Who thinks reducing abortions is a bad thing?
Politics aside, shouldn’t the shared goal be to reduce the number of surgical abortions that women have? Roughly 80 percent of teen pregnancies are unintended. About 1.3 million abortions are chosen out of the 6 million pregnancies that occur in the United States every year. It stands to reason that by making emergency contraception relatively easy to get at pharmacies, police stations, student health services and hospitals, some pregnancies that now end in elective abortions would simply not become pregnancies. Yet implacability on the part of those who see abstinence and surgical abortions as the only public-policy options has hamstrung emergency contraception. Lastly and most importantly, impropriety is the culprit in keeping the option of emergency contraception from being readily available to women. The White House has improperly played politics with this pill. Despite strong evidence from other countries that the day-after pill is both safe and effective, despite the positive rec
