As we approach another United States presidential and congressional election, abortion is a topic that’s heavily debated these days. A couple years ago, I heavily researched the topic of the morality of abortion, because I was no longer convinced that the simplistic treatment I’d been given by my evangelical upbringing was trustworthy. So in July 2022 I spent quite some time carefully considering abortion’s morality and how it’s addressed (and how it’s not addressed) by the Bible, and I documented my thoughts in A Personal Framework for the Morality of Abortion.
The Dobbs decision by the Supreme Court that ended Roe v. Wade upended the previously-stable state of affairs shortly before I wrote that paper. A couple years have passed, and the effects of that upheaval have had some time to settle out and for the 50 states to begin to determine what they’ll do without a constitutional mandate. So in this more recent season, as politicians are increasingly pumping up their faithful constituents over the topic, I realized that I needed to understand the practical aspects of abortion politics: how we as a nation might collectively and effectively begin to actually reduce the number of abortions performed each year – because, regardless of the superheated rhetoric, it’s clear to me that both sides want to reduce abortion – but they differ sharply on HOW to go about it. Each political party has its talking points, but I’d never carefully dug into the real data behind all the propaganda.
So in August and September 2024, I spent some time on the matter, and wrote a new paper, Studies on the Best Ways to Reduce Abortions. Unlike the question of morality, this carefully-sourced paper focuses on the deeply practical: what actually works?
I hope these two papers prove useful to you.
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