NRO Corner Post – The Baby Bust
Quoting a post from NRO’s the Corner to Test my RSS Feed:
Kivus /Amanda Marcotte has an article on Slate today hailing the increase in the number of women who are choosing to remain childless. Marcotte gives legal abortion much of the credit for this — but not in the sense that more women are using abortion as birth control. Instead, she states that the “defense of legal abortion led feminists to create a national discourse around the concept of ‘choice,’ which helped legitimize the decision to remain childless.”
Marcotte is partly correct here. Conservatives have often overstated their concerns about the effect of legal abortion on population levels. Because Roe resulted in substantial changes in both social and sexual mores, even though the abortion rate went up after the decision, the number of conceptions went up as well; therefore, the change in the nation’s birthrate was small.
However, these changes in sexual mores have had subtle but important effects on women’s childbearing decisions. Like contraception, the presence of legal abortion has separated the link between sexual activity and childbirth. Abortion has made it both logistically easier and more socially acceptable for women to engage in recreational sexual activity before marriage. As such, it is unsurprising that many women continue to view sex as largely recreational even within a marital relationship.
