While Reid’s argument that health care benefits reduce abortion rates is unsupported, and even disproved, studies do confirm that abortion law has a direct impact on the incidence of abortion. A 2004 study that appeared in The Journal of Law and Economics analyzed the relationship between changes in abortion policies and abortion rates in post-communist Eastern Europe (where under communist rule health care was “universal” and abortion rates were tremendously high). Modest restrictions on abortion were found to reduce abortion rates by around 25 percent.

Poland, as one of the few countries to have significantly tightened restrictions on abortion, is an excellent case-study. In 1993 abortion was restricted to cases where the life or health of the mother was threatened, where the child was disabled, or in cases of rape—and they have strictly enforced these grounds.  The number of abortions in Poland has drastically decreased since.

We know from our own history that the laws governing abortion directly affect the number of abortions.  Between 1973, when the Supreme Court overturned state laws restricting abortion in Roe v. Wade, and 1980 the number of abortions more than doubled.  But since Planned Parenthood v. Casey in 1992 permitted some abortion restrictions, the number of abortions in the United States has been steadily and significantly declining.

Another piece of history Reid neglects is our experience with funding abortions.  Medicaid, the federal government-run health care program, funded elective abortions, around 300,000 per year, until the Hyde Amendment was first enacted in 1976.  Since then, states have taken various approaches on abortion funding.  A Guttmacher Institute literature review released in 2009 shows strong consensus that abortion rates are reduced when public funding is restricted.  The review cites 20 academic studies documenting this relationship and only four that found the results of public-funding inconclusive.

Furthermore, while abortion rates are declining in the United States, they are rising in parts of Europe – including Great Britain.  While these nations have not altered their laws on health care coverage, many have liberalized their abortion laws suggesting, again, that the latter is what drives abortion rates.

Underlying Reid’s argument is the faulty idea that you cannot both have universal health care and not fund abortions.  Reid supports his argument with selected data from one chart, a statement from a girl he knows that lives in Great Britain, the personal beliefs of unidentified people he talked to when researching for a book, and a statement drawn from the musings of Britain’s Cardinal Basil Hume.  To come to his conclusion he also ignores a much larger and more authoritative body of evidence.  As desperately as Reid wants universal health care in the United States, he is simply wrong to claim it would reduce the rate of abortion—especially when, as is the case with the Senate-passed bill, it funds abortion. 

William Saunders is vice president for legal affairs at Americans United for Life.