Illegitimacy: Unintended Consequence of Abortion

John R. Lott Jr. has a piece at the Opinion Journal today about the rise in illegitimacy due to abortion.

You'd expect abortion on demand to mean fewer out-of-wedlock births, so what's the deal?

As to the first puzzle, part of the answer lies in attitudes to premarital sex. With abortion seen as a backup, women as well as men became less careful in using contraceptives as well as more likely to have premarital sex. There were more unplanned pregnancies. But legal abortion did not mean every unplanned pregnancy led to abortion. After all, just because abortion is legal, does not mean that the decision is an easy one.

Many academic studies have shown that legalized abortion, by encouraging premarital sex, increased the number of unplanned births, even outweighing the reduction in unplanned births due to abortion. In the United States from the early 1970s, when abortion was liberalized, through the late 1980s, there was a tremendous increase in the rate of out-of-wedlock births, rising from an average of 5% of all births in 1965-69 to more than 16% two decades later (1985-1989). For blacks, the numbers soared from 35% to 62%. While not all of this rise can be attributed to liberalized abortion rules, it was nevertheless a key contributing factor.

Many of the attitudes Lott mentions (seeing abortion as backup contraception, the man washing his hands of the situation, etc.) are attitudes I once held when I used to tomcat around (before I gave my life over to the Lord, then got married). Thankfully I never got a woman pregnant back then, but if I had, abortion was my backup plan. I shudder to think what I might have done, back when I believed what I was spoon-fed by the Leftist media.

There are often unintended consequences to our actions, especially when they involve an escape from responsible behavior. Apparently this is yet another unintended consequence of abortion: more children growing up outside the ideal family home...and paying the price for it.