Has Legalizing Abortion Resulted in More Deaths from It?
Yesterday I was teaching the Peltzman Effect– the idea that making a product more safe can result in an increase in the number of injuries from it. If better brakes are put on cars, people will drive faster, and the result can be (but need not be) an increase in the number of accidents.
I wonder how this applies to abortion. In 1965 abortion was illegal almost everywhere in America. Then California under Governor Reagan legalized it, and then in 1973 Judge Blackmun forced it on the rest of us. Illegal abortions are much more dangerous than legal ones, but the number of abortions increased vastly, and the question is what happened to the total number of injuries or deaths. Note that it is not enough to say that abortion is a very safe procedure. When you have 1.3 million abortions per year, even a death rate of 1 per 10,000 abortions means 130 deaths per year. And 153 thousand of those 1.3 million are at 13 weeks or more of pregnancy.
April 26th, 2005 at 6:38 pm
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April 26th, 2005 at 7:12 pm
I don’t think this is an example of the Peltzman effect. It seems more appropriate to think of the Peltzman effect as an example of a principal-agency problem – the agents being the pedestrians and passengers in automobiles and the principal being the driver. The improved safety of the automobile caused the agent to drive less safely, thus hurting the principals even more. If I’m not mistaken, I think Peltzman found no change or possibly a slight decrease in deaths within the automobile, but a greater increase in pedestrian deaths (ie, outside the automobile). But for abortion, the mother is not acting on anyone’s behalf – unelss you consider the fetus the principal.