Douthat examined the abortion polities of various European nations to glean lessons about abortion more generally. Scott Lemineux joins the discussion:
When I’ve tried to make the point that French abortion policy is not in fact more restrictive than abortion policy in most states, at least one commenter will try to rebut the point by bringing up France’s lower abortion rates. Raw abortion rates, however, aren’t in themselves useful when examining abortion access. There’s a missing denominator—what matters is not the overall abortion rate, but the number women who would obtain abortions but can’t get them. Legal restrictions on abortion, then, are just one variable—abortion rates might also be lower because increased use of contraception or generous parental benefits reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies. This can be seen both in the countries that have higher abortion rates than the United States—where nobody can dispute the policies in these countries are more restrictive—as well as countries (such as Canada and the Netherlands) that have lower abortion rates than the U.S. as well as far more liberal abortion policies.
The Dish 