The Juno Effect

I'd like to elaborate a bit on an ABC News report last week that quoted me (correctly) as proffering a theory about something called "the Juno effect" as a way of thinking about recent abortion trends and abortion politics.

Last Thursday morning I found myself in the middle of a Roe v. Wade media firestorm of sorts. A Los Angeles Times reporter had contacted me about the newly released Guttmacher Institute report that indicates, among other things, a dramatic decline in the rate and number of abortions performed in the United States (25% fewer abortions per year since peaking in 1990).

I found myself quoted briefly toward the end of the LA Times article. By the time I reached my office that morning, there were requests on my desk for interviews from two radio shows (KCBS out of San Francisco and KPCC out of Los Angeles), from two national broadcast networks (ABC News and CBN News), and another major daily newspaper, Dziennik, out of Poland.

The reporters all wanted to know the possible political implications of the abortion decline.

I found myself hemming and hawing, because the Guttmacher data reveals some complicated trends that don't altogether admit of a tidy or easy explanation for this overall decrease. For instance, more than 30 states now feature laws that require mandatory counseling sessions before a woman undergoes an abortion, and yet some of the biggest drops in the abortion rate occurred in states that do not have these restrictions.

Also, the report reveals a few countervailing trends in terms of access: The number of U.S. abortion (surgical) providers continues to decline, yet the number of providers that provide only medication abortion services has increased pretty significantly. By 2005 (the last year covered by the report), such non-surgical medication abortions accounted for 13% of all abortions in the U.S.

What does it all mean? My longwinded explanation (left on the ABC News cutting room floor, understandably and thankfully) was this: absent any clear-cut exogenous variable or variables accounting for the decline, it behooves us to attribute, as an operational hypothesis, a good part of the drop-off to women's individual and aggregate choice, plain and simple. Greater numbers of women are, presumably, attending to contraceptive and preventative measures, and/or a greater number of impregnated women seem to be choosing to forgo abortion and carry to term. (Of course, all of those comparative speculations assume that the number of impregnated women would have remained steady otherwise--a big if). I teased those loose inferences and extrapolations out of data cited in the Guttmacher report showing that abortions are occurring earlier in the pregnancy: while nearly 90% of abortions in the U.S. take place in the first trimester, women are having abortions earlier and earlier in that period. 60% of all abortions occur within the first 8 weeks of pregnancy, and 30% take place at 6 weeks or earlier. To put my inferential leap or supposition more baldly: I see evidence in those numbers of women's deliberateness, intentionality, and agency--call that, choice. More women seem to be choosing, for whatever reasons, to undertake abortion at an earlier stage in their pregnancies. By parity of reason, one is tempted to discern similar acts of decisiveness in the abortion drop-off numbers.

(Of course, the study's other bleak data on access--nationwide, 87% of all counties have no abortion services--militates against my hypothesis about choice and voluntarism.)

The movie Juno--perhaps a sign-of-the-times flick--depicts a sixteen-year old girl who gets pregnant. She goes to an abortion clinic, first encounters outside a classmate who is a clinic protester, enters the clinic anyway, declines the receptionist's offer of a flavored condom, surveys the rest of the setting, and then turns away. She decides from there on to carry to term and to seek an acceptable way to put the baby up for adoption.

I want to say that we spectators aren't sure exactly why Juno decides against abortion. But in the terms of the film presented to us, the decision, deeply personal as well as socially implicated, is foremost and finally hers, precariously drawn though it may be. It isn't the protester who changes her view (though an incidental comment about fingernails factors in). It isn't some counseling session or parental notification mandate that accounts for her change of heart. It isn't a sonogram of a third tri-mester fetus. Access isn't an issue in the film. We are left, I dare say, with a sense of Juno's own resolve and agency, a maturity and perspective seemingly beyond her girlish years. Her decision could conceivably have gone, however, the other way. And the film doesn't continue onward nor end as a happy-ever-after, feel-good triumph, though we do leave impressed with something more than Juno's pluckishness.

My own view is that right-to-lifers should read the recent Guttmacher numbers (along with the recent Harris poll numbers showing 56% nationwide support for Roe v. Wade) and realize that entrusting and empowering women with their own reproductive decisions might be a more auspicious strategy for reducing overall abortion numbers than seeking to impose draconian and patronizing juridical and legislative bans and bars to abortion. After 35 years, they have failed to overturn Roe v. Wade; and in light of that failure, maybe they should change their outlook and approach. In short, appealing to women's "choice" could increasingly become the common ground--as well as the site of contestation (as opposed to the largely male courts and congresses)--between the otherwise antagonistic pro-choice and pro-life camps. How else to explain that such bitter adversaries are finding themselves in recent days sitting in the same theater applauding the same off-beat indie film that addresses the very topic about which they disagree so vehemently?

Comments

[realitytrumpsbull]

When there's more people than food, you have famine, war, and cannibalism...the Lebensborn republicans may not like the idea of abortion and birth control, but it beats some of the 'alternative' methods of population control.

Another thing you get when society's resources are outstripped by runamok population growth is illiteracy, which is the gift that keeps on giving, kind of intellectual herpes, at least if you 'did time' in the public school system, hopefully enough information translated over to your 'nog so as not to fall victim to a lot of the more pernicious social traps out there.
Ignorant people are prey for things like corrupt organized religious institutions, scammery and usury of all kinds, I don't know if you could include the military in that but some people do.
The age of digiteach is upon us, though, your
'instructor' might be a computer program in the future, rather than a hu-man, and I don't know if you can completely replace the brick-and-mortar model with a laptop computer, but I'd wager that if you can get kids to the point of having a solid foundation in computers, the path is paved to then pursue other learning using that computer. We live in Interesting Times when ignorance is a serious liability,
deprive yourself of that by any means necessary.

[JimSullivan]

John:

As always, you are thinking about the bigger question here. What is most impressive about your analysis is that you have broken down the artificial binary that our political debate has established between "choice" and the "right to life."

As an adopted child who has grown up to feel that our society should protect and cultivate the right of women to make these choices, I have often wondered whether my own thinking on this issue is as confused as Clarence Thomas' repudiation of affirmative action after a lifetime of benefiting from it.

But your thoughts remind me that we do not have to choose between respect for women's control over these choices and reducing the number of abortions. Of course, you have explained that much more clearly and convincingly than I ever have--even to myself!

Thanks,

Jim

[castlerider]

When Al Gore lifted his head at his debate with George Bush in 2000 and said how he would always defend" A woman's right to choose". I could literally feel millions turn away from him although up to that point he had outclassed Bush in every way.

It was heartbreaking because he played himself right into the hands of the religious right, and oh brother, did they go to work after that...

Had he instead stated "I am against abortion.."- "What parent would not be terribly dissappointed to know their child was involved in such a devastating situation?" "However, I believe it is not the government's place to tell people what to do with their bodies, but to help educate instead." .. Or something to that effect, he could have kept his superior moral standing and not allowed those rightwingers to cut him to pieces like they did.

[hharmon]

Actually, in the real world, Juno would not have had to directly encounter any forces discouraging her from having an abortion. (and let's not forget, this is a MOVIE).
All she would have to do is be alive in this country since the passage of Roe v Wade to be subject to the constant drumbeat of the religious right and it's media: abortion is at best a terrible mistake that will haunt you forever, at worst, child murder. A fertilized egg is a child. Thousands of couples can't have children. Blah blah blah.
The lack of sex education that might help young women know the difference between a zygote and a baby has contributed to the tendency of teens to get in and be trapped in an unwanted pregnancy through doubt and guilt.
Of course, Hollywood has taken the cowardly road on this; how many movies have you seen where women choose abortion, let alone one where they go on to live a happy fulfilled life? It does happen you know.
The sudden vogue of films such as Knocked Up, and Juno, where women decide to go ahead with an accidental, unwanted pregnancy, should be evaluated in the context of a 35 year onslaught of the anti-choice movement, that has been allowed to frame virtually all the terms of the moral debate.

[john75240]

I think the reason that abortions are down is that The Catholic Church and other work up to the fact that we need to support new mothers AFTER they give birth.

Not just say NO NO NO to abortion.

[AntonBursch]

Great article.

I am absolutely anti-abortion.

I am also absolutely pro-choice.

The two do not have to be in opposition to each other.

I was a foster child. My biological parents were each on their 3rd marriage. They had between them has over a dozen children. They had all of the children taken away. If any two people should not have a child it is my biological parents.

But I'm sure as fuck glad they did!

I was horribly abused in foster care. I was finally adopted and abused even worse until I was old enough to leave. So was my older biological brother. We are currently working to get our little sister(adopted sister) out of the home because she is being abused.

And if I had to trade having been beaten with a 2x4 over and over and over or not having been alive... I choose to be alive.

I am 33 now and my life is wonderful. And you know, I think my brother and I, we have appreciated maybe even enjoyed life more than most people, because it wasn't always that great. But we left home and worked hard for years to have a better life. For us it was all going up from our childhood.

So, yeah, I do believe that a woman has the right to choose. But I hope that she chooses to carry the baby to birth. As a prime choice to be aborted... I am glad my mother choose to let me have a chance to live.

[Progress08]

Good Luck! These idiots are "True Believers". they don't know what "Choice" is. If their preacher started touting martyrdom it would only be a number of months til one of them strapped a bomb to his chest. Your argument contains the one thing they will never abide by; logic.
I know you've seen Jesus Camp, but take one more look and tell me you're not just wasting time typing up a fantasy narrative.

[NYCBri]

None of us readers actually having read the study, it is extremely difficult to comment on this. You should take a look at the year's corresponding population numbers. If there was an increase in population then it might indicate an increase in the number of women choosing to carry the fetus to term, i.e. fewer women choosing abortion.

If the population remains steady or decreases in comparison to previous years, then it is likely that it indicates an increase in the use and effectiveness of contraceptions, i.e. fewer women becoming pregnant at all. If the latter is the case, then this fact says absolutely nothing about abortion, politically.

[dwatkins9]

35 years? As much as that?

It took 58 years to overturn Plessy vs. Ferguson. It took four score and seven years - four score and nine, really - from the time of the founding to get rid of slavery, and another 99 to get the civil rights amendment. One doesn't fight evil for a season.

We will never, *ever* give up.