Problems with the Demand-Side Pro-Life Arguments for Making Abortion Unwanted but Not Illegal
by Jacqueline Abernathy, Ph.D. MSSW
Supply Produces Demand
As the United States approaches the 2026 election, pro-life (particularly anti-abortion) voters are faced with the same false dichotomy: vote Republican in order not to exacerbate the unjust social and economic conditions that drive abortion demand, or vote Democrat to reduce demand while safeguarding the supply of abortion options. While the former option is off the table for consistent life ethic (CLE) adherents like myself, I argue the latter should be equally unacceptable.
This is not merely a matter of principle but equally one of pragmatism. Despite how benevolent and pragmatic it may seem. “lowering abortion demand” instead of legally protecting human life is a flawed premise. Legal abortion creates its own demand! So says science, so says common sense.
As an independent voter with no loyalty to either side of the American partisan duopoly, I call out both ends of the spectrum rather equally. I have no sympathies toward either camp; rather I hold quite a bit of animus towards whatever party is in power and the opposition which fails to stop them. Yet I still can (and do) give credit where it’s due on both sides of the aisle. What I’ve found among left-leaning pro-life advocates seeking to rationalize a vote that effectively advances legal abortion in order to stop the human rights abuses from the supposedly “pro-life” right involves conveniently disregarding the efficacy of Republican-enacted state-level abortion regulations.
My pet peeve as a political scientist is when people state something factually accurate to support an inaccurate conclusion; a common one is that abortion rates go down under Democrat presidents. This is true, but to conclude that “therefore Democrats lower abortion demand” is not so simple.
When I ask how Democrats can simultaneously protect abortion access while somehow lowering the number of those who wish to access it, the answer I often get is social welfare policies.
But which ones? The first time we saw a decline in abortion rates was under the Clinton Administration, but he didn’t expand welfare at all. Instead, Clinton limited it significantly, capping it at only five years by changing Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) to Temporary Aid to Needy Families (TANF). For many, welfare was cut off. This explanation fails. So then what actually happened that lowered abortion rates in that time period?
Answer: Abortion laws at the state level passed by Republicans after Planned Parenthood v Casey made this possible in 1991. The correlation between lower abortion rates and Democratic presidents only occurs after 1991. This coincides perfectly with political behavior that tends to elect one party at the federal level and the opposite party at the state level.
The decrease we see corresponds to Republican-enacted state laws: informed consent, parental involvement, waiting periods, regulations. Essentially any hurdle between a woman and a hasty abortion is lifesaving. We can see this decrease has less to do with demand for abortion and more to do with limiting supply despite existing demand levels.
This is human behavior 101. People respond to consequences and behave differently when they perceive less risk.
We have seen this phenomenon with emergency contraception (also known as E.C. or the morning-after pill). Before E.C. decreased the perceived risk, concern for pregnancy often meant no condom = no sex. But after E.C., those who then believed they could engage in sex without contraception and just pick up a pill in the morning meant the pill’s very existence and ease of access created its own demand. This increased as barriers to access decreased (i.e. supply increased). The demand was far less when it involved the inconvenience of seeing a doctor, and more when it became a simple trip to the corner drugstore. The consequences of an action and the difficulty dealing with those consequences are the decision-making criteria that determine human actions. When it’s easy to end an unwanted pregnancy, there’s less care to prevent it.
If you don’t believe me or think that I’m underestimating abortion as no big deal, let me tell you about something called pregnancy ambivalence. Pregnancy ambivalence is where a woman is unsure how she would feel about a pregnancy. Rather than avoiding pregnancy until those feelings become clear, many are simply not engaged much with trying to achieve or prevent pregnancy whatsoever. They instead decide to just see how they feel about having a baby after they make one. This idea of test-driving pregnancy is only possible because women know they can end it.
This assumption that people always have and always will rampantly risk pregnancy in bad situations doesn’t hold true. If crisis pregnancies were a static fact of life, we’d have the same rate of unplanned pregnancy and fewer teen or out-of-wedlock births after abortion became legal. Instead, they’ve skyrocketed. When pregnancy requires a big commitment, behavior changes. Contraception created a false sense of security and created abortion demand. Yet even after contraception became accessible but abortion was illegal, the stakes were higher if it failed. There were far fewer unplanned pregnancies when they led to a shotgun wedding.
There are millions of babies only conceived because abortion is legal, most of whom are dead. When there’s no back-up plan, people are more careful about prevention or take fewer risks in general. This is basic risk compensation theory.
This is why lowering demand for abortion is not largely possible while safeguarding abortion access. Supply for abortion creates its own demand. Women have abortions because they don’t want their children for reasons that typically existed before the children were conceived (since year after year, around 87-88 of abortions are performed on women who got pregnant while single and don’t want a child with that father or no father at all). Even if more social welfare programs could mitigate the consequences of single motherhood, they don’t change those pre-existing circumstances. Women can change this by changing their sexual behavior, but while abortion is legal, they don’t feel any need to.
The problems for which women demand abortion like “I can’t afford to raise a child alone” are problems women simply didn’t risk so often before abortion was legal to “solve.” Without abortion, many of these problems would disappear. Society would be forced to actually help those that remain because our violent cop-out would be gone. There’s no legitimate need for abortion, and any problems abortion solves can be solved without violence.
There’s no evidence that abortion can be stopped by government interventions beyond prohibition. More food stamps would be nice, but I sincerely doubt it would change the minds of 4,400 women a day or that any woman who doesn’t want to be pregnant would remain so in order to depend on a welfare check. Believing we can save lives if we just had better social welfare programs is a comforting delusion that allows people to believe there’s something they can do and that women only have abortions out of desperation. Neither are true. It allows people to sound compassionate about the unborn while not actually protecting them. For that reason, it’s incredibly cruel.
The Problem of Power
If we truly desire justice for women and children, we can’t concede to abortion staying legal, thinking that with enough government support, abortion will end. This idea forgets one fundamental factor: the power differential between pregnant women who might not want abortion and the non-pregnant people who do want them to abort. Who has more power?
While abortion remains legal, it gives negotiating power and leverage to everyone but the pregnant woman. A man can say to a pregnant girlfriend, “it’s me or the baby,” or to his stay-at-home pregnant wife, “I’m not having more kids to take care of — so I hope you have a good job and someplace to go.”
Why? Because legal abortion lets them!
A woman terrified of the possibility of being kicked out on the streets with her other children might feel she has no choice.
Likewise, disappointed parents can tell their pregnant teen, “abort or get out,” or “if you have this baby we’re not going to help you pay for college anymore,” to get what they want. Terrified teens who don’t want abortions have abortions anyway.
Why? It’s legal! And because it’s legal, others have the power.
Threats are only possible because legal abortion makes pregnancy “reversible.” When pregnancy is an unchangeable reality, this takes threats off the table.
True, people can abandon pregnant women all the same. But it’s much harder to do, and they’re more likely to answer for it.
I know women who’ve called the bluff of those making such threats, who weren’t abandoned and whose children are deeply adored by those who had tried so hard to get them killed. But these are the strong ones.
When pregnancy isn’t an “optional” condition, pregnant women are more likely to be accommodated rather than abandoned. Because of this, threats like “if you really think you’re grown up enough to take care of a baby then you’re grown up enough to buy your own car to get to work” or “if you want another baby, you’re on your own” will bully women into unwanted abortions out of fear they can’t take care of themselves or their children unless they comply. I have seen it. A lot.
As long as abortion is a legal option, a woman will be told that any problems she faces from pregnancy was because of the choice she made to remain pregnant. Therefore, it’s all on her. If women can’t end pregnancy on demand, other people will be forced to deal with it and abandonment won’t be so easy.
True concern for unborn children involves demanding their human rights as human beings, and true concern for women requires ending abortion so women aren’t constantly expected to choose between someone else’s demands and the lives of their unborn children. The only way to get women the support they deserve is to stop allowing abortion as a cop-out!
In sum, every policy to support women and families that could lower abortion rates doesn’t require keeping abortion legal and accessible. This is a trade-off that some use to rationalize their vote for Democrats in the same way others use Democrats’ championing of abortion to rationalize their vote for Republican-sanctioned violence. We must do better.
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For more of our thoughts on abortion regulations, see:
What Studies Show: Impact of Abortion Regulations
Why the Hyde Amendment Helps Low-Income Women
Abortion Facilitates Sex Abuse: Documentation
For the idea that the demand-side with poverty does also deserve attention:
Preborn Babies, Infants, and Government Programs / Sarah Terzo
SNAP Cuts? More Poverty, More Abortion / Sarah Terzo
Social Programs to Help the Poor are Pro-life
Several aunts were forced into abortions by their husbands. My cousins died when abortion was still illegal. As far as I know, it started in the 1930’s. Some were taken to their family doc; others were taken to the proverbial back-alley butcher.
I generally agree about the false dichotomy, but I can’t make sense of how the “vote Republican” side of it is defined here: “in order not to exacerbate the unjust social and economic conditions that drive abortion demand”? In terms of life issues, the point most often made in favor of voting Republican is that they are more likely to place legal restrictions on abortion *supply*, despite that some of them might also be more likely to exacerbate those unjust conditions that drive demand. Hence the “vote Democrat” side of the dichotomy “to reduce demand while safeguarding the supply of abortion options.”
I share Jacqueline’s distaste for both of these options, although calling them “off the table” or “unacceptable” is a bit overstated, since there are rarely any satisfactory options from a CLE perspective among voting for one or the other of the major parties, voting third party or independent, and not voting. All of those could be judged by a CLE advocate to be the least bad of the available options, depending on the circumstances (and one can make different choices among these options on a single ballot, as I often do).
The bigger false dichotomy here is supply vs. demand. There has often been an overemphasis on the supply side in single-issue or mainstream pro-life circles, which can lead to an overcorrection from left-leaning CLE sympathizers (rightly) emphasizing reducing demand to the point of (wrongly) giving the supply side a pass. It’s this overcorrection that Jacqueline appears to be responding to, and I agree with her but would caution against absolutizing it to the point of overcorrecting back the other way.
The point about the power differential, in my view, does the best job of avoiding the either/or by dovetailing supply with the injustices driving demand. It’s a point I’ve often seen expressed well by groups like Feminists for Life, and one I’ve taken up myself – including once to an unsolicited phone call from a Planned Parenthood political lobbyist! I doubt I changed his mind in that one call, but I think I did make him think.
The point is (and I think Jacqueline and I are mostly in agreement here), voting strategies aside, in terms of general advocacy we need not and should not choose between trying to reduce supply or demand for abortion (or any other violence – gun laws make the most direct parallel). We need both.
The article misses the point that Democratics in the past weren`t so extreme on abortion, there were many pro-life Democratics in the past, the number decreased with time. The Democratics nowadays don`t say abortion should be “rare, safe and legal”, they just say it needs to be safe and legal, they don´t present it as morally problematic anymore. They push for legal abortion all the nine months of pregnancy. They don`t want women to have the right to choose abortion or life anymore, they want to push them to abortion. Thats why their brainless campaign against pregnancy crisis centers who save thousands of lives every year and to a wonderful job accompanying women even after the babies are born. You can check the work and support pregnancy crisis centers like Human Coalition and Real Alternatives to see if its not truth. I would like to believe that some sense can return to the Democratic Party, but except in some states in the south you hardly will find there any remotelly pro-life politicians. I rather give it a try these days to the Republican Party, hoping it get rids of Trump influence and they can move to the center and will promote more pro-life policies.