Are you familiar with the theory of risk compensation, Joshua? This theory would suggest the availability of abortion would increase risk-taking behaviour regarding unintended pregnancy.
Anecdotally, in the UK during the 1970s, before the NHS covered the cost of abortions generally, a man who caused an unwanted pregnancy would pay the abortion clinic, on the basis that it was cheaper than raising a child.
There's an episode of UK 1970s TV cop drama 'The Sweeney' based on a robbery at a private abortion clinic. As a piece of social history it's indicative of attitudes of the time.
Thanks for the comment. I definitely think the theory of risk compensation is at play here, among other things. I have on my list of analyses to work on research from the 1990s, when there were cuts to state-subsidized medical programs, causing abortion clinics to close in several states. The number of abortions decreased, as one would expect, based on distance to abortion clinics. But additionally, the number of teen births declined based on distance to abortion clinics, as well, suggesting a risk compensation effect.
I suspect a lot of the support among men for the 1970s abortion liberalization movement was an extension of the cheaper cost phenomenon that your anecdotes highlight.
Not only financial costs, but lifestyle costs for those men reluctant to accept long-term relationships and marriages, preferring instead to 'play the field'. There were plenty of 'shotgun marriages' in times when men were forced to take responsibility by families and society at large for unwanted or early pregnancies.
(I say 'early pregnancies' to mean unplanned or ambivalent pregnancies in young women who may go on to have children with the same man. As opposed to 'late pregnancies' for women who already had children many years before. Timing of birth was a common cause of abortion choices in the limited number of women who have spoken to me about the abortions they have chosen, as their male partner who caused the pregnancy was in principle suitable and acceptable to them).
Around the same time that the West adopted de facto abortion on demand (a Soviet invention) the financial responsibility for supporting unmarried mothers shifted from men, families, church organisations and charities to the welfare state, of course. I believe both initiatives were outcomes of the men's liberation movement we call socialism, literally socialising costs of all kinds which previously fell on individual men and their families.
Indeed, you keep touching on topics that I have in my "to-write" list. The expectation that men who impregnate women would be expected to propose marriage was one of the few mechanisms that the culture had to enforce male reproductive responsibility. There is some research around the precipitous decline of this expectation due to the liberalization of abortion, which I have been meaning to dig into more.
We could add to this the legal and social penalties for impregnating a woman by a man who was not considered a potential husband, from imprisonment, to death at the hands of a mob.
Are you familiar with the theory of risk compensation, Joshua? This theory would suggest the availability of abortion would increase risk-taking behaviour regarding unintended pregnancy.
https://injuryprevention.bmj.com/content/6/2/82
Anecdotally, in the UK during the 1970s, before the NHS covered the cost of abortions generally, a man who caused an unwanted pregnancy would pay the abortion clinic, on the basis that it was cheaper than raising a child.
There's an episode of UK 1970s TV cop drama 'The Sweeney' based on a robbery at a private abortion clinic. As a piece of social history it's indicative of attitudes of the time.
Thanks for the comment. I definitely think the theory of risk compensation is at play here, among other things. I have on my list of analyses to work on research from the 1990s, when there were cuts to state-subsidized medical programs, causing abortion clinics to close in several states. The number of abortions decreased, as one would expect, based on distance to abortion clinics. But additionally, the number of teen births declined based on distance to abortion clinics, as well, suggesting a risk compensation effect.
I suspect a lot of the support among men for the 1970s abortion liberalization movement was an extension of the cheaper cost phenomenon that your anecdotes highlight.
Not only financial costs, but lifestyle costs for those men reluctant to accept long-term relationships and marriages, preferring instead to 'play the field'. There were plenty of 'shotgun marriages' in times when men were forced to take responsibility by families and society at large for unwanted or early pregnancies.
(I say 'early pregnancies' to mean unplanned or ambivalent pregnancies in young women who may go on to have children with the same man. As opposed to 'late pregnancies' for women who already had children many years before. Timing of birth was a common cause of abortion choices in the limited number of women who have spoken to me about the abortions they have chosen, as their male partner who caused the pregnancy was in principle suitable and acceptable to them).
Around the same time that the West adopted de facto abortion on demand (a Soviet invention) the financial responsibility for supporting unmarried mothers shifted from men, families, church organisations and charities to the welfare state, of course. I believe both initiatives were outcomes of the men's liberation movement we call socialism, literally socialising costs of all kinds which previously fell on individual men and their families.
Indeed, you keep touching on topics that I have in my "to-write" list. The expectation that men who impregnate women would be expected to propose marriage was one of the few mechanisms that the culture had to enforce male reproductive responsibility. There is some research around the precipitous decline of this expectation due to the liberalization of abortion, which I have been meaning to dig into more.
We could add to this the legal and social penalties for impregnating a woman by a man who was not considered a potential husband, from imprisonment, to death at the hands of a mob.