Universal Health Care Doesn’t Reduce Abortions

William Saunders, vice president for legal affairs at Americans United for Life, knocks down the claim that universal health care reduces abortion :

While Reid’s argument that health care benefits reduce abortion rates is unsupported, and even disproved, studies do confirm that abortion law has a direct impact on the incidence of abortion. A 2004 study that appeared in The Journal of Law and Economics analyzed the relationship between changes in abortion policies and abortion rates in post-communist Eastern Europe (where under communist rule health care was “universal” and abortion rates were tremendously high). Modest restrictions on abortion were found to reduce abortion rates by around 25 percent.

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