Oberman Michelle
Santa Clara University School of Law, Santa Clara, CA, USA.
J Law Biosci. 2022 Apr 28;9(1):lsac011. doi: 10.1093/jlb/lsac011. eCollection 2022 Jan-Jun.
For the past 50 years, abortion opponents have fought for the power to ban abortion without little attention to how things might change when they won. The battle to make abortion illegal has been predicated on three nebulous assumptions about how abortion bans work. First, supporters believe banning abortion will deter it. Second, they hope bans will send a message about abortion-specifically, that abortion is immoral. And third, they expect bans to be competently implemented and enforced. Drawing on empirical work from within and outside of the U.S., this Article offers an evidence-based assessment of each of these assumptions. Part One examines the question of deterrence by exploring findings from countries with relatively high and relatively low abortion rates. After explaining why restrictive abortion laws alone do not reduce aggregate abortion rates, I consider the matter of individual deterrence. By identifying those most likely to be deterred by U.S. abortion bans, I illustrate how abortion bans intersect with structural inequalities to disproportionately impact poor women of color and their children. Part Two tests the idea that abortion bans send a message. I consider the bans' meaning in context with U.S. laws and policies affecting families, exposing the difference between laws discouraging abortion, and those encouraging childbirth. Then, drawing from literature on the expressive function of the law, I assess the limits on the message-sending capacity of abortion bans in a society divided over abortion and over its commitment to children living in poverty. Part Three turns to the expectation that abortion bans will be competently enforced, noting the legitimacy struggles arising from law enforcement patterns, along with the administrative challenges inherent in overseeing the various exceptions to abortion bans. This article concludes by considering why the consequences and limitations of abortion bans should matter to supporters and opponents, alike.
在过去的50年里，反对堕胎者一直在为争取禁止堕胎的权力而斗争，却很少关注如果他们获胜情况会如何改变。将堕胎定为非法的斗争基于关于堕胎禁令如何起作用的三个模糊假设。第一，支持者认为禁止堕胎会威慑堕胎行为。第二，他们希望禁令能传递有关堕胎的信息——具体而言，即堕胎是不道德的。第三，他们期望禁令能得到有效实施和执行。本文借鉴美国国内外的实证研究，对这些假设逐一进行基于证据的评估。第一部分通过探究堕胎率相对较高和相对较低国家的研究结果来审视威慑问题。在解释为何仅靠限制性堕胎法无法降低总体堕胎率之后，我考虑个体威慑问题。通过确定那些最有可能因美国堕胎禁令而受到威慑的人群，我阐述了堕胎禁令如何与结构性不平等相互交织，从而对有色人种贫困妇女及其子女产生不成比例的影响。第二部分检验堕胎禁令能传递信息这一观点。我结合影响家庭的美国法律和政策来考量禁令的意义，揭示了 discouraging abortion 的法律与鼓励生育的法律之间的差异。然后，借鉴关于法律表达功能的文献，我评估了在一个对堕胎及其对贫困儿童的承诺存在分歧的社会中，堕胎禁令传递信息能力的局限性。第三部分转向对堕胎禁令将得到有效执行的期望，指出执法模式引发的合法性斗争，以及监督堕胎禁令各种例外情况所固有的行政挑战。本文最后思考了为何堕胎禁令的后果和局限性对支持者和反对者都应重要。
