It was among an audience of mostly conservative Catholics that the question (as usual) arose.
I was speaking to a group of Fordham law students about my new book, The Abolition of Marriage, in particular about the many ways in which the federal government has helped promote unwed motherhood among young girls, from welfare for unmarried teens to federal laws requiring local school districts to “mainstream” pregnant girls.
“Wouldn’t changing these policies just encourage more abortions?” one woman asked.
She’s not the only one asking that question. Pro-life forces split over the same issue regarding the House welfare reform bill. That bill, among other changes, would have cut off welfare for girls under eighteen, with pro-family groups such as the Family Research Council favoring the change, while groups with a more exclusive antiabortion focus opposed. It’s an unfortunate and I believe misguided division of forces in the ongoing culture war.
In a recent issue of Policy Review, Frederica Matthewes-Green points out that under the influence of the same notion, crisis pregnancy counselors rarely raise the issue of marriage or adoption, “the crisis mentality of the moment envisions only two possibilities: the woman will have an abortion, or she’ll ‘keep the baby.'”
The perceived conflict between encouraging marriage and discouraging abortion is based on a false notion about human nature, about the relationship between abortion, sexual behavior, and unwed motherhood. It accepts what pro-lifers should resist—the simplistic model proposed by sexual liberals: More abortions equal fewer unwed births; limits on abortion mean (in the liberal mind) more “unwanted” poor children of single mothers. It is this same kind of thinking that produces false corollaries such as: Condoms in schools mean fewer teen abortions.
That’s the theory. In practice, of course, contraceptive use, abortions, and out-of-wedlock births have soared quite comfortably together. Why? The May issue of the Quarterly Journal of Economics provides some intriguing data on this question. Out-of-wedlock birthrates are rising in part because far more single women are sexually active. A number of scholars (by no means conservatives) have suggested that legal abortion has played a key role in pressuring young women into the sexual marketplace.
“Those women who will obtain an abortion … no longer find it necessary to condition sexual relations on [promises of marriage]. Those women who want children, who do not want an abortion for moral or religious reasons … have been placed at a competitive disadvantage,” point out Brookings Institution scholar George Akerlof and his colleagues.
But what most people do not realize is that a large proportion of the increase in illegitimacy comes not from an increase in unwed pregnancy, but from the declining willingness of men to marry their girlfriends when pregnancy occurs.
Of the approximately 360,000 babies born to single mothers in 1969, just 65,000 were reported as living with never-married mothers three years later. Most of the women married quickly. Many of the rest of the babies were put up for adoption (often by married relatives). Today, by contrast, most unwed moms keep their babies, and far fewer marry.
In fact, Akerlof and his colleagues estimate that about 75 percent of the increase in white illegitimacy, and 60 percent of the increase in black illegitimacy, is caused by the decline in the so-called “shotgun marriage.” It comes, in others words, from the collapse of marriage as the child-rearing norm.
Already half of new marriages end in divorce and almost a third of all American children are born out of wedlock. In just ten years, if present trends continue, at least half of our kids will be born outside of marriage; half the remainder will experience at least one parental divorce. Marriage, as a lifelong child-rearing union, will be a cult practice of a small minority.
We do not have to choose between supporting marriage and opposing abortion, because human beings are capable, in response to the knowledge contained in social norms, of changing their behavior. A society that acknowledges the profound importance of marriage and fathers in children’s lives would be a society in which far fewer women conceived out of wedlock, and far more of those who did would be able and willing to marry their children’s father, or offer their babies the gift of adoption.
To acquiesce in the collapse of marriage is to promote, and not fight, the culture of death.