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In this article, I will provide evidence for the following three facts about abortion policy in the United States:

1. Hardly anybody ever changes their mind about abortion.
2. Policies of Democratic politicians reduce the abortion rate.
3. Overall, policies of Republican politicians increase the abortion rate.

These three facts lead me to conclude that it is useless for "pro-choice" voters to talk to "pro-life" voters about a woman's right to choose. A pro-life voter won't change his or her mind. But if pro-choice voters can show pro-life voters that Republican politicians create abortions and Democratic politicians do the opposite, it might be possible to persuade pro-life voters to vote against politicians who claim to represent pro-life values but do not.

Before I continue, I would like to answer questions you may have that might help you decide whether you want to keep reading.

Why did I write this, and why do I think anybody would want to read it?

When, out of curiosity, I started looking into historical data on abortion rates and abortion policy, what I discovered surprised me. I learned facts about the politics of abortion that I think are important and not well known, facts that I believe are of great interest to both voters and politicians.

Why might you want to read this?

• You can trust what I say because I base it on facts that anybody can verify. I have not cherry-picked the data to support my conclusions.


• Whether you are "pro-choice," "pro-life," or something else, I won't try to dissuade you from your beliefs, which are probably firmly held. If, after reading this, you try to guess whether I am "pro-choice" or "pro-life," there is a 50% chance you will be wrong.


• I think that it is important for voters and politicians to know the facts I present here. We speak, vote, and legislate most wisely when we do so based on factually accurate beliefs.


• Opinions about abortion have a tremendous effect on American politics. About 42% of voters identify as pro-life, and only 11% of them believe that the Democratic Party does a better job on the issue of abortion. If pro-life voters were convinced that Democrats do a better job on this issue, Republicans would lose their stranglehold on pro-life voters.

Why aren't the facts I report here more widely known?

I don't know. This isn't rocket science. Anybody can look up the facts just like I did. I will say more about this at the end.

Might I be mistaken about all this?

The facts I report are accurate, but I don't know everything. If I have overlooked relevant facts, including facts that do not support my conclusions, please let me know.

Why Do Republican Policies Increase the Abortion Rate?

The fundamental reason why policies of Democratic politicians reduce the abortion rate and policies of Republican politicians generally increase it is that Democratic policies encourage the use of contraception and Republican policies do the opposite. Republican policies intended to discourage abortion also discourage the use of contraception, which results in more unwanted pregnancies and more abortions.

I will provide evidence that at the national level, Republican policies consistently create abortions. At the state level, state legislatures with Republican majorities have made both abortions and contraception more difficult to obtain. The net effect on state abortion rates of state laws is not clear.

Democratic policies that encourage the use of contraception include:

• The contraceptive mandate of the Affordable Care Act, which provides that all health insurance plans must cover female contraception without any out-of-pocket costs. In 2013, the year the contraceptive mandate went into effect for most health plans, the number of abortions performed in the U.S. fell by the largest percentage decrease in a single year on record.
  
• Medicaid expansion, another provision of the Affordable Care Act, which brings affordable medical care, including contraception, to many Americans who otherwise could not afford it.
  
• The health insurance exchanges of the Affordable Care Act, which bring affordable medical care, including contraception, to Americans who do not receive health insurance from an employer.
  
• Comprehensive sex education, which both encourages abstinence and includes information about contraception. Research has shown that adolescents who receive comprehensive sex education initiate sex later and use condoms at higher rates.

Republican policies that discourage the use of contraception include:

• Opposition to the Affordable Care Act.
  
• The Mexico City Policy, which denies U.S. foreign aid to foreign medical providers that perform abortions or abortion counseling. Researchers estimate that the imposition of the Mexico City Policy during the G.W. Bush administration increased the abortion rate by 40% in the thirteen most severely affected countries.
  
• The Trump administration's Title X domestic gag rule, which denies Title X funding to medical providers that refer pregnant women to abortion providers.
  
• Abstinence-only sex education. Studies find that adolescents who receive abstinence-only sex education engage in sex at the same rates as those who receive no sex education, and also use condoms at the same rates.

I almost didn't bother to look for evidence that encouraging the use of contraception reduces abortions, because it seems so obvious.

Researchers at the Washington University School of Medicine found that giving women contraception at no cost reduces unplanned pregnancies and, therefore, abortions. Researchers at the Brookings Institution found that Title X funding, Medicaid, and the contraceptive mandate of the Affordable Care Act reduce unwanted pregnancies and abortions in two ways: by giving more women access to contraception and by giving women who may already be using contraception access to more reliable methods. Women are increasingly choosing long-acting reversible contraceptives (LARCs) such as IUDs, which have failure rates under 1%.

Now that I have summarized things, it's time to go into more detail. I will:

• Show evidence that opinions on abortion have not changed much over the years.
  
• Show evidence that abortion rates fall more quickly during Democratic administrations.
  
• Discuss in more detail the Democratic and Republican policies I have listed.
  
• Discuss the effects of policies to limit access to abortion at the state level.
  
• Discuss Supreme Court rulings on abortion.

Opinions About Abortion

First of all, hardly anybody ever changes their mind about abortion. Not only that, but opinions about abortion in this country remain consistent even across generations. Here is a graph of opinion poll responses on abortion, collected by Gallup, over 45 years.



Americans' opinions on abortion have changed remarkably little since Gallup began asking about the issue in 1975, two years after Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that made abortion legal in every state. For example, the percentage of respondents who believe that abortion should be illegal in all circumstances was 22% in 1975 and is 21% today, despite a temporary drop in the popularity of this response in the 1990s.

By comparison, support for same-sex marriage, another emotional issue, more than doubled over 24 years. You can teach your children what you want about abortion, but it is a waste of time to try to change the mind of someone who already has an opinion.

Before I leave the subject of opinions about abortion, I would like to mention that surprisingly many Republicans and pro-life voters believe that Roe v. Wade should be upheld.

According to a 2018 survey, 71% of Americans, including 52% of Republicans, believe that Roe v. Wade should be upheld, and 23% believe it should be overturned. According to a 2019 survey, most Republicans and most people who identify as pro-life believe that Roe v. Wade should be upheld:

	uphold Roe v. Wade	overturn Roe v. Wade	undecided
pro-life	52%	34%	14%
pro-choice	91%	1%	7%
Republican	59%	31%	9%
Democrats	89%	4%	7%

Averaging three 2019 surveys, 52% of respondents identified as pro-choice and 42% identified as pro-life.

Data on Abortion Rates

Before I explain how Democratic politicians prevent abortions and Republican politicians tend to create them, I would like to show the data on abortion rates that suggests that Democratic administrations do a better job of reducing the abortion rate than Republican ones.

Here is a graph of the abortion rate from 1973, the year Roe v. Wade was decided, through 2017, the most recent year for which data collected by the Guttmacher Institute is available. From 1982 through 2017, the abortion rate declined, and, beginning in 2012, it has been below the 1973 rate.



During the period when the abortion rate declined, it declined more rapidly in Democratic administrations than in Republican ones. The next graph makes this point more clearly:



When I say that Republican policies at the national level create abortions and Democratic policies prevent them, I do not mean that abortion rates rise in Republican administrations and fall in Democratic ones. From about 1980 through at least 2017, abortion rates fell. Republican policies created abortions against a background of generally declining abortion rates, so that the abortion rate fell slower than the overall trend in Republican administrations and faster than the overall trend in Democratic ones.

Data from the Guttmacher Institue shows that the abortion rate declined by only 0.2 abortions per 1000 women of childbearing age in Donald Trump's first year in office. During the Obama years, the abortion rate declined by 0.4 to 0.9 abortions per year. Because of Trump's efforts to weaken the Affordable Care Act and its contraceptive mandate, the abortion rate may be increasing now. We don't know yet because the data isn't available. Furthermore, I am convinced that the abortion rate would increase if the Republicans were able to achieve all their policy goals affecting abortion, including repeal of the Affordable Care Act.

The CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) also collects abortion data, using different methods than the Guttmacher Institute. The CDC relies on voluntary reporting from the states. Not all states report every year, and different states fail to report in different years. The Guttmacher Institute, which attempts to contact every abortion provider, always finds more abortions than the CDC, but these two organizations agree well on trends in abortion rates over the years.

The CDC's data confirms that the abortion rate declines more rapidly in Democratic administrations than Republican ones, at least through 2016, the most recent year for which the CDC has released data.



The CDC's data from 1998 (when the CDC began to report the change in the abortion rate to an accuracy of 0.1 abortions per 1000 women rather than 1 abortion per 1000 women) through 2016 (the last year for which the CDC has reported data) includes eleven years under Democratic administrations (Clinton and Obama) and eight years under the George W. Bush administration. The ten largest percentage decreases in the abortion rate all occurred in Democratic administrations. If annual changes in the abortion rate were independent chance events, there would be less than one chance in 37,000 that Democrats would be this much more successful in reducing the abortion rate than Republicans.



Why have I not mentioned the increases in the abortion rate during the Nixon/Ford and Carter administrations? I assume that those increases were caused by a spike in demand for abortion once it became legal nationwide, rather than by partisan policy differences.

Democratic Policies That Reduce the Abortion Rate

As I have already mentioned, the fundamental reason why policies of Democratic politicians reduce the abortion rate and policies of Republican politicians increase it is that Democratic policies encourage the use of contraception and Republican policies do the opposite. Some Democratic policies, such as the contraceptive mandate of the Affordable Care Act, specifically promote contraception, and other Democratic policies, such as the health insurance exchanges created by the Affordable Care Act, bring medical care, including contraception, to more Americans.

I would like to discuss the following Democratic policies in detail:

• The contraceptive mandate of the Affordable Care Act
  
• Medicaid expansion
  
• The health insurance exchanges of the Affordable Care Act
  
• Comprehensive sex education
  

The Contraceptive Mandate

The Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare) requires health insurance plans to offer preventive care at no additional cost beyond insurance premiums. According to regulations issued by the Obama administration, female contraception is preventive care, and, therefore, health insurance plans must cover the full range of female contraceptive methods without out-of-pocket costs. Previous laws required health insurance plans that include prescription drug coverage to cover female contraception, but they were allowed to charge a copayment or apply the cost to a deductible.

These provisions of the ACA made it possible for more women to afford contraception and allowed many women to employ IUDs and other long-acting reversible contraceptives, which have lower failure rates than the pill. In 2013, the year the contraceptive mandate went into effect for most health plans, the number of abortions fell by the largest percentage decrease in a single year on record: 5.0% according to the CDC and 5.6% according to the Guttmacher Institute.

The Obama administration exempted from the contraceptive mandate plans covering employees of churches and other places of worship. It also provided an accommodation for nonprofit religious organizations, so that they were not required to purchase contraceptive coverage, yet their female employees nevertheless enjoyed contraceptive coverage without cost-sharing.

Conservatives have been fighting the contraceptive mandate for years, with some success.

In 2012, the Hobby Lobby corporation, owned by an evangelical Christian family, dropped contraceptive coverage for its employees and filed a lawsuit, arguing that the contraceptive mandate violated the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the religious freedom clause of the First Amendment. In 2014, in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, the Supreme Court exempted closely held for-profit corporations from the contraceptive mandate.

In 2017, the Trump administration decreed that employers and insurers may decline to cover the cost of contraception if contraception violates their religious beliefs or moral convictions. Federal courts temporarily blocked this attempt to weaken the contraceptive mandate. In July 2020, in Little Sisters of the Poor v. Pennsylvania, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Trump administration. The government estimates that between 70,000 and 126,000 women will lose access to cost-free contraception.

Medicaid Expansion

Medicaid provides health care to low-income individuals. Before the Affordable Care Act, individual states were largely free to set their own standards for Medicaid eligibility. The Affordable Care Act expanded Medicaid eligibility so that individuals with incomes up to 138% of the Federal Poverty Line are eligible, including adults without dependent children.

After the ACA became law, conservatives went to court in an attempt to have the law declared unconstitutional. The Supreme Court ruled, in NFIB v. Sebelius, that the law was constitutional, except for the provision requiring states to adopt Medicaid expansion. States were, therefore, able to choose whether or not to participate.

Medicaid expansion began in 2014. In that year, twenty-six states and the District of Columbia participated. From 2015 through January 2020, nine more states implemented Medicaid expansion, including three states that adopted Medicaid expansion via statewide popular vote after inaction on the part of Republican legislators. As of April 2019, Medicaid enrollment was 13.1 million above the 2013 baseline.

As of June 2020, fifteen states are not yet participating in Medicaid expansion. Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Missouri have approved Medicaid expansion by statewide popular vote, but it has not yet gone into effect. In all fifteen states, Republicans have controlled both houses of the legislature (or, in Nebraska, the single house of the unicameral legislature) from 2013 to the present.

These Republican legislators have blocked Medicaid expansion even though it saves lives and saves the states money.

Researchers from the University of Michigan, UCLA, the National Institute of Health, and the Census Bureau estimate that approximately 15,600 deaths would have been averted from 2014 through 2017 if every state had adopted Medicaid expansion in 2014.

The federal government pays 90% of the cost of Medicaid expansion. Furthermore, states receive additional cost savings. For example, they can shift some patients from state-funded health care into expanded Medicaid. More patients become insured, which reduces the states' reimbursements to providers for uninsured medical care. Federal Medicaid money flowing into a state benefits the state's economy, which leads to additional state tax revenues.

A 2015 study from the National Bureau of Economic Research found that children who receive medical care through Medicaid will earn more and pay more in taxes as adults than children in similar economic circumstances who are not enrolled in Medicaid. Their additional tax payments pay the government back for most of the cost of Medicaid, even after taking into account the time value of money.

Taking all these factors into account, states that expand Medicaid save money in the long run.

Health Insurance Exchanges

Individuals who do not receive health insurance through their employers and do not qualify for Medicaid may purchase insurance through the health insurance exchanges, also known as health insurance marketplaces. As of the first quarter of 2019, 10.6 million people had purchased health insurance through the insurance exchanges. 9.3 million of these people received federal subsidies that reduced the cost of their insurance.

Sex Education

Here are the facts about federally funded sex education:

• Abstinence-only sex education doesn't delay sex and doesn't prevent pregnancies.
• Comprehensive sex education, which both encourages abstinence and includes information about contraception, delays sex and prevents pregnancies.
• Republican politicians support abstinence-only sex education.
• Democratic politicians support comprehensive sex education.

Researchers from Indiana University and Columbia University found that adolescents who had received abstinence-only sex education engaged in sex at the same rates as those who had received no sex education, and had the same rates of condom use. By contrast, adolescents who had received comprehensive sex education initiated sex later and used condoms at higher rates.

The researchers wrote:

"Abstinence-only curricula have been found to contain scientifically inaccurate information, distorting data on topics such as condom efficacy, and promote gender stereotypes. An independent evaluation of the federal program, several systematic reviews, and cohort data from population-based surveys find little evidence of efficacy and evidence of possible harm. In contrast, comprehensive sexuality education programs have been found to help teens delay initiation of intercourse and reduce sexual risk behaviors. Abstinence-only policies violate the human rights of adolescents because they withhold potentially life-saving information on HIV and other STIs."

The graph below shows that funding for abstinence-only sex education increases when Republicans control both houses of Congress. When Democrats controlled both houses of Congress during the early years of the Obama administration, Congress funded comprehensive sex education for the first time and reduced funding for abstinence-only sex education.



Years shown in the graph are federal fiscal years, which begin on October 1 of the previous calendar year and end on September 30. The shading for a particular fiscal year reflects which party controlled Congress in the previous year, when Congress legislated federal spending for the fiscal year.

Comprehensive sex education is funded through the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program (TPPP) and the Personal Responsibility Education Program (PREP). Donald Trump has proposed eliminating TPPP, but Congress has continued to fund it. The Trump administration attempted to cancel multi-year grants administered by TPPP and to divert TPPP funds to abstinence-only sex education, but seven court decisions have ruled against the Trump administration on these two matters. Nevertheless, the Trump administration is suspected of illegally awarding TPPP and PREP funds for abstinence-only sex education, in violation of Congressional intent and court orders. It is currently being sued because it refuses to release records that might reveal that it is violating the law.

Republican Policies That Increase the Abortion Rate

Republican policies intended to discourage abortion also discourage the use of contraception, which results in more unwanted pregnancies and more abortions.

I have already discussed abstinence-only sex education. The remaining Republican policies I would like to discuss are:

• Opposition to the Affordable Care Act


• The Mexico City Policy


• The Trump administration's Title X domestic gag rule

Republican Opposition To the Affordable Care Act

Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, also known as ObamaCare, between 20 million and 24 million more Americans now have health insurance.

The two features of the Affordable Care Act that increased the number of insured persons most dramatically are the health insurance exchanges and the expansion of Medicaid. Numerous other provisions of the ACA make it easier for people to obtain health insurance. Insurers are required to accept all applicants, and to charge uniform rates regardless of preexisting conditions. Subsidies to families with low or moderate incomes make insurance easier to afford. Large employers are required to offer insurance to their employees or pay a penalty.

Republican politicians have attempted over and over to repeal or weaken the ACA, and in some cases, they have succeeded. Here are a few examples.

• From January 19, 2011 through February 3, 2015 the Republican-controlled House of Representatives voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act 67 times.


• On July 28, 2017, a Senate bill to repeal ObamaCare failed 49-51. 49 Republicans voted in favor, and three Republicans, including the late John McCain, voted against. The bill would have taken health insurance away from 16 million people.


• Because health insurance premiums can't cover the medical expenses of the sick if only sick people obtain insurance, the ACA included an "individual mandate," which required people to obtain insurance or pay a federal tax penalty. In 2017, President Trump signed into law a bill that eliminates the federal tax penalty for violating the individual mandate.


• The Trump administration is trying to get the Supreme Court to declare the Affordable Care Act unconstitutional, although the Court previously ruled that it is, in fact, constitutional.

The Mexico City Policy

The Mexico City Policy, initially imposed by President Reagan and announced at the second International Conference on Population in Mexico City in 1984, denies U.S. foreign aid to any foreign medical provider that performs abortions or abortion counseling. The policy, imposed or rescinded by presidential memorandum rather than by legislation, has been rescinded by every subsequent Democratic president (Clinton and Obama) and re-imposed by every subsequent Republican president (George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, and Donald Trump).

Many organizations that lose funds under the policy also provide contraception. Researchers have found that the policy leads to reduced use of contraception, which in turn leads to more unintended pregnancies and more abortions.

Data collected by researchers affiliated with Stanford University shows that when the Mexico City Policy was in effect under the G.W. Bush administration, the abortion rate was 64% higher in thirteen countries highly affected by the policy than in other comparable countries. Under the immediately preceding Clinton administration, when the policy was not in effect, the abortion rate in the thirteen countries was 8% lower than in the other comparable countries. The researchers estimate that Bush's imposition of the Mexico City Policy increased the abortion rate in the thirteen countries by 40%, and the rest of the increase had other causes.

The Title X Domestic Gag Rule

The Title X Family Planning Program, signed into law in 1970 by President Nixon, provides contraception and other family planning services to low-income and uninsured people. It enjoyed bipartisan support for many years.

The Trump administration issued new regulations affecting medical providers that receive Title X funding. These regulations, known as the "domestic gag rule," prevent medical providers from referring pregnant women to abortion providers, and forbids some medical professionals, including nurses and social workers, from providing nondirective factual information about abortion. Although 20 states, Planned Parenthood, and other organizations are challenging these regulations in the courts, they took effect in August 2019.

Planned Parenthood and eight states (Hawaii, Illinois, New York, Oregon, Washington, Maine, Massachusetts, and Maryland) have opted out of Title X funding because they were unwilling to accept the restrictions imposed by the Title X gag rule. These eight states and Planned Parenthood collectively served 47% of Title X patients in the United States. In 2016, women who received contraception at clinics funded by Title X avoided about 750,000 unwanted pregnancies and about 250,000 abortions.

The number of additional abortions that will result if the courts uphold the Title X gag rule is unknown. Many medical providers that received Title X funding also have funding from other sources, these medical providers may be able to secure additional funding elsewhere, and patients at Title X clinics may be able to find contraceptive care elsewhere. Therefore, it would be incorrect to conclude that 47% of former Title X patients will be unable to obtain contraception.

Do Policies of Republican Politicians Ever Reduce the Abortion Rate?

I can think of two possible areas where Republican policies may reduce the abortion rate: state laws and Supreme Court nominations.

State Laws

We have already seen that Republican legislators in many states have denied their constituents the expansion of Medicaid promised in the Affordable Care Act, thereby creating abortions and deaths. At the same time, Republican state legislators have passed laws attempting to reduce access to abortion. The effect of these laws is difficult to discern.

Abortion rates are generally lower in states with laws that restrict access to abortion, but abortion rates were already lower in those states before the laws were passed. We can expect both lower abortion rates and restrictive abortion laws in states in which voters more strongly disapprove of abortion. As any statistician will tell you, correlation is not causation.

If, on the other hand, abortion rates decline faster after states enact laws intended to limit access to abortion, this would be evidence that the laws have the intended effect. In 2006 and again in 2016, the Guttmacher Institute rated state laws concerning abortion as supportive, middle-ground, hostile, or extremely hostile to abortion. Between 2006 and 2016, 23 states became more hostile to abortion, 27 states remained the same, and no states became more supportive of abortion.

The graph below shows, for each state for which we have data, the percentage change in its abortion rate between 2006 and 2016. Abortions are assigned to the state of residence of the patient. The states are sorted by percentage changes in abortion rates. The states that became more hostile to abortion (which, for brevity, I will call "hostile states") appear in red, and the states that remained the same ("non-hostile states") appear in blue.



If you look carefully, you will see that abortion rates tended to fall a bit faster in hostile states, but not consistently so. The linear equation that best fits the data suggests that abortion rates declined slightly more over the 10-year period in states that became more hostile to abortion than in other states, by a difference of 0.4 abortions per 1,000 women of childbearing age. This effect is nowhere near statistical significance; an effect this large or larger could occur by chance 46% of the time. By comparison, the median decline in the abortion rate among all states was 3.7 abortions per 1,000 women. (Note to statisticians: I ran a multiple linear regression.)

Efforts to make abortions harder to obtain may indeed reduce abortion rates by a modest amount, but I can't show statistical significance with the data I have. Abortion rates vary widely among states and are affected by factors that this analysis does not consider. In Arizona, the one state in which laws about abortion fell all the way from "supportive" to "extremely hostile," the abortion rate actually increased.

I agree with the Guttmacher Institute, which concludes that state abortion restrictions "are not the main driver" of the continuing decline in the abortion rate.

The Supreme Court

Turning to the Supreme Court, the future of abortion rights is uncertain following Amy Coney Barrett's confirmation to the Court. I expect that the new Court will restrict abortion rights but not overturn Roe v. Wade, but I easily could be mistaken. If the Court overturns Roe v. Wade, some states will make abortion illegal under most circumstances. Women in these states will have to travel farther to obtain abortions. Some will be unable to do so.

Nevertheless, Democrats have done more to reduce the abortion rate than Republicans could ever do. By making contraception more widely available, Democrats were able to reduce the abortion rate below its pre-Roe level. During the last four years of the Obama Administration, the abortion rate was lower than it was back in 1972, the year before Roe v. Wade, when abortion was illegal in 44 states. It remains to be seen if, after 47 years, Republican politicians finally can do something that will prevent abortions rather than create them.

Roe v. Wade was decided and has been upheld by justices nominated by Republican Presidents. Six of the nine justices who decided Roe v. Wade in 1973 were nominated by Republicans, and five of those six justices concurred with the majority. This is not surprising, since the justices were appointed before abortion became a partisan issue.

In 1992, the Court upheld Roe v. Wade in the case Planned Parenthood v. Casey, at a time when eight of the nine justices had been nominated by Republicans. Five of those eight justices formed the majority. In at least four other cases, one or more justices, writing in dissent, argued that Roe v. Wade should be overturned, but the majority did not agree.

Justices nominated by Republican Presidents have formed a majority on the Court ever since 1970. Why haven't they overturned Roe v. Wade in 47 years? I can only speculate. Here are some possible reasons:

• Republican Presidents might not actually want abortion rights overturned. Although every Republican President from Gerald Ford to Donald Trump opposed Roe v. Wade while in office, they all held more moderate views earlier in their careers. For example, Donald Trump said back in 1999 that he was "pro-choice in every respect." Perhaps some Republican Presidents adopt pro-choice rhetoric for reasons of political expediency, while not actually wishing to undermine abortion rights. Furthermore, if Roe v. Wade were overturned, Republican politicians could no longer say "Vote for us and we will get Roe v. Wade overturned."


• A Republican President might not know a potential nominee's position on Roe v. Wade. It is considered unethical for a justice to reveal how he or she might rule in a particular case, or for a politician to ask.


• The Republican Presidents between Nixon and Trump stated that they did not require their Supreme Court nominees to oppose Roe v. Wade. Even Donald Trump, who stated when he was running for President in 2016 that he would nominate Supreme Court justices who would "automatically" overturn Roe v. Wade, stated as President that he would not ask his potential nominees whether they would overturn the 1973 decision.


• Justices are expected to be impartial. They should not reach a decision simply to please the President who nominated them. In the words of Chief Justice John Roberts, "We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges. What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them." Although Supreme Court justices do not always reach this lofty ideal, I trust that most of them try to do so.


• A justice may choose to uphold Roe v. Wade even if he or she thinks it was wrongly decided because of the principle of stare decisis, which states that a precedent of the Court is settled law and should not be overturned without a compelling reason. In the words of Chief Justice John Roberts in June Medical Services v. Russo, "The legal doctrine of stare decisis requires us, absent special circumstances, to treat like cases alike." Every time Roe v. Wade is upheld, it becomes more difficult to overturn it in the future.


• Judges sometimes change their minds. David Souter once filed a brief that called abortion "the kllling of unborn children." Anthony Kennedy once called Roe v. Wade " the Dred Scott of our time." In a 1986 opinion, Sandra Day O'Connor called Roe v. Wade "unworkable." Yet Souter, Kennedy, and O'Connor all supported abortion rights in Planned Parenthood v. Casey.
  

As conservative journalist David French wrote, "Supreme Court justices are instruments of stability in abortion law." For example, the most recent abortion-related Court decision, June Medical Services v. Russo, maintains the status quo. The court overturned a Louisiana law restricting access to abortion, just as it had previously overturned a similar Texas law. Chief Justice John Roberts provided the fifth vote, on the basis of stare decisis, in the 5-4 decision.

The administrations of Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, GW Bush, and Donald Trump have appointed profoundly conservative justices to the Supreme Court and to the federal courts. Republicans claim that they want these justices to overturn Roe v. Wade, but they haven't done that, at least not yet. What have they actually done?

By a series of 5-4 decisions, the conservative justices on the Supreme Court have enacted unpopular rulings that Republican politicians were unable to achieve through legislation. Here are a few examples.

• I have already mentioned NFIB v. Sebelius (2012), which denied Medicaid to 4.4 million Americans.


• I have also mentioned Burwell v. Hobby Lobby (2014), which weakened the contraceptive mandate of the Affordable Care Act.


• Trump v. Hawaii (2018) allows a particular form of religious discrimination: the decision allows the Trump administration to forbid residents of several Muslim countries from traveling to the U.S.

Donald Trump recently said that if it were easier for people to vote, "you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again." Here are a few 5-4 Supreme Court decisions that have undermined our voting rights:

• In Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission (2010), the Supreme Court allowed unlimited corporate spending on elections.


• In Shelby County v. Holder (2013), the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act, allowing states to pass voter suppression laws without judicial review. After that decision, Republican state legislatures in at least seven states passed laws that made voting more difficult.


• In Lamone v. Benisek (2019) and in Rucho v. Common Cause (2019), the Supreme Court said that they deplore partisan gerrymandering, but they can't do anything about it.

In short, the conservative justices on the Supreme Court have taken health care away from Americans, watered down our right to vote, and permitted a form of religious discrimination.

Summary

At the level of the U.S. Congress and the Presidency, policies of Republican politicians consistently discourage the use of contraception and consistently increase the abortion rate. At the state level, Republican legislatures intend to discourage abortion, but state laws only have a modest effect on abortion rates. Concerning the Supreme Court, Roe v. Wade has stood for 47 years. The conservative majority on the Court continues to uphold Roe v. Wade while issuing decisions that endanger our access to health care and our rights.

What Should Democratic Politicians Say About Abortion?

Democratic politicians have a built-in advantage on the abortion issue because their policies are more popular with voters:

• Republican politicians attempt to discourage both abortion and contraception. Only a small percentage of voters agree. The official position of the Catholic Church and some evangelical Protestant denominations is that contraception is morally wrong, but only 8% of Catholics, 3% of White evangelical Protestants, and 6% of Black Protestants agree.


• A large majority of Democratic voters, a smaller majority of Republican voters, and a small majority of voters who identify as pro-life all support Roe v. Wade.


• More voters consider themselves pro-choice than pro-life.

On the other hand, the issue of abortion motivates Republicans more than Democrats. In a 2019 survey, 16% of Republican adults but only 8% of Democratic adults identified abortion as the most important political issue.

Before I mention specific talking points, I would like to pass along some useful advice.

• Don't say "birth control". Please say "contraception" instead. Linguist George Lakoff argues that the phrase "birth control" subliminally reminds listeners of controlling the birth of a baby, which isn't the idea at all.


• Tell stories before, or instead of, giving data. Researchers who study cognitive biases have found that people find anecdotes more persuasive than data. Before saying that 15,600 people died in four years because Republicans delayed Medicaid expansion, begin by talking about one person who died. As Nobel Prize-winning scientist Daniel Kahneman once said, "No one ever made a decision because of a number. They need a story." Another Nobel winner, Robert Shiller, wrote: "The human brain has always been highly tuned towards narratives, whether factual or not, to justify ongoing actions…. Stories motivate and connect activities to deeply felt values and needs." This article might be more convincing if it had stories, but I don't know any.


• Choose stories that voters will want to tell their friends. In our polarized society, we tend to hang out, both in person and on social media, with people who share our values. Furthermore, voters want to get along with their friends, and they don't want to lie to them. Therefore, the way to persuade voters to vote for a candidate their friends don't support is to give the voters a compelling story to tell their friends. For pro-life voters, the idea that Republican politicians are scamming and betraying them can be part of such a story.


• If you are running in a general election against a candidate of another party, vilify your opponent. Legal scholar Cass Sunstein cites evidence that the public reacts most intensely to a threat if it has a identifiable perpetrator. Voters will be motivated to support you if you can describe a threat and make your opponent the human face of that threat. This strategy worked for Donald Trump.
  


• A Democratic politician can have one message for pro-choice voters and another message for pro-life voters without contradicting herself. She can say, for example, "My message to pro-life voters is that Republican politicians have betrayed you by claiming to be pro-life while enacting laws that create more abortions." This will not alienate pro-choice voters, because it is consistent with a pro-choice stance.

Here are what I think are the most important talking points for pro-choice Democratic politicians when addressing an audience that includes pro-life voters:

• Everybody -- Democrats, Republicans, pro-choice voters, and pro-life voters -- agrees that there are too many abortions in this country. There are too many abortions because there are too many unwanted pregnancies.


• Democratic politicians eliminate abortions by making sure women can get reliable, affordable contraception. Republican politicians who claim to be pro-life actually create abortions by taking contraception away from women.


• Since 1980, when the abortion rate began to decline, it has declined, on average, six times faster in Democratic administrations than in Republican ones, according to data collected by the CDC. This isn't a statistical accident. If annual changes in the abortion rate were independent chance events, there would be less than one chance in 37,000 that Democrats would be this much more successful in reducing the abortion rate than Republicans.


• The Affordable Care Act has done more than any other Act of Congress to reduce the abortion rate. It brought health care, including contraception, to more than 20 million Americans who didn't have it before. Furthermore, the contraceptive mandate of the Affordable Care Act guarantees women access to reliable contraception without any out-of-pocket costs.


• Republican politicians who take contraception and other forms of health care away from people don't just cause abortions. They also leave people to die. The Affordable Care Act expanded Medicaid eligibility, but Republican legislators delayed or completely blocked Medicaid expansion in 19 states, denying health insurance to more than two million people. Over 15,000 of those people who are dead today would be alive if Medicaid expansion had been adopted in every state beginning in 2014.


• Donald Trump wants you to think that if you elect Republican Presidents and Senators, they will nominate and confirm Supreme Court justices who will overturn Roe v. Wade. It's a scam. Justices nominated by Republican Presidents have formed a majority on the Supreme Court for the last 50 years, beginning three years before Roe v. Wade. The Supreme Court upheld Roe v. Wade in 1992 when eight of the nine justices had been nominated by Republican Presidents. Republicans have been able to milk this scam for 47 years because it's impossible to prove that Roe v. Wade will never be overturned.


• Thanks to Democrats, the abortion rate in this country is probably lower today than it was in 1972, the year before Roe v. Wade became law, when abortion was illegal in 44 states. According to data from the CDC, it fell below the 1972 level in 2013, the year the contraceptive mandate of the Affordable Care Act went into effect for most health plans, and it continued to fall throughout the rest of the Obama administration. The CDC has not released data for the first year of the Trump administration yet.


• The vast majority of Republican voters approve of contraception, and the vast majority of Republican couples use or have used it, but Republican politicians consistently oppose the use of contraception. Republican politicians are the enemy of every family that wants to choose when to have children.

It is difficult, but not impossible, to find Democratic politicians who are making these kinds of arguments. Joe Biden’s website mentions that the Affordable Care Act requires insurers to cover contraception free of charge. A Warren-for-President website stated that the Trump administration has tried to defund Planned Parenthood, spread abstinence-only sex education, and limit access to contraception, "all of which are likely to result in more unplanned pregnancies."

But statements like these aren't easy to find, and I don't understand why. Are some Democratic politicians not aware of the facts I have cited here?

The most salient political issues right now might be "Black Lives Matter" and Republican mismanagement of the COVID-19 epidemic. Nevertheless, if voters realized that Republican politicians create abortions and Democratic politicians prevent them, it would make a difference to the 42% of voters who identify as pro-life. Most pro-life voters say that a candidate's position on abortion is a major factor in deciding their vote for President. Showing that Democratic policies reduce abortions would not alienate pro-choice voters, because nobody thinks we need more abortions. Voters who oppose contraception, as well as abortion, will not be impressed, but they are only a tiny fraction of the population.

Democrats have an opportunity to show pro-life voters that Republican politicians are hypocritical, out of touch with reality, or both, and that Republican policies create abortions.

To the extent possible under law,
P. Alan Thiesen
has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to
What should "pro-choice" voters and politicians say to "pro-life" voters about abortion?.
This work is published from:United States.

EDIT: Some of the sources I used commented on provisions of early versions of the legislation that have been changed. I will soon update this to reflect the final version of the bill.

Dear Congressman LaMalfa,

Please vote against the harmful tax bill that Congress will vote on this week. If you vote against this bill, you might save your job.

Your next Democratic opponent undoubtedly will be happy to point out the following facts about the tax bill. If you doubt any of these facts, please consult the references I have provided.

• The tax bill will increase the taxes of 31% of your constituents, and reduce the taxes of only 3% of them. Your constituents will lose $770 million of tax deductions every year. [1]

• The tax bill will not benefit the economy. [2] Even conservative economist Greg Mankiw, who was Mitt Romney’s economic adviser when Romney ran for President, calls the tax bill "an unworkable mess." [3]

• The tax bill will drastically increase the national debt. In a survey of eminent economists, the one economist who denied that the debt-to-GDP ratio will substantially increase said later that he misread the question. [2]

• The tax bill is a giveaway to the idle rich who live off their investments. Wealthy business owners who tell other people what to do will also benefit, but not as much, and people such as surgeons who have earned their wealth by providing useful services or goods will benefit less than the business owners. [4] One of the most fundamental principles of economics is that people respond to incentives, and society benefits when the incentives it provides encourage people to do useful things. By this standard, a tax bill that encourages people to retire and live off their stock portfolios can’t be a good idea.

• The tax bill is a bait-and-switch. As you know, this bill includes some tax cuts that benefit people who aren’t wealthy, but those tax cuts expire after a few years, while the tax breaks for the rich remain.

• The tax bill gives $700 billion to foreigners. [5] I have nothing against foreigners, but supporting them is not a goal of our tax code.

• The tax bill is a giveaway to heirs. Weakening the estate tax will put even more money into the hands of heirs who have done nothing to earn their wealth. Even with the estate tax in place, the heirs of one wealthy American inherited more money than the total wealth of the poorest 40% of Americans put together. [6] I see no reason anybody needs to inherit even more than this. I don’t mean to criticize wealthy heirs; I mean to criticize a system that gives them unlimited unearned wealth.

• The tax bill will prevent the government from providing necessary services. For example, funding for CHIP, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, has not been renewed. Republican Senator Orrin Hatch, who helped create CHIP, says "The reason CHIP’s having trouble is that we don’t have money anymore." [7] Yet economists have found that in the long run, CHIP turns a profit, because children who get medical care grow up to be healthier adults who earn more money and pay more taxes. [8] If we are already unwilling to fund a vital program that pays for itself, God help us if the tax bill becomes law. The U.S. economy is currently at or near full employment, so our economy has a ceiling but no floor. If, as is likely, a recession occurs within the next few years, we will be unable to recover by lowering interest rates, because interest rates will already be near zero, and we will be unable to recover by increasing government spending. The government won’t have the money because the tax bill will reduce government revenues by $150 billion per year. [9][10]

• The tax bill will increase the U.S. trade deficit by about $800 billion over 10 years. [11] Donald Trump is correct to be worried about our trade deficit. When we pay foreign workers for net goods we import, we don’t have enough money left to pay our own workers. But Trump seems to think that our trade deficit results from "bad trade deals." He does not understand that our trade deficit increases when our budget deficit increases, since foreigners buy about 40% of federal debt.

• Because the tax bill repeals the individual health insurance mandate, premiums will rise, and millions of people will lose health insurance. Thousands of them will die unnecessarily every year. An American who loses health insurance is 40% more likely to die in the next year. [12][13]

• The arguments in favor of the tax bill are a web of lies. Donald Trump says the tax bill will cost him money. Senator John Cornyn says "This is not a bill that is designed primarily to benefit the wealthy and large businesses." [14] Give us a break. If this tax bill were a good idea, its proponents would be able to defend it honestly.

[1] DeLong, Bradford (December 3, 2017). "Doug LaMalfa: Republican House Member Voting to Make His District and Constituents Poorer". Grasping Reality With Both Hands. http://www.bradford-delong.com/2017/12/doug-lamalfa-republican-house-member-voting-to-make-his-district-and-constituents-poorer.html

[2] "Tax Reform". Chicago Booth IGM Forum. November 21, 2017. http://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/tax-reform-2

[3] Mankiw, N. Gregory (November 3, 2017). "How To Improve the Trump Tax Plan". The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/03/business/how-to-improve-the-trump-tax-plan.html

[4] Krugman, Paul (December 14, 2017). "Republicans Despise the Working Class". The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/14/opinion/republicans-working-class-taxes.html

[5] Krugman, Paul (December 14, 2017). "Trump’s $700 Billion Gift to Wealthy Foreigners". The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/26/opinion/trump-taxes-wealthy-foreigners.html

[6] Moorhead, Molly (July 31, 2012). "Is the Walmart family wealthier than 40% of the United States?". Politifact. http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2012/jul/31/walmart-family-wealthier-40-percent-united-states/

[7] Krugman, Paul (December 7, 2017). "The Republican War on Children". The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/07/opinion/republicans-children-health-chip.html

[8] Goodman-Bacon, Andrew (December 2016). "The Long-Run Effects of Childhood Insurance Coverage: Medicaid Implementation, Adult Health, and Labor Market Outcomes". The National Bureau of Economic Research. http://www.nber.org/papers/w22899

[9] "The Latest: Estimate Says Tax Bill Adds 1.46T to Deficit". WTOP. December 15, 2017. https://wtop.com/national/2017/12/the-latest-trump-predicts-monumental-tax-bill-will-pass/

[10] Chait, Jonathan (December 12, 2017). "Why the Trump Tax Cuts Might Jack Up the Deficit More Than Anybody Expects". New York Magazine. http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/12/trumps-tax-cuts-might-jack-up-deficit-more-than-you-expect.html

[11] Applebaum, Binyamin (November 17, 2017). "Trump's Tax Cuts are Likely to Increase Trade Deficit". The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/17/us/politics/tax-cuts-trade-deficit-trump.html

[12] Pear, Robert (December 18, 2017). "Without the Insurance Mandate, Health Care's Future May Be in Doubt". The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/18/us/politics/tax-cut-obamacare-individual-mandate-repeal.html

[13] Chalabi, Mona (June 24, 2017). "Will Losing Health Insurance Mean More US Deaths? Experts Say Yes"". The Guardian. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/18/us/politics/tax-cut-obamacare-individual-mandate-repeal.html

[14] Krugman, Paul (November 30, 2017). "Republicans' Tax Lies Show the Rot Spreads Wide and Runs Deep". The New York Times. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jun/24/us-healthcare-republican-bill-no-coverage-death

I will be Marching for Science in DC on Saturday!

I'm flying United. Kind Ms. Irlweg tells me not to worry.

A friend of mine asked, "What does the Democratic Party stand for?"

My answer is below. I paint a rosy picture of the twelve virtues of the Democratic Party. I imply that the Republican Party must be really awful, because it has none of these virtues. Is this picture accurate? Maybe not. Like just about everyone else in the world, I am subject to confirmation bias: I tend to seek out and remember information that confirms my preexisting beliefs, and ignore evidence that contradicts my beliefs.

I plan to examine the virtues I attribute to the Democratic Party one by one in future posts, gathering evidence to see if my impressions are accurate. I encourage you to comment with evidence for or against my claims.

I should make it clear that when I talk about "The Democratic Party" or "The Republican Party", I am talking only about politicians. There are many fine people registered as Republican voters. I was one, once.

• Economic issues: The Democratic Party...
  
  
  
  1. Reduces the Federal budget deficit (as a percentage of GDP)
  2. Creates jobs and increases wages
  3. Offers universal health insurance
  4. Promotes the long-term economic interests of the American people, as opposed to the Republican party, which promotes the perceived short-term economic interests of the very rich
  
  


• Social issues: The Democratic Party...
  
  
  
  5. Reduces the abortion rate, while keeping abortion legal and available
  6. Believes in equal rights for everyone, regardless of race, religion, or sexual preference
  7. Protects the environment
  
  


• Foreign policy: The Democratic Party...
  
  
  
  8. Didn't start the last two wars
  9. Promotes democratic ideals, at home and abroad
  
  


• Issues of competence and trust: The Democratic Party...
  
  
  
  10. Tells the American people the truth
  11. Values facts over ideology when formulating policy
  12. Governs competently

The Republican Party does none of these things.

I don't think Democratic politicians have done a good job of getting their message across, and that isn't just because vastly more money is poured into Republican messaging. I bet most Democratic politicians don't even know that Democratic Presidents consistently reduce the Federal budget deficit as a percentage of GDP, while Republican Presidents consistently increase it. I bet most Democratic politicians don't even know that the abortion rate plummeted during the Clinton and Obama administrations, while declining by only a few percentage points during recent Republican administrations.

Stay tuned for future posts on these twelve topics. Please be patient; this may take me a while.

In 1971, Sally Ride was an undergraduate at Stanford University, and she was the top player on the women's tennis team. Ride and three other players were denied travel funds to compete in a tournament in Ojai, CA. When they offered to pay their own way, they were again denied permission because they didn’t have a chaperone.

At a time when decades of progress in reducing discrimination against women and minorities seems to be reversing itself in this country, I hesitate to draw any moral from this story, but I wanted to share it with you anyway.

Taxpayers made my life possible.

My mother, Grace, grew up in poverty. Her mother was a garment worker in a New York City sweatshop, and her father's business failed. When Grace graduated from high school, there was no money for college tuition. Nevertheless, Grace was able to attend Hunter College, which was free to New York City residents because it was supported by the taxpayers of the City and State of New York.

If Grace had not gone to college, she would not have gone to graduate school. If Grace had not gone to graduate school, she would not have met my father, and I would not exist.

Grace earned much more money throughout her career than she would have earned with only a high school education, and therefore she paid much more in taxes. She undoubtedly paid society back many times over for the cost of her college education. Furthermore, I believe that the value to society of her work far exceeded the amount she was paid.

The specific taxpayers who made it possible for Grace to attend college may be deceased now, but I trust that today we taxpayers are making other success stories possible.

Thank you, taxpayers! We rock! Happy Income Tax Day!

The Affordable Care Act will be wonderful for my family. We currently pay $36,000 (that's right, thirty-six thousand dollars) a year for health insurance for a family of three. And it's mediocre insurance, with a $5,000 deductible and a $25,000 maximum out-of-pocket. That's what happens when you're self-employed (or your employer doesn't provide health insurance or you retire before age 65) and your family has a poor medical history.

The year my wife Alta had ovarian cancer, we paid $72,000 in health care expenses. That's the sum of our insurance premiums and the medical expenses that our insurance didn't pay for. We felt lucky and grateful to have insurance. Without it, we would have owed more than $250,000.

The insurance plan we have will go out of business the end of this year. If the Republicans manage to get the Affordable Care Act postponed, we will be unable to get any health insurance at all. And Alta has just been diagnosed with breast cancer.

I'll post an update after I have found out how much we will save by getting insurance through the ACA.

EDIT: The breast cancer was diagnosed at a much earlier stage than the ovarian cancer. Alta's prognosis is excellent.

I have just uploaded to the Filk Archive (www.filkarchive.org.uk) two songs performed by Bill Maraschiello that I recorded at OVFF 2 back in 1986, only about a month before Bill's tragic, sudden, and unexpected death.

Thanks to Bill's brother Paul for permission to make "Half-Pint Baby" and "The Hugo-Winning Authors" available, and to Adam Puche for digitizing my audio cassette recordings.

My song below dramatizes the following articles about Mitt Romney's tax shelters:

Where the Money Lives (Vanity Fair)
Mitt Romney's Cayman Island holdings complicate tax return debate (Washington Post)
Mr. Romney's Financial Black Hole (New York Times)
Mitt Romney's Tax Dodge (Rolling Stone)

The Mitt Romney Shanty
lyrics by patoadam, completed 10/30/2012, placed in the public domain by the author
melody: "The LiveJournal Shanty" by Brooke Abbey, except for the last line of the chorus, the melody for which is here

I’m a poor confused voter, and I’d like to know
Why Mitt Romney’s taxes are so goddamn low.
So I'll sail the world over, with courage and stealth
To learn how Mitt Romney has sheltered his wealth.

So it's heave at the capstan! We’re sailing away.
(We’ll post Facebook reports at least three times a day.)
And it's haul on the halyards! Our flag is unfurled.
We sail for Mitt Romney's tax havens, all over the world.

To the warm Cayman Islands, my bold buccaneers!
Mitt has a dozen tax shelters out here.
Twelve corporations, each one is tax-free,
With assets that Mitt doesn't want us to see.

( Read more... )

If you enjoyed my song, you'll love The Elegant President: A Poem for Mitt Romney by Julian Gough:

( Read more... )
What we need is an elegant country for elegant folk.
Not fuckups in pickups with hiccups from drinking and dope
Who can't afford healthcare, who can't afford dinners like this
Those people aren't drowning, they're waving their communist fists.
( Read more... )

Finally, I encourage you to read An Open Letter to Candidate Romney:

You said that you think that 47% of Americans “think they are victims” ... I am not a victim. I have been beaten. I have been bullied. I have been raped. I have been addicted. I have been alone. I have been poor. I have been homeless. I have been sick and broken. I have chosen — each and every single time — to stand up and pull myself and my family out of those circumstances. I beat every one of them without any riches to aid me. I did that without any inheritance, any gifted stocks or bonds, any loans, any rich family, or any elevators for my cars. I did it because I am not a victim, I am an American.

Remember: One small vote is enough.

One day two or three decades ago, as I was donating blood, I was given the opportunity to sign up to be a potential bone marrow donor. I jumped at the chance.

(For years after that, I was under the impression that to register as a possible bone marrow donor, you have to donate blood first. Not so. You can send away for a free kit that you use to collect a few cells from the inside of your cheek.)

So why did I register as a marrow donor? Until I started to think about writing this message, I was under the impression that I had made a rationally altruistic decision that would give me a chance to save a life. But that's not the whole story. I also wanted the drama and glory of being a hero. I wanted to get that email or phone call saying that I could save a life. I wanted to turn off my targeting computer and single-handedly destroy the Death Star. I wanted to run into a burning building and rescue the baby trapped in a crib.

But we rarely have opportunities to be heroes in real life. They say that only 1 in 540 donors is ever called. On the other hand, if 374 new donors sign up, one of them will probably be a match for a patient some day, because (539/540)³⁷⁴ < 1/2.

I still think it made sense for me to sign up. Not so much because of the slim chance that I might be called on to donate, but because if enough people sign up, more lives will be saved. But the other thing I realize now is that I should donate blood more often. That is a less dramatic but surer way to save lives.

My wife A. would have died in surgery last year if she had not received blood transfusions. My thanks go out to the anonymous heroes who saved her life. I recently found out about Leah, a leukemia patient, who will need blood and possibly bone marrow. Her illness is what prompted me to post about this now. Best of luck to Leah for a speedy cure!

If you are in the U.S. and you wish to register as a potential bone marrow donor, see the National Marrow Donor Program for details. If you wish to donate blood, see the American Red Cross.