Commenting on the increased number of women who sought abortions after Roe versus Wade was decided, Daniel Callahan said the following:
“A change abortion laws, from restricted to permissive, appears – from all data and in every country – to bring forward a whole class of women who would otherwise not have wanted an abortion or felt the need for one… Women can be conditioned (and are in many places) to want and feel the need for abortions. Evidence from those countries where abortion on request has been long available (Russia, Japan, Hungary for instance) shows that the subjectively felt stress that leads women to seek an abortion is socially influenced.”
Daniel Callahan, “Abortion: Thinking and Experiencing” Christianity and Crisis, January 8, 1973, 296
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The notion that women can be conditioned to want abortions just by legalizing abortion is ridiculous. Most women who grew up prior to Roe v Wade were socialized, enculturated, and victimized by both propaganda and laws from the time we were little kids to accept, if not want, courtship, marriage, bearing children, and sacrificing careers in order to raise kids. Despite that fact, a rather large number of us did not like the fact that we were presented with unequal opportunities, less liberty, and men who thought single women were trying to trap them to get “meal tickets.” We dislike the way we were disrespected, expected to take inferior roles, please men, satisfy them sexually, and get and stay pregnant and give birth whether or not we wanted to. Our genuine love of liberty and equality showed that inherent values of key importance to individuals cannot be smothered by a bunch of busybodies. That you cannot figure out how to persuade women to want all the pregnancies that occur is not their problem: it’s yours.