Abortion: Prevention or Punishment?

Dr. Lisa Littman is a board certified Obstetrician/Gynecologist from New Jersey. She works primarily in family planning.

http://www.rockridgeinstitute.org/projects/reprod/littmanabortion?nopag=1

Ask the real question: prevention or punishment? The abortion debate is not about who chooses or when life begins. These arguments rarely reach the other sides. The true abortion debate question comes down to the following:

Would you rather reduce unintended pregnancies, reduce abortions, and reduce sexually transmitted diseases while protecting the health of women and men, or do you want to deliberately increase unintended pregnancies, increase abortions, increase sexually transmitted diseases and harm the health of women and men in order to punish them for having sex?

That's the real debate. Every discussion on abortion needs to be about this question. Understanding the values, policies and goals of both sides will allow people to support the policies consistent with their goals.

Prevention policies result in fewer pregnancies, fewer abortions, and fewer women dying.

Punishment policies result in higher pregnancy rates, higher abortion rates, and more women dying.

Those who take the side of increasing risk to accentuate punishments will have to defend their views. And that's an abortion debate worth having. It's the abortion debate. It's definitely an abortion debate we can win.