by My recent post, “How the Religious Right Promotes Abortion,” elicited a quick response from Michael New of the Witherspoon Institute, which was just as quickly endorsed by Rick Garnett and Thomas Peters. Prof. New wants us to believe that, even though a very large number of American women receive no instruction about contraception before their first sexual experience, giving them that information would have no effect whatsoever on the rate of unintended pregnancy. Now June Carbone and Naomi Cahn, on whose work I rely in that post, have written a response, which I post below. They answer New’s arguments better than I could.
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The religious right purports to be deeply concerned about the high rates of abortion in the United States, but its most stalwart proponents have succeeded in implementing and maintaining policies that keep the abortion rate high.
I draw this lesson from discussions in Naomi Cahn and June Carbone’s wonderful new book, Red Families v. Blue Families: Legal Polarization and the Creation of Culture. The book is primarily a study of the way in which different family forms have emerged in different parts of the country, and the political ramifications of the polarized value systems that result. But the data it contains reveals a deep incoherence in the American government’s family planning policies.
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