Naomi Cahn and June Carbone argue that, if “abortion is not an option, then more single-parent births are pretty inevitable”:
The big increase in African-American nonmarital births occurred in the 1960s and 1970s. For whites, the development has been more recent, and it has occurred at the same time as the emergence of anti-abortion sentiment as a key constituent of conservative political identity. Has the hardening of anti-abortion attitudes among white working-class conservatives helped cause the increase in white nonmarital births? Did it contribute to the erosion of the stigma on nonmarital births? As scholars, while we suspect that the answer is yes, we have to admit that we have no definitive data.
Douthat counters:
Yes, in a post-Roe world, social conservatives often find themselves accepting single parenthood as the lesser (by far) of two potential evils. But there’s good reason to think Roe itself was instrumental in creating the kind of sexual culture that makes the Bristol Palin dilemma as commonplace as it’s become. While the frequent use of abortion can limit out-of-wedlock births, that is, the sudden mass availability of abortion almost certainly had the opposite effect — mostly by changing the obligations associated with pregnancy, and by legitimating male irresponsibility where sex and its consequences are concerned.
(Chart: “Number of births, birth rate, and percentage of births to unmarried women: United States, 1940-2007” from (pdf) the CDC.)
The Dish 