Their findings on abortion rates among minors are even starker. They observe that the “blue states in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions have . . . higher use of abortion,” and go on to say that this set of states “discourages teen childbearing, with abortion as an established fallback.”[ii] Furthermore, according to the data presented in Blue Families vs. Red Families, pregnant teens in blue states are much more likely to obtain abortions than their counterparts in red states.[iii]

In my earlier response to Koppelman, I analyzed abortion rates from all fifty states, using data from both the Centers for Disease Control and the Alan Guttmacher Institute. This analysis provided additional evidence that red states have lower abortion rates than blue states. Since pro-lifers are primarily interested in lowering abortion rates, it is easy to see why the blue family model touted by Cahn and Carbone offers little appeal. Koppelman is simply wrong.

Furthermore, even though Koppelman, Cahn, and Carbone avidly promote greater support for contraceptives as a compromise, there is very little evidence to suggest that more government spending on contraceptives will do much to reduce abortion rates. As I stated in my response to Koppelman, nine years ago the Alan Guttmacher Institute surveyed 10,000 women who had abortions. Among those not using contraception at the time they conceived, a very small percentage cited cost or lack of availability as their reason for not using contraception. Only 12 percent said that they lacked access to contraceptives due to financial or other reasons.[iv] Given all the existing programs, it is by no means clear that more federal spending could increase the use of contraceptives among this subset of women.

In April, Koppelman, Cahn, and Carbone responded to my essay. Koppelman’s comments in particular left much to be desired. Instead of engaging my arguments or presenting actual data indicating that more government funding for contraceptives lowers abortion rates, Koppelman disregards my response. He states that this argument is “silly” and laments that it is “astoundingly stupid and tragic that this is what we are arguing about.”

To their credit, Carbone and Cahn actually make an argument, and note that improvements in contraceptives led to the 1990s abortion decline. There is actually a grain of truth to this. Abortion rates started to fall in the early 1990s for a host of reasons including improvements in contraceptives, a decline in sexual activity among minors[v], the passage of new pro-life legislation[vi], and reductions in the number of abortion providers.[vii] However, Carbone and Cahn overstate their case.

First, they claim that publicly funded family-planning services annually prevented two million unwanted pregnancies that would have resulted in over 800,000 abortions. This is misleading. Their figure comes from a Guttmacher Institute policy analysis which does not analyze any actual data on either funding for family-planning services or abortion rates.[viii] Instead, the Guttmacher analysis assumes that funding for family-planning clinics will automatically result in more clients, greater contraceptive use among clients, fewer unintended pregnancies, and fewer abortions. It fails to take into account that some people who obtain contraception from family-planning clinics would still be able to obtain contraception of a similar quality on their own. It also fails to acknowledge that easier access to contraception may increase the population of sexually active people and that people with access to more reliable forms of contraception may engage in sexual activity more often.

Second, Carbone and Cahn’s claim that more consistent and effective contraception accounts for eighty-five percent of the drop in teen pregnancies is also questionable. Carbone and Cahn likely obtain this figure from a study that was authored by Santelli et al. in 2007.[ix] This study incorrectly assumes that minors use contraception as reliably as adults. There is plenty of reason to believe that minors—regardless of what kind of sex education they have—will be less consistent in their use of contraceptives. Since minor contraceptive use is less consistent—and less effective—there is a good chance that reductions in teen sexual activity played a larger role in the decline in teen pregnancies than Santelli and his co-authors conclude.

Finally, Carbone and Cahn attempt to support their argument about contraception by arguing that during the 1990s the rate of unintended pregnancies fell among college-educated women but increased among low-income women. However, arguing that these disparities are caused by differences in access to contraception seems a bit simplistic. For instance, the booming economy of the 1990s increased the economic costs of an unintended pregnancy more significantly for educated women, thus giving them a greater incentive to use contraceptives more often.

Furthermore, Carbone and Cahn fail to take into account that certain cultural and behavioral factors may be to blame for unmarried pregnancies among low-income women. In Unmarried Couples with Children, sociologists Kathryn Edin of Harvard and Paula England of Stanford conducted an intense study of 76 low-income couples from Milwaukee, Chicago, and New York who had just given birth. Some of these couples were married, but most were not. The fertility patterns of all of the women in the survey were carefully studied for 4 years.[x]

Edin and England found that only a very small percentage of these women wanted contraception, but were unable to afford it.[xi] Specifically, all of the women surveyed were asked whether they had been in a situation where they wanted birth control, but could not afford or find it. Tellingly, all said no.[xii] In fact, according to Eden and England “some laughed when we asked this question, pointing out how hard clinics and school in their communities push contraceptives.”[xiii]

Specifically, Edin and England found that pregnancies of unmarried women were often intended, or at least not specifically avoided. In particular, as relationships became more serious, contraceptive use tended to lapse. The authors found that the need of one or both partners to indicate trust is the reason for this. As such, the lack of consistent contraceptive use, but not lack of contraceptive availability, played a role in the pregnancy. As Edin and England put it, these parents were “not thinking” about pregnancy prevention. However, their lack of thought did not denote a desire to have a child. Overall, the evidence presented by Edin and England strongly indicates that greater access to contraceptives will do little to prevent unwanted pregnancies among low-income women.

As such, even though improvements in contraceptives may have played some role in the 1990s abortion decline, it does not follow that the government should increase funding for contraception. In particular, Carbone and Cahn fail to understand the argument I made in my original response to Koppelman’s essay. Attributing the following claim to me, Carbone and Cahn state that “the most frequently asserted half-truth making its way across the internet is that most women who have abortions did use some form of birth control, therefore ‘there is relatively little the government can do to increase contraceptive use among sexually active women.’”

However, that was not my argument at all. Again, my argument is that a number of studies indicate that only a small percentage of sexually active women who forgo contraceptive use do so because of either cost or availability. Considering the federal government already funds contraceptives for low-income women through the Title X program it is not clear that more funding for contraceptives would improve contraceptive use, result in fewer unwanted pregnancies, or reduce abortion rates. In my own research on state abortion trends, I have collected data on Title X grants by state and have found no correlation between Title X spending and state abortion rates.

Overall, there is precious little evidence that greater government funding for contraceptives will reduce abortion rates. Quite honestly, the hypocrisy here is astounding. Koppelman, Cahn, Carbone, and other opponents of abstinence-only education can always be relied upon to cite chapter and verse a number of studies that purportedly show that abstinence education is ineffective at reducing teen sexual behavior. However, they are unwilling to subject their own ideas to the same level of empirical scrutiny. Specifically, Koppelman, Cahn, and Carbone have yet to cite one peer-reviewed study from the United States which shows greater government spending on contraception results in lower abortion rates.

In fact, throughout their entire book Red Families vs. Blue Families, Cahn and Carbone only manage to cite one study that purportedly finds a negative correlation between contraceptive availability and abortion rates. This particular study is a 2003 Guttmacher Institute study that analyzed data from foreign countries.[xiv] Like many Guttmacher studies, however, the conclusions fail to fit the data.

For instance, according to the study, a number of countries, including the United States, Cuba, Denmark, Netherlands, Singapore, and South Korea saw simultaneous increases in both contraceptive use and abortion rates. Now it is true that the abortion rates in some of these countries declined in the long term. However, in many of these countries—including, again, the United States—the abortion rate remained higher than it was before contraception was widely available. This particular Guttmacher study fails to consider how the availability of contraception affects sexual behavior and how a more permissive sexual culture will result in a higher incidence of abortion.[xv]

Overall, considering the weakness of their empirical argument, any “compromise” that would involve greater government funding for contraceptives seems like a bad deal for the pro-life movement. At the end of the day conservatives are not scared of contraception. Most of us realize that contraceptives are here to stay. Most of us also respect the rights of others to make the contraceptive choices they feel are appropriate. However, we are rightly concerned about proposals to have the government fund and distribute contraceptives.

Easier access to contraceptives might encourage even more sexual activity among unmarried people. This is especially the case if contraceptives are made available to populations which include a high percentage of sexually inactive people, such as young teens. After all, government programs send powerful messages about the types of behavior that are acceptable and appropriate.

Indeed, what we are rightly scared of is a more sexualized, more promiscuous culture. We know that a promiscuous culture is never going to support significant restrictions on abortion, regardless of the availability of contraceptives. No contraceptive is one-hundred percent effective and when contraceptives fail in a sexualized culture, there will be significant demand for legal abortion. The high rates of abortion in blue states are evidence of this.

Creating a more chaste culture will pose a substantial challenge for the pro-life movement.

Public policy is a rather clumsy tool for changing sexual activity in a positive way, and getting people to change their sexual behavior will doubtless be difficult. Pro-lifers need to realize this. At the same time, Koppelman, Carbone, and Cahn need to realize that a contraceptive culture and a chaste culture are mutually exclusive, and public policy can do much to change sexual activity in a negative way. As such, the pro-life movement is never going to embrace contraception. Simply put, most of us feel that any potential benefits from greater contraceptive use are dwarfed by the benefits that would accrue from a more chaste culture.

Pro-lifers may discover that advocating for sexual restraint is more difficult than advocating for the unborn. However, this is a battle that pro-lifers must continue to engage in if we are to succeed in our goal of providing legal protection to all unborn children.


Michael J. New is an Assistant Professor at The University of Alabama and a Fellow at the Witherspoon Institute in Princeton, NJ.

Copyright 2010 the Witherspoon Institute. All rights reserved.

[ii] Ibid., p.24

[iii] Ibid., pp. 22-23

[iv] Jones, Rachel, Jacqueline Darroch, and Stanley K. Henshaw. 2002. “Contraceptive Use Among U.S. Women Having Abortions 2000-2001.” Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health 34(6): 294-303.

[v] Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 2002. “Trends in Sexual Risk Behaviors Among High School Students – United States 1991-2001.” Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. September 27, 2002, Volume 51: 856-859.

[vi] New, Michael J. 2010. “The Effect of Pro-Life Legislation on the Incidence of Abortion Among Minors.” Catholic Social Science Review 12: 185-215.

[vii] New, Michael J. Forthcoming. “Analyzing the Effect of State Level Anti-Abortion Legislation in the Post Casey Era.” State Politics and Policy Quarterly.

[viii] Gold, Rachel Benson, Adam Sonfield, Cory Richards, and Jennifer Frost. 2009. Next Steps for America’s Family Planning Program. The Alan Guttmacher Institute. For a more detailed description of the Metholdogy see Jennifer Frost, Lawrence Finer, and Athena Tapales. 2008. “The Impact of Publicly Funded Family Planning Clinic Services on Unintended Pregnancies and Government Cost Savings. Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved. 19(3):777-795.

[ix] Santelli, John, Laura D. Lindberg, Lawrence Finer, and Susheela Singh. 2007. “Explaining Recent Declines in Adolescent Pregnancy in the United States: The Contribution of Abstinence and Improved Contraceptive Use.” American Journal of Public Health 97(1): 150-156.

[x] Edin, Kathryn and Paula England. 2009. Unmarried Couples with Children. Russell Sage Foundation. New York. pp 5-6

[xi] Ibid., p. 32

[xii] Ibid., p. 48

[xiii] Ibid.

[xiv] Martson Cicely, and John Cleland. 2003. “Relationships Between Contraception and Abortion: A Review of the Evidence.” International Family Planning Perspectives. 6-13.

[xv] Ibid.

This argument occurs once again in a widely circulated essay entitled “How the Religious Right Promotes Abortion” by Northwestern University Law Professor Andrew Koppelman. Koppelman favorably cites Naomi Cahn and June Carbone’s book Red Families vs. Blue Families: Legal Polarization and the Creation of Culture. According to Koppelman, the hostility in red states to both contraception and comprehensive sex education leads to a greater incidence of abortion. Conversely, even though blue states are more tolerant of premarital sex, their support for comprehensive sex education and contraception actually lowers abortion rates. Koppelman spends much of the rest of the essay criticizing the religious right for their opposition to both sex education and government funding of contraception.

Unfortunately, Koppelman’s claims are based on rhetorical sleights of hand and a faulty analysis of data. What is unique about this essay is that all three of Koppelman’s arguments are incorrect. First, there is little evidence that more federal funding for contraceptives will reduce abortion rates. Second, there is some evidence that abstinence-only sex education is effective at reducing sexual activity among minors. Finally, red states actually have lower abortion rates, in part because they have placed more legal restrictions on abortion.

Funding for Contraception

Throughout the essay Koppelman axiomatically states that more government funding for contraception will reduce the abortion rate. However, the only evidence he presents to support his claim is a faulty analysis of abortion trends. In his essay, Koppelman claims that Reagan-era cuts in contraceptive funding in the early 1980s resulted in increasing abortion rates during the rest of the decade. While it is true that abortion rates went up slightly during the 1980s, it should also be noted that abortion rates were rising much faster during the 1970s. In fact between 1974 and 1980, the number of abortions performed in the United States nearly doubled at a time when, according to Koppelman, the federal government was funding contraception at historically high levels.

Furthermore, existing research indicates that there is relatively little the government can do to increase contraceptive use among sexually active women. Nine years ago, the Alan Guttmacher Institute, which was Planned Parenthood’s research arm and which strongly supports more funding for contraception, surveyed 10,000 women who had abortions. Among those who were not using contraception at the time they conceived, a very small percent cited cost or lack of availability as their reason for not using contraception. Specifically, only 12  percent said that they lacked access to contraceptives due to financial or other reasons.¹ Given all the existing programs, it is by no means clear that more federal spending on contraceptives could increase contraceptive use among this subset of women.

Abstinence Programs

In his essay, Koppelman is quick to attack abstinence education programs. He argues that there is no evidence that such programs either increase the likelihood of abstinence until marriage or produce a decline in teen or non-marital births. However, this February a study which appeared in The Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine found evidence that abstinence programs were effective in reducing sexual activity among sixth and seventh graders.²

The study involved 662 African-American students from four public middle schools in a city in the Northeastern United States. Students were randomly assigned to one of the following: an eight-hour curriculum that encouraged them to delay having sex; an eight-hour program focused on safe sex; an eight- or 12-hour program that did both; or an eight-hour program focused on teaching them other ways to be healthy.

Over the next two years, about 33 percent of the students who went through the abstinence program had engaged in sexual activity, compared with about 52 percent who were taught only safe sex. About 42 percent of the students who went through the comprehensive program started having sex, and about 47 percent of those who learned about other ways to be healthy did. Notably, contrary to the concerns of Koppelman and other opponents of abstinence education, the abstinence program did not reduce the likelihood of condom use among those students who were sexually active.

Even the group “Advocates for Youth” which is usually very critical of abstinence programs, praised the study, calling it “quality research” and “good science.” While there have been other studies which have demonstrated the effectiveness of abstinence programs, this study garnered more attention because of its unique control mechanism and because it appeared in a very visible peer-reviewed journal.

Abortion Rates

Koppelman’s main argument is that policies pursued by religious conservatives are responsible for high abortion rates. Of course, he neglects to mention that many policies supported by social conservatives have been shown to be effective at reducing the incidence of abortion. For instance, a literature review that was published by the Guttmacher Institute during the summer of 2009 found that 20 of 24 academic studies found that state public funding restrictions lowered abortion rates.³ Even Guttmacher acknowledges the best research on this topic indicates that public funding bans reduce the incidence of abortion.

Furthermore, a number of peer-reviewed studies show that pro-life parental involvement laws reduce the incidence of abortion among minors. Two detailed case studies that focused respectively on parental involvement laws passed in Massachusetts⁴ and Texas⁵ found that the in-state decline in the number of abortions performed on minors clearly exceeded any out-of-state increases. Furthermore, both studies also found small, but statistically significant increases in the minor birth rate, indicating that some minors who would have otherwise had abortions, gave birth instead. Finally, there is also research which indicates that pro-life informed consent laws are effective.⁶ In particular, two case studies of Mississippi’s informed consent show that it reduced the minor abortion rate.⁷ One of these studies even demonstrates that the decline started in the month the informed consent legislation took effect.⁸

What about Koppelman’s arguments about culture, contraception, and sex education? Well, once again the data clearly show that Koppleman is incorrect. Data obtained from the Alan Guttmacher Institute shows that the 31 states that were won by George W. Bush in the 2004 election had an average abortion rate of about 12 abortions per thousand women of childbearing age. The 19 states that John Kerry won had an average abortion rate of over 20. The results were similar when data from the Centers for Disease Control was used.

Furthermore, the five states where John McCain received the highest percentage of votes in 2008 had an average abortion rate of 6.9. The five states where Barack Obama received the highest percentage of votes in 2008 had an average abortion rate of 22.6. Overall, it seems clear that politically conservative states have, on average, lower abortion rates, than their more liberal counterparts.

Conclusion

Andrew Koppelman is the latest in a long line of pro-choice commentators to try to make the case that the best strategy for lowering the abortion rate is not greater legal protection for unborn children, but rather, more funding for contraception and comprehensive sex education. Unfortunately, the available research and data do not support his arguments. There is no solid evidence that greater federal funding for contraceptives lowers abortion rates. Furthermore, contrary to the claims of Koppelman there exists evidence that well designed abstinence education programs are able to reduce teen sexual activity.

However, the best way to empirically test Koppelman’s claims is to simply analyze abortion data from the state level. If Koppelman’s claims are correct, then sexually permissive, contraceptive friendly blue states should have the lowest abortion rates. However, that is not the case. Data from both the Centers for Disease Control and the Alan Guttmacher clearly indicate that abortion rates are significantly lower in red states than in blue states. Furthermore, the states where Republican Presidential nominees receive the most support have far lower abortion rates than those states where Democratic Presidential nominees perform the best. Simply put, state level data offer no support for Koppelman’s argument.

Overall, it should come as no surprise to pro-lifers that sexual restraint and greater legal protection for the unborn has been and will continue to be the best strategy for lowering abortion rates. The pro-life movement would do well to stay the course.

Michael J. New is an Assistant Professor at The University of Alabama and a Fellow at the Witherspoon Institute in Princeton, NJ.

Copyright 2010 the Witherspoon Institute. All rights reserved.

[2] Jemmott, John, Loretta S. Jemmott, and Geoffrey T. Fong. 2010. “Efficacy of a Theory-Based Abstinence-Only Intervention Over 24 Months: A Randomized Controlled Trial With Young Adolescents.” Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine 164: 152-159.

[3] Henshaw Stanley K. et al. 2009. Restrictions on Medicaid Funding for Abortions: A Literature Review, New York: Guttmacher Institute.

[4] Cartoof, Virginia and Lorraine Klerman. 1986. “Parental Consent for Abortion: Impact of the Massachusetts Law.” American Journal of Public Health 76: 397-400.
[5] Joyce, Theodore, Robert Kaestner, and Silvie Coleman. 2006. “Changes in Abortions and Births and the Texas Parental Involvement Law.” The New England Journal of Medicine 354: 1031-1038.

[6] New, Michael J. 2004. “Analyzing the Effect of State Legislation on the Incidence of Abortion During the 1990s.” Heritage Foundation Center for Data Analysis Report 04-01.

[7] Althaus F. and Stanley K. Henshaw. 1994. “The Effects of Mandatory Delay Laws on Abortion Patients and Providers.” Family Planning Perspectives 26(5):228–231 & 233.

[8] Joyce, Ted, Stanley K. Henshaw, and JD Skatrud. 1997. The Impact of Mississippi’s Mandatory Delay Law on Abortions and Births.” Journal of the American Medical Association 278(8): 653–658.

Early in the article, Saletan concisely and effectively makes the case that greater access to contraceptives will do little to stop abortion. Saletan cites a study by the Alan Guttmacher Institute, which until recently was Planned Parenthood’s research arm. Eight years ago, the Guttmacher Institute surveyed 10,000 women who had abortions. Among those who were not using contraception at the time they conceived, 8 percent said that they lacked access to contraceptives and 2 percent said that they could not afford contraceptives. Given all the already existing programs, it is by no means clear that there are policy instruments that could increase contraceptive use among this subset of women.

Oddly enough, however, contraception plays a key role in two of Saletan’s three compromise proposals on sanctity of life issues. Now his first, and incidentally best, proposal has nothing to do with contraception. Saletan suggests giving the national abortion rate more attention. This would actually be a good idea. Every fall, the Centers for Disease Control releases abortion data with little fanfare and less coverage. The pro-life movement should claim more credit for the progress visible in these numbers, a 20 percent decline in the abortion rate since the early 1990s. It provides tangible evidence that pro-life outreach and pro-life legislative efforts have been effective. Doing this would draw attention to some of the legislative strategies in the states that have succeeded at reducing the incidence of abortion.

This suggestion, however, would encounter political problems. Democrats would be reluctant to give serious attention to declining abortion rates, as they receive a considerable amount of support from abortion providers and pro-choice activists. The former probably do not want to see declining abortion numbers and the latter often see lower abortion rates as evidence of “lack of access.” Additionally, while Republicans will often support incremental pieces of pro-life legislation that enjoy broad support, many Republicans feel uncomfortable discussing overall abortion numbers. Some Republicans might fear that an emphasis on the national abortion rate might create conflict between pro-life incrementalists and pro-life absolutists who feel that small victories , however real, are never enough.

The other two compromises that Saletan proposes both deal with contraception and have the unique characteristic of being both ineffective and impractical. His second suggestion is for family planning counselors to “speak bluntly to women having unprotected sex.” However, it is unclear how often sexually active women who are not using contraception interact with family planning counselors. Furthermore, the contraception statistics that Saletan cites indicate that this proposed compromise will accomplish little.

Third, he suggests that pro-lifers who oppose contraception change their minds and support, or at least tolerate, birth control methods other than natural family planning. Saletan, like the rest of the media, tends to overstate the influence of pro-lifers who oppose contraception. While there are certainly anecdotes of doctors who will not prescribe birth control and pharmacists who refuse to carry contraceptives, Saletan’s own statistics, again, clearly indicate that greater access to contraceptives will not have a significant effect on the abortion rate. Furthermore, most pro-lifers who oppose the use of artificial contraception do so at least in part for religious reasons. As such, expecting them simply to reconsider seems a bit unrealistic.

So where does this leave the pro-life movement? Unfortunately, and wrongly, Saletan dismisses current pro-life efforts as ineffective. Saletan says that pro-lifers tend to “show up after a woman is pregnant,” which he argues is too late. However, there exists a substantial body of peer-reviewed research indicating that parental involvement laws and public funding restrictions do reduce the incidence of abortion. Furthermore, there exist hundreds of crisis pregnancy centers which assist countless women every year who are facing unplanned pregnancies.

Despite the presence of both protective laws and crisis pregnancy centers, a significant number of women facing unplanned pregnancies still seek abortions. The statistics that Saletan cites, however, clearly indicate that more access to contraception will do little to reduce the incidence of unplanned pregnancies. Under the Roe regime, it seems, the only way to reduce the abortion rate substantially seems to be to encourage greater sexual restraint.

Not surprisingly, Saletan is quick to dismiss this idea. As a stand-alone national policy, abstinence is “foolish” he says. Furthermore “mating has overpowered every stricture put in its way.” It should be noted, though, that there was a time when the culture was certainly less promiscuous. The Guttmacher Institute’s own analysis indicates that among people turning 15 between 1964 and 1973—after the advent of the birth control pill—only 39 percent were sexually active by age 18. For the same age cohort 20 years later, that figure increased by 20 percentage points. Interestingly, Guttmacher’s latest figures indicate that among the youngest age cohort, the rate of premarital sex is falling, albeit slightly. Perhaps abstinence education is having some effect after all.

That said, Saletan is partly correct. Creating a more chaste culture will pose a substantial challenge for the pro-life movement. Decisions about sexual activity tend to be resistant to any changes in public policy, and getting people to change their sexual behavior will doubtless be difficult. Pro-lifers need to realize this. At the same time, Saletan and his allies need to realize that a promiscuous culture is never going to support significant restrictions on abortion, regardless of the availability of contraceptives. No contraceptive is one-hundred percent effective and when contraceptives fail in a sexualized culture, there will be significant demand for legal abortion.

Indeed, the damage done by Roe v. Wade went beyond the legalization of abortion in all fifty states. Roe gave abortion rights mainstream political credibility. More importantly, it shifted sexual and cultural mores in such a way as to make the enactment of pro-life laws more difficult. Now, the reversal of Roe would do considerable good for the pro-life movement. It would further stigmatize abortion and remove judicial barriers from the enactment of pro-life legislation. Overturning Roe, however, is only the first step. Indeed, creating a more chaste culture is a battle that the right-to-life movement must engage for years to come.

Michael J. New is an Assistant Professor at the University of Alabama and a Visiting Fellow at the Witherspoon Institute in Princeton, New Jersey. He is a contributor to Public Discourse.

Copyright 2009 the Witherspoon Institute. All rights reserved.

Dr. Michael New did original analysis of datasets for the Family Research Council, which immediately published the results in September, 2008. The Guttmacher Institute (GI) recently published an article on New’s study, but as Dr. New’s (MN) response, previously published by the Family Resource Council, indicates, their paper betrays an inadequate grasp of the literature.

What follows are excerpts from the Guttmacher Institute’s paper and Dr. Michael New’s response.

State Notification Laws Are Ineffective

GI: Antiabortion activists repeatedly claim that state laws requiring parental involvement (such as notification or consent) for minors to obtain abortions have been a major contributing factor to declining abortion rates among minors in the United States.

Recently, Michael New, a visiting fellow at the antiabortion advocacy organization Family Research Council, posted an analysis on the organization’s Web site that he claims “demonstrates that state level parental involvement laws are effective in reducing the incidence of abortion among minors.” New’s analysis, which has not been published in a peer-reviewed journal, has serious methodological flaws. Like many previous studies on the subject, it is not able to substantiate the claim.

In contrast, there is strong evidence that the decline in minors’ abortion rates is largely the result of fewer teen pregnancies, which, in turn, reflect better contraceptive use among adolescents. Moreover, the evidence suggests that even in the absence of parental involvement laws, some six in 10 minors involve at least one parent in their decision to have an abortion. Mandating this involvement can be harmful to some minors. There is no strong evidence that parental involvement laws have prevented many minors from obtaining abortions.

MN: Actually, peer-reviewed research provides very good evidence that pro-life parental involvement laws have been effective at lowering the incidence of abortion among minors.

A 1986 Study in the American Journal of Public Health¹ analyzed the Massachusetts Parental Notice law, which took effect on April 23, 1981. In 1981 the number of Massachusetts minors obtaining abortions in other states increased by an average of 66 per month after the law was passed. However, the number of abortions performed on minors in Massachusetts fell by an average of 149 per month after the parental notice law took effect. As such, the in-state decline clearly exceeded the out-of-state increase. Furthermore, the article provides evidence that the minor birthrate in Massachusetts increased in 1982, possibly because of the parental notice law.

A 1991 study in the American Journal of Public Health² found that the minor abortion rate in Minnesota fell by 28 percent after the enactment of a parental notice law in 1981. A 1987 study in the American Journal of Public Health³ found little evidence that significant numbers of Minnesota minors were obtaining abortions in other states.

A 1996 study in the Journal of Health Economics⁴ found statistically significant evidence that Tennessee and South Carolina minors were less likely to obtain abortions, either in-state or out-of-state, after the passage of parental involvement laws in both states. This finding held true for both blacks and non-blacks. Furthermore the abortion rate for minors in both states fell relative the abortion rate for 19-20 year olds.

A 2006 study which was published in the New England Journal of Medicine⁵ analyzed the parental notice law that took effect in Texas in 2000. It found that:

Furthermore, a survey of public health departments in neighboring states found little evidence that Texas minors were circumventing the law by seeking abortions across state lines.

GI: Most studies purporting to show a significant impact of such laws suffer from a range of serious methodological flaws. One common flaw of these studies (including New’s) is that they track abortions by state of occurrence, not by state of residence. By failing to account for minors traveling to neighboring states to obtain an abortion, it is impossible to prove that parental involvement laws caused overall declines in minors’ abortion rates, even if they may succeed in shifting the occurrence of abortions from one state to another.

MN: Some of the research on this subject would be stronger if scholars analyzed minor abortion data by state of residence instead of state of occurrence. However, there is a slight problem here — the CDC only releases minor abortion data by state of occurrence. Furthermore, not all state health departments keep accurate data on the number of abortions performed on out-of-state minors. Sad to say, social scientists can only use data which is publicly available. Furthermore, in my research, I acknowledge that minors may be able to circumvent these laws by traveling to other states where the abortion laws are more permissive. The solution, however, is not to throw our hands in the air but to 1) Get more states to pass pro-life parental involvement laws and 2) Pass good federal legislation like the Child Custody Protection Act, which would make it a felony for a non-parent to take a minor across state lines to have an abortion.

GI: Minors’ abortion rates have been declining steadily for years, both in states with and without parental involvement laws. Even in states with such laws, the declines often started well before these statutes became effective.

MN: It is true that minor abortion rates were going down before many states passed parental involvement laws. However, the trend is held constant in my research. My findings indicate that states that passed pro-life parental involvement laws saw minor abortion rates fall faster than the national trend.

GI: A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2006⁶ found that in the period immediately following implementation of a Texas parental notification law, the abortion rate among teens aged 15-17 in the state fell more sharply than it did among 18-year-olds, who were not subject to the law. The authors concluded that the law was associated with reduced abortion rates among minors and an increase in the birth rate among older minors. However, given the design of this study, causality cannot be proven. If the law has had this effect, it likely reflects the fact that all states bordering Texas, with the exception of New Mexico, also have a mandatory parental involvement law, which makes it extremely difficult for Texas minors to seek an abortion elsewhere. The sheer size of the state contributes to that difficulty. Should additional states enact such laws, thus giving the minority of teens who seek abortions without involving parents fewer places to turn, these types of restrictions may begin to have a measurable impact on adolescent abortion rates.

MN: The 2006 study that appeared in The New England Journal of Medicine supports my argument. This study found that after the Texas parental notice law took effect in 2000, there were statistically significant declines in the abortion rate for 15 year olds, 16 year olds, and 17 year olds. Overall the minor abortion rate in Texas fell by approximately 15 percent after the passage of the law. Furthermore, the authors contacted state health departments in neighboring states and found very little evidence that Texas minors were obtaining abortions across state lines.

Declines in minors’ abortion rates are largely the result of declines in their pregnancy rates

GI: Declines in minors’ abortion rates reflect the fact that fewer minors are becoming pregnant in the first place. Between 1989 and 2002, the pregnancy rate among minors aged 15-17 declined 43% to a historic low.

Most (77%) of the reduction in the pregnancy rate among minors was the result of improved contraceptive use among sexually active minors; the remainder (23%) was attributable to some minors waiting longer to initiate sex.

MN: It is true that the reduction in minor abortion rate is partly due to the fact the minors are becoming less pregnant less often. However, there are flaws with the Santelli⁷ study which argues that the teen fertility decline is largely due to increased contraceptive use. For instance, Santelli assumes that minors would use contraception as consistently/reliability as adults. In reality, there is plenty of evidence to the contrary.

Mandating parental involvement can be harmful

GI: The most vulnerable and scared teens are put at greatest risk. Forcing teenagers to disclose to their parents that they are pregnant or seeking an abortion may place some teens at risk of physical violence or abuse. According to a 1992 study, about one-third of teenagers who did not tell their parents about their decision to seek an abortion had experienced violence in their family, or feared that violence would occur or that they would be forced to leave home.

MN: The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in Planned Parenthood of Missouri vs. Danforth (1976) and Belotti vs. Baird (1979) that parental involvement laws must contain a judicial bypass provisions that would allow minors in abusive situations to obtain permission to receive an abortion from a judge.

GI: Legal impediments to teens’ access to abortion services can result in teens’ delaying abortions until later in pregnancy, when they carry a greater risk of complications and are also more expensive to obtain.

MN: The Alan Guttmacher Institute puts forth no credible social science evidence to support this assertion. Furthermore, it should be noted that many minors are unaware of their own medical history. There are stories of minors who died because they sought abortions without their parents’ knowledge and did not realize that they were allergic to anesthesia.⁸

GI: Many medical, public health and youth-serving organizations have consistently opposed laws and policies requiring mandatory parental involvement for abortion services. These organizations—made up of professionals who study and work most closely with teens—include the American Academy of Family Physicians, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the American Medical Association and the Society of Adolescent Medicine, among others. They agree that health care providers have an obligation to encourage adolescents to talk to their parents about sexual activity and reproductive health care, and that they have an important role in facilitating such conversations. At the same time, however, they uniformly state that minors should not be forced to involve their parents in their decision to obtain an abortion.

MN: A number of law enforcement officials and district attorneys have endorsed parental involvement laws as a mechanism to help stop child predators. Furthermore, parental involvement laws are supported by both CareNet and the National Institute of Family and Life Advocates (NIFLA) which represent hundreds of pregnancy resource centers. These pregnancy resource centers provide assistance to thousands of women, including at-risk minors, every year. Their experience indicates that parental involvement can help minors to make better informed choices about how to deal with a crisis pregnancy.

¹ Cartoof, Virginia and Lorraine Klerman. 1986. “Parental Consent for Abortion: Impact of the Massachusetts Law.” American Journal of Public Health 76: 397-400.




² Rogers, James, Robert Boruch, George Storms, and Dorothy DeMoya. 1991. “Impact of the Minnesota Parental Notification Law on Abortion and Birth.” American Journal of Public Health 81:294-298.




³ Blum, Robert, Michael Resnick, and Trisha Stark. 1987. “The Impact of a Parental Notification Law on Adolescent Abortion Decision Making.” American Journal of Public Health 77: 619-620.




⁴ Joyce Theodore and Robert Kaestner. 1996. “State Reproductive Policies and Adolescent Pregnancy Resolution: The Case of Parental Involvement Laws.” Journal of Health Economics 15: 579-607.




⁵ Joyce, Theodore, Robert Kaestner, and Silvie Coleman. 2006. “Changes in Abortions and Births and the Texas Parental Involvement Law.” The New England Journal of Medicine 354: 1031-1038.




⁶ Ibid.




⁷ Santelli, John, Laura D. Lindberg, Lawrence Finer, and Susheela Singh. 2007. “Explaining Recent Declines in Adolescent Pregnancy in the United States: the Contribution of Abstinence and Improved Contraceptive Use.” American Journal of Public Health 97(1): 150-156.




⁸ The following are links to stories of minors who died while undergoing abortions due to the fact they had an adverse reaction to the anesthesia

http://realchoice.0catch.com/library/weekly/aa010503a.htm

http://realchoice.0catch.com/library/deaths/bl85dlozinski.htm

http://realchoice.0catch.com/library/deaths/bl72rroe.htm

http://realchoice.0catch.com/library/deaths/bl79ascott.htm

http://realchoice.0catch.com/library/weekly/aa020500a.htm

Michael J. New is an Assistant Professor at the University of Alabama and a Visiting Fellow at the Witherspoon Institute in Princeton, New Jersey. He is a contributor to Public Discourse.

Copyright 2009 the Witherspoon Institute. All rights reserved.

Presenting the Findings

While I would not accuse the authors of explicitly hiding their findings on the effect of pro-life legislation, I certainly think that it is fair to say they downplay them. Neither the conclusion nor the executive summary of the CACG paper make any mention of their findings on Medicaid funding of abortion. On page 7 the authors mention that one of their regressions finds that Medicaid funding of abortion increases state abortion rates by 10 percent. However, they quickly point out that this finding is not statistically significant from zero. No mention is made of the fact that this finding comes extremely close to conventional levels of statistical significance. While discussing another regression on page 10, they authors mention that Medicaid funding of abortion increases abortion rates. However, they fail to acknowledge that this finding is statistically significant.

On page 9 and in the conclusion on page 11 the authors are quick to point out that informed and parental consent have not had a significant impact on abortion rates. Their discussion could have been more nuanced. Parental involvement laws directly affect only minors. As such, the authors should have at least mentioned that analyzing their effects on overall abortion rate is not the best way to gauge their actual impact. Similarly, they should have made some mention of the large difference in the effects of enacted and nullified informed consent laws. On page 6 they say, “The difference between states that passed legislation that was implemented and states that passed legislation that was overturned should capture the causal effect of these laws.” Therefore, by their own criteria they actually found evidence to suggest that informed consent laws are effective. However, they make no mention of this in the paper.

Weighting

In private correspondence and in their response to my Public Discourse article, the authors seem unwilling to acknowledge that using unweighted data is biasing their results. Both of our studies analyze the effects of state level pro-life laws by comparing abortion rates in states that have adopted these laws to the overall national trend. Since a number of low population states experienced large abortion declines during the 1990s, unweighted data exaggerates this national decline. When abortion rates in states that pass pro-life laws are compared to this exaggerated national decline, it makes it appear that pro-life laws are less effective than they really are.

Professor Wright is correct that data is weighted to correct the error variance problems that he describes. However, social scientists weight data for other reasons as well. Survey data is often weighted to insure that the representation of various demographic groups is consistent with their actual percentage of the population. Insuring that the abortion trends in states that enact pro-life laws are compared to an accurate baseline is a perfectly legitimate reason to weight the data. The weighting methods that Professor Wright suggests would continue to distort this baseline, biasing the results. In my analysis, I realize that there is a multiplier effect with regression data so I weight my data by the square root of the population of women of childbearing age. When the data is weighted in such a manner, we can compare abortion rates in various states to the correct national trend. This allows us to more accurately gauge the impact of different types of state level pro-life legislation

Excluding Data

In their study, the authors exclude data from various years from Florida, Hawaii, Iowa, Louisiana, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. I received this information from them only through private correspondence. They make no mention of this in the CACG study nor do they offer a rationale for excluding these data points. I should also add the appendix in my 2004 Heritage Foundation study contains an error. West Virginia only reported abortions performed on hospitals from 1981 to 1988, not 1981 to 1998.

Professor Wright argues that that the abortion data from Alabama, Iowa, and Illinois that was reported from state hospitals is not biased. He may be correct. However, it seems safer to exclude data that was obtained before a reported change in the collection mechanism. In my analysis I exclude a total of 22 data points from these 3 states. That is a small fraction of the entire data set and does little to weaken the power of the statistical model.

Most importantly, Professor Wright fails to offer any rationale for including data from Kansas. Their inclusion of Kansas is probably one of the main reasons why their results differ from mine. Kansas is a statistical outlier for a couple of reasons. First, for every year between 1990 and 1999, over 40 percent of the abortions in Kansas were performed on out of state residents. This is by far the highest percentage in the country. Second, between 1990 and 1999 the abortion rate in Kansas increased by 60 percent. This is also by far the highest percentage increase in the country. The state with the next highest increase saw their abortion rate go up by only 18 percent during that time period.

Furthermore, since I wrote my original response, I learned that in 1995 abortion reporting became mandatory in Kansas “for every medical care facility and every person licensed to practice medicine and surgery” Furthermore, the Kansas Department of Health and Environment acknowledges that their early 1990s abortion increase may reflect “an increase in the number of abortion providers voluntarily reporting data.” As such, I think that there is very good reason to exclude data from Kansas.

Methodology

The authors make use of a sophisticated statistical model that attempts to analyze both the long-term and the short-term effects of various factors on state abortion rates. I am not entirely sure that the sort of model that they use is appropriate for this data set. This is because we lack precise information about the enactment date for some of the pro-life laws and for some of the welfare policies–specifically family caps. This might be biasing their short-term findings.

In my analysis I attempted to replicate their results, but was unable to do so. I collected the same variables for the same set of states and years. The means and variances of the data that I collected are similar to the means and variances reported in Table 4 of the CACG study. I was hoping I could replicate their model because that would have made my critique more persuasive.

Now, it is possible that some of their variables are not having an impact in the short term, but are having long-term effects that my model is not picking up. However, I am somewhat skeptical of this because I think that most decisions about sexual activity and pregnancy resolution are based on short-term factors. If a state suddenly reduced its welfare benefits, I think that the current level of low welfare benefits would do considerably more to affect influence choices about sexual activity and pregnancy resolution than the previous level of high welfare benefits.

More importantly, I have concerns about some the independent variables that are used. The authors argue that increases in state TANF spending per person in poverty results in long-term abortion declines. However, TANF spending per person in poverty is correlated with how well the economy is doing. In most states this variable peaks during the late 1980s and early 1990s and declines throughout the rest of the decade. I have serious doubts that the short-term increase in this variable during the late 1980s and early 1990s led to subsequent abortion declines. I think it is more likely the 1990s abortion decline was caused by the improving economy and the fact that more states were passing pro-life legislation.

Michael J. New is an Assistant Professor at the University of Alabama and a Visiting Fellow at the Witherspoon Institute. He is a contributor to Public Discourse.

Indeed, Amendment 59 is the latest in a long series of efforts by the left to undermine TABOR. Some background here is instructive. TABOR was passed by Colorado voters in 1992 and is rightly viewed by many fiscal conservatives as America’s best and most effective fiscal limit. It places a tight cap on the growth of state revenues and requires that all revenues above the limit be refunded to taxpayers. Between 1997 and 2002 TABOR required Colorado to issue tax rebates totaling more than $3.2 billion. Not surprisingly, Colorado led the nation in tax relief and its economy was among the strongest in the country during this time.

Effective fiscal restraints such as TABOR have long been a goal of conservatives. There are good reasons for this. Limiting government reduces the tax burden and keeps the economy strong. More importantly when the government is limited to a few vital functions, individuals assume greater responsibility for both themselves and their communities. Problem solving is handled by those institutions which are close to the people. This places more of an emphasis on institutions such as neighborhoods, churches, fraternal societies, and families–allowing civil society to flourish.

However, advocates of big government, including the media, unions, and many elected officials oppose these fiscal limits. TABOR proved to be no exception. Interestingly, the early efforts by the left to undermine TABOR were not particularly effective. In every year from 1993 to 1999 there was a proposal on the Colorado ballot to either raise taxes or increase spending in excess of the TABOR limit. Knowing these initiatives would markedly reduce the size of their annual tax rebate, voters soundly defeated each of these measures. However, in 2000 TABOR opponents changed their strategy. Instead of attacking TABOR directly, they succeeded in passing Amendment 23, a K-12 education spending mandate.

Amendment 23 has two features that resulted in significant budgetary pressures in Colorado. First it required that K-12 education spending grow at a rate faster than the TABOR limit. This effectively forced reductions in other parts of the Colorado budget. Even worse, Amendment 23 mandated significant increases in K-12 education spending even when state revenues declined. Between 2001 and 2003 a combination of the September 11th terrorist attacks and a severe drought caused state revenues to decline by over $1 billion. Despite this, Amendment 23 forced Colorado to increase K-12 education spending by $450 million during this time.

Not surprisingly, this combination of a sharp increase in K-12 education spending with a decline in overall revenues caused significant budgetary pressures in Colorado. The media, politicians, and labor unions were quick to blame TABOR for Colorado’s fiscal woes. This led to the passage of Referendum C in 2005 which suspended TABOR’s revenue limit for 5 years. This has allowed the legislature to spend, rather than rebate, all revenues over the TABOR limit. As such, Colorado’s growing economy has not funded tax relief as it had in previous years, but funded big government instead.

Indeed, data from Colorado’s Joint Budget Committee indicate that the legislature appropriated a total of $3.4 billion above the TABOR limit between 2006 and 2008. This means that each and every Colorado resident has missed out, on average, of a total of $750 in tax rebates during the past three fiscal years. In fact, the latest projections have raised this projected tax hike since the passage of Referendum C from $3.7 billion to $6.1 billion. That number is likely to continue to grow in subsequent years.

If Amendment 59 passes in November, it would effectively be the third time in eight years that Colorado voters required the state to increase spending on education. Still TABOR opponents probably felt that 2008 presented the best opportunity for them to eliminate TABOR’s revenue limit altogether. The 2008 election cycle is not looking particularly good for Republicans and conservatives. More importantly, the benefits of TABOR’s revenue limit have been invisible in recent years–the limit has been suspended since 2005 and Colorado residents have not received any tax rebates since 2002.

However, a defeat of Amendment 59 would give TABOR a bright future. In 2010 TABOR’s revenue limit is scheduled to come back into effect. The subsequent tax rebates will doubtless increase TABOR’s visibility and popularity. Furthermore, starting in 2010 the constitutionally mandated increases in K-12 education spending are reduced, which will reduce fiscal pressures. Overall, TABOR was the first state level fiscal limit that was both durable and effective. For a long time, it was heralded as a model by other states seeking to limit spending, promote tax relief and spur their economy. A loss for Amendment 59 may be the first step in rehabilitating TABOR’s reputation.

This could have nationwide implications. For a long time, fiscal conservatives have been searching for an effective strategy to limit government growth. There is plenty of evidence from both the states and federal government that electing more Republicans provides no guarantee of fiscal discipline. As such, starting in the 1970s with the passage of California’s Proposition 13, many turned to the initiative process. Unfortunately, many of the spending and revenue limits that were passed through the initiative process suffered from design flaws. Furthermore, increases in other taxes have diluted the impact Proposition 13 and other property tax reductions. As such, a revitalized TABOR could give fiscal conservatives something that they have lacked–an effective and durable fiscal limit that can be used in other states.

Michael J. New is an Assistant Professor at the University of Alabama and a Visiting Fellow at the Witherspoon Institute in Princeton, New Jersey. He is a contributor to Public Discourse.

Copyright 2008 the Witherspoon Institute. All rights reserved.

This year pro-life supporters of Barack Obama have at least tried to add a little methodological rigor to their arguments. Many have been eagerly citing a study that was released in August by Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good. This study analyzes abortion data from almost every state from every year from 1982 to 2000. The spin given to the study is that it shows that state level pro-life laws only have a marginal impact on the incidence of abortion. Furthermore, increased expenditures on TANF and other welfare programs reduce abortion rates.

But this isn’t quite right. A closer look at the results provides evidence of the effectiveness of pro-life legislation. Furthermore, there are methodological problems with the analysis performed by Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good. A correct analysis demonstrates that pro-life laws are effective–and casts serious doubts about whether more generous welfare benefits are correlated with reductions in the incidence of abortion.

What the Catholics in Alliance Study Really Finds

Suppose one takes the results of the Catholics in Alliance study at face value. Contrary to the spin, the results actually provide some evidence that pro-life legislation is correlated with abortion declines. The authors analyze four different types of state level abortion policies: 1) public funding of abortion through Medicaid, 2) parental involvement laws 3) partial birth abortion bans and 4) informed consent laws. I will discuss their analysis of each of these laws below.

1. Medicaid Funding of Abortions

In the Catholics in Alliance study, the authors run two regressions that analyze abortion data from nearly all 50 states from every year from 1982 to 2000. In the first regression, the authors find that public funding of abortion by Medicaid increases state abortion rates by approximately 13 percent. This finding is statistically significant and is consistent with other research on the issue. In the second regression the authors find that Medicaid funding of abortion increases state abortion rates by approximately 10 percent. This finding does not reach conventional levels of statistical significance, but comes extremely close. However, the authors give little attention to the significant finding in the first regression and emphasize the (narrowly) insignificant finding in the second.

2. Parental Involvement Laws

The results of the Catholics in Alliance study indicate that state level pro-life parental involvement laws only have a marginal impact on state abortion rates. However, the authors overstate the importance of this finding. Their study analyzes overall abortion rates, not minor abortion rates. Since parental involvement laws would only have a direct effect on minors, it is unsurprising they only have a marginal effect on the overall abortion rate. In addition to this, there is significant social science evidence that pro-life parental involvement laws are able to reduce abortion rates among minors. Furthermore, my recently released study shows that more protective parental involvement laws–those that require parental consent and those that require the involvement of two parents–result in even larger decreases in minor abortions.

3. Partial Birth Abortion Bans

The authors find that state level Partial Birth Abortion Bans have little effect on the incidence of abortion at the state level. This finding is consistent with my studies and other research on the subject.

4. Informed Consent Laws

The one area where the results of the Catholics in Alliance study contradict previous research involves their analysis of informed consent laws. They use two separate variables to analyze informed-consent laws at the state level. The first variable indicates whether a state passed an informed-consent law and the second indicates whether or not a state informed-consent law was enacted. The difference between these two variables is that two states, Michigan and Indiana, both passed informed-consent laws in the 1990s, but their enactment was delayed due to judicial challenges.

The results of the Catholics in Alliance study indicate that when a state passes an informed consent law, it results in an 18 percent increase in state abortion rates. When a state puts this law into effect, the abortion rate declines by approximately 18 percent. This means the total impact of an informed consent law that is both passed and enacted is close to zero.

However, the fact that enforced laws are much more effective than unenforced laws provides evidence that informed consent laws work. More importantly, the finding that unenforced informed consent laws increase abortion rates by 18 percent causes one to seriously question the other findings of this study. Quite honestly, there is no plausible explanation why an unenforced law should result in such a sharp and statistically significant increase in the incidence of abortion. Aberrant results like this are often evidence of some underlying problems with the statistical model. These methodological problems will be discussed in the next section.

Where Catholic Alliance for the Common Good Went Wrong

There are two main problems with the methodology used by the authors of the Catholics in Alliance study.

1. Inclusion of Potentially Biased Data

The authors are not able to analyze abortion data from every state from every year from 1982 to 2000. This is for a couple reasons. First, during the late 1990s California, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, and West Virginia did not report abortion data to the Centers for Disease Control. Second the authors exclude Alaska and Hawaii in their analysis and exclude certain years from Florida, Iowa, Louisiana, West Virginia, and Wyoming.

However, there exist other data points that should have been excluded as well. In certain years, Alabama, Iowa, and Illinois only reported data for abortions performed in hospitals. Since a relatively high percentage of abortions are performed in clinics, this underestimates the actual number of abortions performed in these states. As such, this data should have been excluded from their analysis.

Furthermore, the authors should have excluded data from Kansas. Kansas is a statistical outlier for a couple reasons. First, for every year between 1992 and 1999, 40 percent of the abortions in Kansas were performed on out of state residents. This is by far the highest percentage in the country. Second, between 1991 and 1999 the abortion rate in Kansas increased by 69 percent. This increase cannot be attributed to changes in demographics, economics, or legislation and is instead likely due to notorious late term abortionist George Tiller expanding his abortion practice. As such excluding data from Kansas seems reasonable.

2. Failing to Weight The Data

More importantly, the authors of the Catholics in Alliance study do not weigh their data by a measure of state population. This is a mistake for a couple reasons. First, small fluctuations in low population states can cause large percentage increases, potentially biasing the results.

Secondly, unweighted data distorts the analysis and makes it appear as if pro-life laws are less effective than they really are. Between 1992 and 1999 the overall national abortion rate declined by 16.7 percent (for the 46 states that reported data in both years). However, if one averages the abortion rates in each state in 1992 and 1999 (unweighted) the abortion decline comes out to 23 percent. This is because a number of low population states experienced large abortion declines during the 1990s.

The Catholics in Alliance study analyzes the effects of state level pro-life laws by comparing abortion rates in states that have adopted these laws to the overall national trend. Unweighted data exaggerates the national decline and makes these laws seem less effective than they really are.

Correcting the Analysis

The authors of the Catholics in Alliance study undertake a complicated statistical analysis where they attempt to differentiate between those factors that affect state abortion rates in the short term and those that affect state abortion rates in the long term. For my analysis, I collected the same data from the same set of states and years. The means and standard deviations of the variables I uses are very similar to those that they report in Table 4 of their study. However, despite my best efforts I was unable to replicate their results. As such, I proceeded to run three regressions using conventional statistical techniques.

The first regression is on the same set of independent variables over the same set of states and years that were analyzed in the Catholics in Alliance study.

The second regression keeps the same set of independent variables. However, I eliminate the biased data from Alabama, Iowa, Illinois, and Kansas, and weight the data by the number of women in each state who are of childbearing age (15 to 44).

The third regression is identical to the second except for the fact that I add some additional explanatory variables. I include variables that measure the racial breakdown and age demographic of women of childbearing age. Additionally, to better measure the effect of the economy, I also add variables that measure the change in the state unemployment rate and the real change in per capital personal income. These regression results can all be found in Table 1.

Analysis

The first regression provides little evidence that more generous welfare benefits reduce abortion rates. The regression results indicate that more state spending on TANF or AFDC actually increases the incidence of abortion. Furthermore, the regression results indicate that Family Caps–policies that do not grant additional welfare benefits to women to have additional children out of wedlock–actually reduce state abortion rates. This regression also provides little evidence that pro-life laws are effective at reducing abortion rates either. None of the variables measuring the impact of various types of pro-life laws achieve statistical significance.

However, when potentially biased data is removed, the data is weighted by the population of childbearing women, and additional demographic and economic variables are included, the results change. Once again, the variables measuring welfare spending are insignificant. But more importantly, the regression results indicate pro-life laws are effective. Specifically, Medicaid funding of abortions increases abortion rates and informed consent laws reduce abortion rates. Both of these findings are statistically significant. Interestingly, in the final regression model only 4 of the 24 independent variables achieve conventional standards of statistical significance. Two of these four variables measure the effect of pro-life laws. Overall these findings contribute to the body of academic and policy literature which argues that pro-life laws are effective at lowering abortion rates.

Some Final Thoughts on Informed Consent Laws

The primary area of disagreement between me and the authors of the study published by Catholics in Alliance involves the effectiveness of informed-consent laws. As such, I wanted to further analyze these informed-consent laws. National Right to Life’s 1996 Convention Yearbook highlights 8 states that were the first to adopt Casey style informed consent laws. These are informed consent laws that are modeled after Pennsylvania’s law that was found constitutional in the Supreme Court’s 1992 Casey vs. Planned Parenthood decision. All of these laws came into effect in either 1993 or 1994. Table 2 compares the abortion decline in these 8 states to the national average.

Examining these data, one finds that the overall national abortion rate declined fifteen percent from 1992 to 1999. Interestingly, six of the eight states that first adopted Casey style informed-consent laws experienced above average abortion declines during the 1990s. Mississippi led the way with an impressive decline of 54 percent in its state abortion rate. Now, it is true that OhioÂ’s abortion-rate decline was somewhat below average; however, there are reports of enforcement problems with its informed-consent law. Similarly, North DakotaÂ’s abortion rate declined little, but since North Dakota has one of the lowest abortion rates in the country, the small decline is unsurprising. Overall, the average abortion decline in these 8 states is approximately 25 percent, 10 percentage points greater than the national average. It appears that these informed consent laws played a role in these abortion declines.

Conclusion

This summer Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good released a study which questioned the effectiveness of some types of state level pro-life legislation. It argued that greater spending on welfare programs was a better strategy for lower abortion rates than enacting pro-life laws. In some respects they actually deserve credit. Catholics in Alliance attempted to make a meaningful contribution to the ongoing debate about pro-life voting by commissioning a methodologically rigorous study to analyze a complicated issue–the incidence of abortion at the state level.

Unfortunately, their study did not acknowledge any of the previous academic or policy research on pro-life legislation. As such, they did not engage or find fault with previous research indicating that pro-life laws were effective. Overall, it seems that Catholics in Alliance was primarily interested in making the case that welfare spending was the best way to reduce abortion. They even refused to properly acknowledge and publicize their own findings which indicated that certain types of pro-life laws were effective.

My analysis of their data indicates that welfare spending only has a marginal impact on the incidence of abortion. Additionally I find that both public funding restrictions and informed-consent laws are effective at reducing state abortion rates. This adds to the body of research which finds that pro-life laws are effective. Hopefully this sizeable body of work will inform ongoing discussions among Catholics, pro-lifers, and others who are deciding how best to cast their vote on Election Day.

Michael J. New Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor at the University of Alabama and a Visiting Fellow at the Witherspoon Institute. He is a contributor to Public Discourse.

Copyright 2008 The Witherspoon Institute. All rights reserved.

Their arguments are the same ones put forward in 2004. They have not improved with age. Most of these authors attempt to make one of two points: either a) that there is little that elected officials can do to curb abortion through legislation, or b) that the pro-life movement has not reaped any real benefits from supporting candidates who oppose abortion. Voters should, therefore, they argue, place greater emphasis on other issues. However, an examination of the history of the pro-life movement and a careful analysis of abortion trends demonstrate that these arguments are deeply flawed. In fact, the success of pro-life political candidates has resulted in substantial reductions in the abortion rate.

For instance, the 1990s decline in the abortion rate–a decline that is eagerly touted by these Obama and Kerry supporters–had virtually nothing to do with policies enacted by President Clinton, and much to do with the dramatic increase in the number of states that were enacting pro-life laws. The information below comes from NARAL’s Who Decides, an annual publication which provides information about abortion legislation:

- In 1992, virtually no states were enforcing informed-consent laws; by 2000, 27 states had informed-consent laws in effect.

- In 1992, no states had banned or restricted partial-birth abortion; by 2000, twelve states had bans or restrictions in effect.

- In 1992, only 20 states were enforcing parental-involvement statutes; by 2000, 32 states were enforcing these laws.

Furthermore, there is plenty of evidence which suggests that these and other types of pro-life legislation have been effective at reducing the incidence of abortion.

Public Funding Restrictions

There are a number of studies in peer reviewed academic journals that indicate that restrictions on public funding reduce abortion rates. In fact, there is close to a consensus on this subject among social scientists. I have conducted three studies which have examined state abortion data from almost every state for every year from 1985 to 1999. Each study finds that these state level public funding restrictions reduce the incidence of abortions by over 10 percent.

Informed Consent Laws

Informed consent laws require that women seeking abortions receive information about public and private sources of support for single mothers, health risks, and fetal development. Between 1992 and 2000, 27 states have enacted informed consent laws. Abortion data obtained from both the pro-abortion Alan Guttmacher Institute (AGI) and the officially neutral Centers for Disease Control (CDC) indicate that informed consent laws reduce the incidence of abortion. Furthermore, natural experiments which compare the effects of nullified laws to enacted laws have shown that nullified laws have no real effect on state abortion rates whereas enacted laws result in fewer abortions. This provides more evidence for the effectiveness of informed consent laws.

Parental Involvement Laws

There exist at least 8 studies in peer reviewed academic journals–including one in The New England Journal of Medicine–which demonstrate that pro-life parental involvement laws reduce the in-state abortion rate for minors anywhere from 13 percent to 19 percent. Furthermore, a recent study I have conducted shows that more protective parental involvement laws–those that require parental consent and those that require the involvement of two parents–result in even larger decreases in abortion.

Case studies provide still more evidence of the effectiveness of state level pro-life legislation. Between 1992 and 2000 the overall abortion rate declined by 14 percent (among the 47 states reporting data both years). However, those states that were especially active in enacting pro-life legislation during the 1990s experienced even larger decreases in abortions.

Mississippi 

Mississippi has probably been more active than any other state in enacting pro-life legislation. During the 1990s the legislature enacted an informed consent law, the most protective parental involvement law in the country (one which requires the consent of both parents), a partial birth abortion ban, and a sweeping conscience clause allowing any medical professional to opt out of participating in an abortion.

Abortion Rate Decline: 1992-2000: 52.07%

Pennsylvania

In the 1980s the Pennsylvania state legislature passed the Abortion Control Act, signed into law by the late Governor Robert P. Casey. It was one of the most comprehensive informed consent laws and included a parental consent law (It was the law the Supreme Court ruled on in its Casey vs. Planned Parenthood decision in 1992). This law took effect sometime after the Supreme Court’s decision.

Abortion Rate Decline: 1992-2000: 23.50%

South Carolina

During the 1990s South Carolina passed a partial birth abortion ban, a parental consent law, an informed consent law, and an act regulating abortion clinics.

Abortion Rate Decline 1992-2000: 33.57%

Michigan

During the 1990s Michigan enacted a partial birth abortion ban, an informed consent law, a parental consent law, a ban on public funding, and abortion clinic regulations.

Abortion rate decline 1992-2000: 21.39%

So what generated this increase in pro-life legislation? There are two primary factors and both directly result from the election of pro-life candidates. First, the Supreme Court nominees of Presidents Reagan and Bush (41) gave state level pro-life legislation greater deference in their Casey v. Planned Parenthood decision in 1992.

Many in the right-to-life movement were disappointed that the Supreme Court did not use Casey as an opportunity to overturn Roe v. Wade. However, in Casey the Supreme Court upheld as constitutionally permissible some of the policies contained in Pennsylvania’s Abortion Control Act. As such, this decision afforded pro-life legislators at the state level more freedom to enact laws designed to protect the unborn.

Prior to Casey, the only laws that consistently withstood judicial scrutiny were parental-involvement laws and Medicaid-funding restrictions. After Casey, informed-consent laws were upheld. Informed-consent laws require women seeking abortions to receive information about fetal development, the health risks involved with obtaining an abortion, and public and private sources of support for single mothers. Furthermore, after Casey waiting periods and many state-level partial-birth-abortion bans were upheld as well.

Second, during the 1994 elections, Republicans won control of both chambers of the state legislature in eleven additional states. In many cases, Republicans maintained control over most of these legislatures through the end of the decade. Since Republicans at both the state and federal level tend to be more supportive of pro-life legislation, this made it easier for pro-lifers to enact protective legislation at the state level. Overall, there is no room for serious doubt that political victories by pro-life candidates have made a real difference.

In fairness, it should be noted that Kmiec, Cafardi, and others who are supporting Obama make one valid point. That is that the reversal of Roe vs. Wade will not be a panacea for the pro-life movement. Indeed, a reversal of Roe would simply give states the ability to restrict abortion. Not surprisingly, many states would not change their abortion policies at all if Roe were reversed.

However, the importance of reversing Roe vs. Wade should not be understated. The damage done by Roe vs. Wade went beyond the legalization of abortion in all 50 states. Roe gave the idea of ”abortion-rights” mainstream political credibility and shifted sexual and cultural mores in such a way as to make the enactment of pro-life laws more difficult. As such, a reversal of Roe would still do considerable good for the pro-life movement. It would further stigmatize abortion and remove judicial barriers from the enactment of pro-life legislation. However, pro-lifers need to be reminded that overturning Roe is only the first step. Indeed, enacting pro-life laws and changing the culture are battles that will engage the right-to-life movement for years to come.

During the past 35 years, the pro-life movement has made some real progress–progress that pro-lifers could at times do a better job of advertising. During the 1990s more states enacted parental-involvement laws, waiting periods, and informed-consent laws. More importantly, the number of abortions has fallen in 12 out of the past 14 years and the total number of abortions has declined by 21 percent since 1990. These gains are largely due to pro-life political victories at the federal level in the 1980s and at the state level in the 1990s, both of which have made it easier to pass pro-life legislation. Furthermore, since the next President may have the opportunity to nominate as many as four justices to the Supreme Court, the right-to-life movement would be very well advised to stay the course in 2008.

Michael J. New is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Alabama and a Visiting Fellow at the Witherspoon Institute of Princeton, New Jersey. He is a contributor to Public Discourse.

Copyright 2008 the Witherspoon Institute. All rights reserved