The drop in the teen abortion rate has been especially dramatic; it fell by more than 66 percent from its peak in 1988. In part, that is a function of fewer teenagers getting pregnant: the teen pregnancy rate plummeted by a stunning 51 percent between 1990 and 2010. But there has also been an empathy-driven reaction against abortion among the generation of Americans that grew up in a world of vivid ultrasound images, and among the miracles of neonatal medicine that now make it possible even for babies born extremely prematurely to survive and flourish.
Millennials have also grown up amid the grim images of abortion and its aftermath. For many, the willful destruction of life in the womb seems less an act of “reproductive freedom” than an act of violence against an innocent victim. All of them know someone who has had a legal abortion; they need only look in a mirror to see someone else who could have been lawfully aborted.
It has been a long time since Roe v. Wade legalized abortion in every state, and, in the companion case of Doe v. Bolton, effectively proclaimed a right to destroy an unborn baby at any stage of pregnancy. But making abortion lawful didn’t make it right. Even after all these years, Americans tend to regard most abortions as ignoble. According to Gallup, only 38 percent of US adults generally see abortion as morally acceptable. Other surveys concur. The Pew Research Center found in 2013 that 49 percent of Americans believe that having an abortion is morally wrong, far outnumbering those who regard abortion as morally acceptable (15 percent) or not a moral issue (23 percent).
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