[R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] Pro-Death

[Bill Totten]

Religious conservatives are responsible for high abortion rates

by George Monbiot

Published in the Guardian (February 26 2008)


Who carries the greatest responsibility for the deaths of unborn
children in this country? I accuse the leader of the Catholic Church in
England and Wales, His Eminence Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor. I
charge that he is partly to blame for our abnormally high abortion rate.

Let me begin with a point of agreement. "Whatever our religious creed or
political conviction", Murphy-O'Connor writes, the level of abortion in
the UK "can only be a source of distress and profound anguish for us
all" {1}.  Quite so. But why has it climbed so high? Is it because of
the rising tide of liberalism? The absence of abstinence? Strange as it
may seem, the evidence suggests the opposite.

Last week the cardinal sacked the board of a hospital in north London
{2}. It had permitted a GP's surgery to move onto the site and the
doctors there, horror of horrors, were helping women with family
planning. Though it is partly funded by the NHS, St John and St
Elizabeth's is a Catholic hospital, which forbids doctors from
prescribing contraceptives or referring women for abortions. The
cardinal says he wants the hospital to provide medical help that is
"truly in the interests of human persons" {3}.

Murphy-O'Connor has denounced contraception and abortion many times
before. That's what he is there for: the primary purpose of most
religions is to control women. But while we may disagree with his
position, we seldom question either its consistency or its results. It's
time we started. The most effective means of preventing the deaths of
unborn children is to promote contraception.

In the history of most countries which acquire access to modern medical
technology, there is a period during which the rates of contraception
and abortion rise simultaneously. Christian fundamentalists suggest that
the two trends are related, and attribute them to what the Pope calls "a
secularist and relativist mentality" {4}. In fact it's a sign of
demographic transition. As societies become more prosperous and women
acquire better opportunities, they seek smaller families. During the
early years of transition, contraceptives are often hard to obtain and
poorly understood, so women will also use abortion to limit the number
of children they have. But, as a study published in the journal
International Family Planning Perspectives shows, once the birthrate has
stabilised, the use of contraceptives continues to increase and the rate
of abortion falls. In this case one trend causes the other: "rising
contraceptive use results in reduced abortion incidence" {5}. The rate
of abortion falls once eighty per cent of the population is using
effective contraception {6}.

A study published in the Lancet shows that between 1995 and 2003 the
global rate of induced abortions fell from 35 per 1000 women each year
to 29 {7}. This period coincides with the rise of the "globalized
secular culture" the Pope laments {8}. When you look at the broken-down
figures, it becomes clear that (except in the countries of the former
Soviet Union) the incidence of abortion is highest in conservative and
religious societies. In the largely secular nations of western Europe,
the average rate is twelve abortions per 1000 women. In the more
religious southern European countries, the average rate is eighteen. In
the United States, where church attendance is still higher, there are 23
abortions for every 1000 women {9}, the highest level in the rich world.
In Central and South America, where the Catholic Church holds greatest
sway, the rates are 25 and 33 respectively. In the very conservative
societies of East Africa, it's 39 {10}. One abnormal outlier is the UK:
our rate is six points higher than those of our western European
neighbours {11}.

I am not suggesting a sole causal relationship here: the figures also
reflect the regions' changing demographies. But it's clear that
religious conviction does little to reduce the abortion rate and plenty
to increase it. The highest rates of all - 44 per 1000 - occur in the
former Soviet Union. Under communism, contraceptives were almost
impossible to obtain. But, thanks to better access to contraception,
this is also where the fastest decline is taking place: in 1995 the rate
was twice as high. There has been a small rise in the level of abortion
in western Europe, attributed by the Guttmacher Institute in the US to
"immigration of people with low levels of contraceptive awareness" {12}.
The explanation, in other words, is consistent: more contraception means
less abortion.

There is also a clear relationship between sex education and falling
rates of unintended pregnancy. A report by the United Nations agency
Unicef notes that in the Netherlands, which has the world's lowest
abortion rate, a sharp reduction in unwanted teenage pregnancies was
caused by "the combination of a relatively inclusive society with more
open attitudes towards sex and sex education, including contraception"
{13}. In the US and UK, by contrast, which have the highest teenage
pregnancy rates in the developed world, "contraceptive advice and
services may be formally available, but in a 'closed' atmosphere of
embarrassment and secrecy" {14}.

A paper published by the British Medical Journal assessed four
programmes seeking to persuade teenagers in the UK to abstain from sex.
It found that they "were associated with an increase in number of
pregnancies among partners of young male participants" {15}. This
shouldn't be surprising. Teenagers will have sex whatever the grown-ups
say, and those who are the least familiar with contraceptives are the
most likely to become pregnant. The more effectively religious leaders
and conservative newspapers anathemise contraception, sex education and
pre-marital sex, the higher the abortion rate will go. The cardinal
helps to sustain our appalling level of unwanted pregnancies.

But while his church causes plenty of suffering in the rich nations,
this doesn't compare to the misery inflicted on the poor. Chillingly, as
the Lancet paper shows, there is no relationship between the legality
and the incidence of abortion. Women who have no access to
contraceptives will try to terminate unwanted pregnancies whatever the
consequences might be. A report by the World Health Organisation shows
that almost half the world's abortions are unauthorised and unsafe {16}.
In eastern Africa and Latin America, where religious conservatives
ensure that terminations remain illegal, they account for almost all
abortions. Methods include drinking turpentine or bleach, shoving sticks
or coat hangers into the uterus {17} and pummelling the abdomen, which
often causes the uterus to burst, killing the patient {18}. The WHO
estimates that between 65 000 and 70 000 women die as a result of
illegal abortions every year, while five million suffer severe
complications. These effects, the organisation says, "are the visible
consequences of restrictive legal codes" {19}. I hope David Cameron, who
has just announced that he wants to place restrictions on legal
terminations in the UK {20}, knows what the alternatives look like.

When the Pope tells bishops in Kenya, the global epicentre of this
crisis, that they should defend traditional family values "at all costs"
against agencies offering safe abortions {21}, or when he travels to
Brazil to denounce the government's contraceptive programme {22}, he
condemns women to death. When George Bush blocks US aid for family
planning charities that promote safe abortions, he ensures,
paradoxically, that contraceptives are replaced with backstreet
foeticide {23}. These people spread misery, disease and death. And they
call themselves pro-life.

_____

Bring on the Apocalypse: Six Arguments for Global Justice, by George
Monbiot, is available for GBP 10.99 from Guardian Books

www.monbiot.com

References:

1. Cardinals Cormac Murphy-O'Connor and Keith O'Brien, 22nd October
2007. Open Letter on the occasion of the 40th Anniversary of the 1967
Abortion Act from the Presidents of the Catholic Bishops' Conferences of
Scotland and England and Wales.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00222/Open_Letter_Abortio_222943a.pdf

2. Riazat Butt, 22nd February 2008. Archbishop orders Catholic hospital
board to resign in ethics dispute. The Guardian.

3. ibid.

4. Catholic News Agency, 19th November 2007. Defend marriage and family
life at all costs, Benedict XVI tells Africans.
http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/new.php?n=11014

5. Cicely Marston and John Cleland, March 2003. Relationships Between
Contraception and Abortion: A Review of the Evidence. International
Family Planning Perspectives, Volume 29, Number 1.
http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/journals/2900603.html

6. ibid.

7. Gilda Sedgh et al, 13th October 2007. Induced abortion: estimated
rates and trends worldwide. The Lancet vol 370, pages 1338–45.

8. Catholic News Agency, ibid.

9. The Guttmacher Institute, May 1999. Abortion in Context: United
States and Worldwide. http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/ib_0599.html

10. Gilda Sedgh et al, ibid.

11. Office of National Statistics and Department of Health, June 2007.
Statistical Bulletin: Abortion Statistics, England and Wales: 2006.
http://www.dh.gov.uk/en/Publicationsandstatistics/Publications/PublicationsStatistics/DH_075697

12. Hannah Brown, 17 November 2007. Abortion round the world. British
Medical Journal. doi:10.1136/bmj.39393.491968.94

13. UNICEF, July 2001. A league table of teenage births in rich nations.
Innocenti Report Card No 3. UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre, Florence.
http://www.unicef-irc.org/publications/pdf/repcard3e.pdf

14. ibid.

15. Alba DiCenso et al, 15th June 2002. Interventions To Reduce
Unintended Pregnancies Among Adolescents: Systematic Review Of
Randomised Controlled Trials. British Medical Journal 324:1426.

16. World Health Organisation, 2007. Unsafe abortion. Global and
regional estimates of the incidence of unsafe abortion and associated
mortality in 2003. Fifth edition.
http://www.who.int/reproductive-health/publications/unsafeabortion_2003/ua_estimates03.pdf

17. Andy Coghlan, 21st October 2007. Family planning lowers abortion
rates. New Scientist.

18. World Health Organisation, ibid.

19. World Health Organisation, ibid.

20. James Chapman, 25th February 2008. Cameron: Cut the abortion limit
to 21 weeks. Daily Mail.

21. Catholic News Agency, ibid.

22. Tegan Fleming, 21st June 2007. Contraception spree: Brazilian
government lowers birth control costs for the poor. Pharmacy News.

23. See http://www.globalgagrule.org/

Copyright (c) 2006 Monbiot.com

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2008/02/26/pro-death/

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