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So you say.

Well the California data is meaningless without comparison to populations without sex ed and access to birth control.

You're right if you're saying that the next step is to get a comparison between Californians and a matched control group in a place where contraception isn't so everlastingly promoted and provided to teenagers. But the California experience is still significant in itself.

Contraception is constantly being promoted as a way to keep kids "safe" from the effects of sexual behavior. California's disease incidence gives the lie to that argument, unless you want to argue that their epidemic is accepable as an outcome.

I think you'll find this apropos: from "The Prevention Deception" by Richard Doerflinger:

The Alan Guttmacher Institute, research affiliate of Planned Parenthood, often announces that contraceptives have “prevented” so many thousands of pregnancies and abortions. But these are projections based on a flawed mathematical model, not genuine findings.

In 2006, when the Institute issued a report card ranking the 50 states by how aggressively they promote contraceptives, the embarrassing fact emerged that New York, California and other states receiving the highest grades also had some of the highest abortion rates in the country; some states ranked near the bottom for contraceptive services have the lowest abortion rates.

Studies from a variety of countries have shown that contraceptive programs do not reduce abortion rates. In fact, says one recent overview, “[m]ost studies that have been conducted during the past 20 years have indicated that improving access to contraception did not significantly increase contraceptive use or decrease teen pregnancy.”

Perhaps the most surprising finding is that programs promoting ECs do not reduce abortions. Yet when leading experts who favor EC programs recently summarized 23 studies gauging the effect of such programs, they had to admit that not one of the 23 found a reduction in unintended pregnancies or abortions.

Conclusion: What reduces abortions?

One clue lies in the Guttmacher data mentioned above. Abortions are lowest in “heartland” states with a more traditional culture of honoring marriage and discouraging premarital sex. New studies show that an increase in the number of teens nationwide who delay initiating sexual activity is responsible for a large part of the reduced abortion rate in recent years.

Second, these and other states place modest legal restraints on abortion, which have a well-documented and significant effect of reducing abortions.

Third, offering life-affirming services to pregnant women and their children, as proposed in federal bills like the “Pregnant Women Support Act” (H.R. 6145), could make a substantial impact on the number of abortions.

These strategies can reduce abortions without creating any moral or social problems, and could be the true common ground in the abortion debate. Will Congress seize this opportunity?

Richard Doerflinger

The full-length version of this article is posted at

http://www.usccb.org/prolife/programs/rlp/doerflinger.pdf