The world’s greatest pro-life hero

In perusing recent excellent posts at Alas, A Blog and Body and Soul on abortion rates and presidencies, a thought occurs to me. If we were to take the view that abortion is akin to murder, and the refusal to recognize it as such is a form of grotesque bigotry against fetal Americans, than all people should do all they reasonably can to stop the ongoing massacre. If we were looking to give an award to someone for the work they’ve done to save the lives of these defenseless victims, and we were interested in giving it not to the most elequent or ideologically pure, but to the individual who has been responsible for the most fetal lives saved, who should it go to?

I’m open to arguments that there’s a better candidate than Bill Clinton, but I can’t think of who it might be, at least in the U.S.

Statistics on abortion rates through 1999 are here, but here are some key figures to include when you’re preparing the press release naming William Jefferson the fetal American defense league lifetime acheivement award:

1992: 1.36 million abortions (in the 46 states for which data seems to be available). 334 Abortions for every 1000 live births. (These numbers are down slightly from 1989-1990, but they’ve been pretty constant since 1978).

1999: 862,000 abortions (in the same 46 states). 256 abortions per 1000 live births.

This is a dramatic decline, something ostensibly pro-life presidents have been manifestly unable to do. George W. Bush talks a good pro-life game, and even signed a bill that would ostensibly ban some abortions. However, he’s rather obviously obviously unserious about the issue. The bill was designed to have no serious impact on abortion as actually practiced, and was predictably struck down. Meanwhile, while comprehensive statistics don’t appear to be available, abortion rates appear to be on the rise again, suggesting that W is undoing the brave work of Bill Clinton. In a sane world, pro-lifers so allegedly concerned with the lives of fetal Americans would be outraged that a president would play to their sentiments, but ignore their noble goal. They like their slavery analogies, apparently; would Abraham Lincoln have been an abolitionist hero if he had passed a meaningless “extra-cruel slavery ban” an allowed the institution of slavery to expand under his watch?

In some alternative universe with a serious press corps, here’s the abortion question posed to Bush in the presidential debates–“You’ve talked a great deal about promoting a “culture of life,” and yet it appears that abortions are on the increase under your administration after a significant decline under the Clinton administration. Why have you failed to maintain the momentum you inherited coming into office?”

Update: It occurs to me that the reason for the decline might have something to do with less abortion access, perhaps in response to threats of violence, which would take all the fun out of this post for anti-fetal American bigots such as myself. But really, what policies or changes were responsible for this decline? This guy links the Bush increase to economic insecurity, but is the inverse sufficient to explain the late 90’s decline? After all, that wasn’t the first economic boom since the late 70’s, and at no other point did abortion decline significantly. I hope there’s a better explanation than decreasing access. Here’s some data on declining access. It seems clear enough that this must be part of the story, but how much? Access was decreasing in the 80’s, but with little impact on abortion rates.

Update II: I can’t get permalinks to work for Alas, A Blog, so you’ll have to scroll down. And read the other posts along the way; it’s a excellent blog.