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Does The Adoption Of Genderless Marriage Lead To More Abortions?

Does The Adoption Of Genderless Marriage Lead To More Abortions?

 

Among the six European nations that first allowed same-sex marriage—either overtly or indirectly—there appears to have been a substantial increase in abortion.  Those six nations are listed in the following chart, which shows the years in which each nation either redefined marriage in genderless terms or adopted a genderless civil union or registered partnership regime that offered virtually all the incidents of marriage, including full adoption rights, to same-sex couples:[1]

 

Comparison of National Abortion Percentages and Ratios

In European Union Nations Adopting Same-Sex Marriage (Or Practical Equivalents) Before 2006[2]

 

Nation Year adopted SSM or equivalent Abortion % in prior year Abortion %

2011

Percent change Abortion ratio in prior year Abortion ratio

2011

Percent change
               
 Norway 1993 (2009)[3] 20.1 20.3 1.0% 252.1 254.8 1.1%
 Sweden 1995 (2009) 22.4 25.2 12.5% 287.9 333.7 15.9%
 Iceland 1996 (2010) 15.9 17.8 11.9% 188.6 215.7 14.4%
 Netherlands 2001 11.6 13.4 15.5% 131.7 154.5 17.3%
 Belgium 2003 12.4 13.4 8.0% 133.0 154.8 16.4%
 Spain 2005 15.8 18.8 19.0% 187.6 231.2 24.2%
               
    Average

Increases

      11.3%     16.5%
               

As the chart shows, since 2000 all but one of these six nations saw a substantial increase in both the abortion percentage—defined as the percentage of pregnancies ending in abortion—and the abortion ratio—the number of abortions per 1000 live births.  Spain’s progression is especially remarkable:  Over the 2004-2011 period, it saw an increase of 19 percent in its abortion percentage and 24.2 percent in its abortion ratio.  The average change in the abortion percentage for the entire group was 11.3 percent, while the average change in the abortion ratio was 17.9 percent.

 

These changes, moreover, stand in sharp contrast to overall trends in the developed world.  According to a 2012 joint study by the Guttmacher Institute and the World Health Organization, overall abortion rates (the number of abortions per 1000 women of child-bearing age) in the developed world have consistently declined since 1995 (up to 2008, the last year analyzed by the study).[4]  Specifically, in developed countries other than Eastern Europe (where abortion rates have been higher), between 1995 and 2008 the average abortion rate declined by about 15 percent.  Abortion percentages and ratios have seen a similar decline.[5]

 

So why might the adoption of a genderless marriage regime lead to more abortions?  There are at least two plausible reasons.

 

First, as a number of commentators have noted, the adoption of genderless marriage necessarily changes the public meaning or perception of marriage from an institution principally concerned with procreation and children to one that is principally concerned with the well-being of adults.[6]  In most societies, marriage is the only social institution largely dedicated to children, and its high status stands as a constant reminder to society that the interests of children should take precedence over the interests of adults.  But a society that redefines marriage to accommodate the romantic interests of a small subset of the adult population necessarily conveys to its members that adult interests can appropriately trump the interests of children.  That message will tend to legitimize decisions by non-married and married citizens to place their own interests above the interests of their children – including their unborn children.  And that, in turn, will tend to increase the abortion rate.

 

Second, as other commentators have noted, the adoption of a genderless marriage regime sends another, powerful message to men—especially young men—who self-identify as heterosexual.  That regime creates a legal structure in which any two people of the same sex—generally two women—can easily form a family, conceive children (using artificial reproductive technology), parent them, and raise them to adulthood—all without (except for an initial sperm donation) any male involvement.  The adoption of that regime thus says to young heterosexual men, “Aside from access to your DNA, we as a society no longer really need you in order to form families and effectively parent the resulting children.”[7]  Some young heterosexual men will inevitably take that message to heart and, as a result, lose interest in marriage—which will tend to produce declining marriage rates.  But because these young men will not lose their ordinary interest in sex, the end result is likely to be a relative increase in the number of unmarried but pregnant women.  And because unmarried pregnant women are much more likely than married pregnant women to obtain abortions,[8] a relative increase in the former will naturally lead to higher abortion rates.

 

Statistics for the six European nations discussed above, moreover, appear to confirm (with one exception) a reasonably strong correlation between the adoption of genderless marriage and declining marriage rates:

Comparison of National Marriage Rates

In European Union Nations Adopting Same-Sex Marriage (Or Practical Equivalents) Before 2006[9]

                       

Nation Year adopted SSM or equivalent Marriage rate in prior year[10] Marriage rate, 2010 Percent change
         
 Norway 1993 (2009) 5.3 5.2 -2.0%
 Sweden 1995 (2009) 3.6 5.1 +42.0%
 Iceland 1996 (2010) 5.6 5.2[11] -7.1%
 Netherlands 2001 5.0 4.4 -12.0%
 Belgium 2003 3.9 4.1 +5.1%
 Spain 2005 5.1 3.8 -25.5%
         

 

 
Although marriage rates have generally declined in Europe during this period—by around 6 percent[12]–the declines in three of these nations, the Netherlands at 12%, Spain at 25.5% and Iceland at 7.1%, were significantly in excess of the overall European decline.  And that is consistent with the common-sense prediction that the adoption of genderless marriage leads some percentage of the heterosexual male population to lose interest in marriage altogether.

 

The data for two more of these countries—Norway, which saw a small decline than the European average, and Belgium, which saw a slight increase—are also consistent with this prediction.  That is because, all else being equal, the advent of officially sanctioned same-sex marriage could be expected to cause a small but temporary increase in overall marriage rates because of pent-up demand for marriage by same-sex couples.  If that expectation is correct—as same-sex marriage advocates themselves claim—then it appears that marriages involving heterosexual men were also probably declining in these three nations at a faster clip than the overall decline in European marriage rates.[13]

 

Thus, marriage rates among heterosexuals appear to have declined more rapidly than one would expect in five of the six European nations that were “early movers” in enacting same-sex marriage or its functional equivalent.  That strong correlation is unlikely to be a mere coincidence.

 

In sum, there are at least two plausible pathways by which the adoption of a genderless marriage regime would lead to more abortions.  And available statistics suggest that one or both of those pathways may well have led to increased abortion rates in the five European nations that first embraced that regime.

 

 

 

[1] Denmark adopted a registered partnership arrangement for same-sex couples in 1989.  But as to adoption and other significant matters, and unlike the arrangements in Norway and Sweden, Denmark’s registered partnership arrangement did not give same-sex couples the same rights as married couples.

[2] Source:  Wm. Robert Johnston, Abortion Statistics and Other Data, last updated 14 April 2014, www.johnstonsarchive.net.

[3] For Norway, Sweden and Iceland, the year in parentheses is the year in which marriage was formally redefined in genderless terms, after having been effectively redefined previously because of a marriage-equivalent civil union or registered partnership regime.

[4] See Guttmacher Institute, “Facts on Induced Abortion Worldwide,” January 2012, available at www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_IAW.html.

[5] This paper focuses on abortion percentages and ratios because more recent data are available for those measures than for abortion rates.  See Johnston, supra.  However, in years for which abortion rates are available, those rates closely follow changes in abortion percentages and ratios. See id.

[6] See, e.g., Girgis, Anderson, & George, What is Marriage? Man and Woman: A Defense, at 23-28 (2012).

[7] See, e.g., [cite Hawkins-Carroll article or amicus brief]

[8] See, e.g., National Center for Health Statistics, Data Brief No. 136 (December 2013), available at www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db136.pdf (in the U.S., the abortion rate for unmarried women is “almost five times higher than for married women”).

[9] Sources:  OECD Statistics on marriage rates for 2010 in OECD nations are available at www.oecd.org/statistics; other marriage rates available from Eurostat at epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/tgm.

[10] The earliest year for which data are consistently available is 1998, so that year is used for nations that adopted same-sex-marriage-equivalent regimes before then.

[11] Iceland’s marriage rate does not appear in the OECD data.  The most recent year for which Iceland’s marriage rate is available from Eurostat is 2008, and that is the rate used here.

[12] See id. (showing average decline for all 27 EU nations from 5.18 in 2000 to 4.87 in 2007, or approximately 6 percent over that period).

[13] Some other exogenous factor or combination of factors must explain the dramatic increase in the marriage rate in Sweden during this period.

Posted 16 June 2014 by Lynn D. Wardle

Lynn Wardle