Roe v. Wade Turns 34

Happy Birthday to Roe versus Wade, the sine qua non of moralistic judicial activism. The annual pro-life rally sloshed through D.C., receiving elegant lip service from politicians, and wild-eyed weirdo coverage from a half-hearted media contingent, no doubt.

Those who don't like abortion politics often criticize abortion supporters and opponents for being one-dimensional. Aren't there issues that affect the country and the world more? Um, not a lot more. From Wikipedia:

[Yearly], approximately 46 million abortions are performed. Of these, 26 million are said to occur in places where abortion is legal; the other 20 million happen where it is illegal . Some countries, such as Belgium (11.2 per 100 known pregnancies) and the Netherlands (10.6 per 100), have a low rate of induced abortion, while others like Russia (62.6 per 100) and Vietnam (43.7 per 100) have a comparatively high rate. The world ratio is 26 induced abortions per 100 known pregnancies.

In case you didn't catch that, every year 47,000,000 abortions are performed; that's one out of every four pregnancies. In the U.S., 1,365,700 abortions are performed annually according to somewhat outdated Guttmacher data, with a ratio about the same as the world average.

Abortion is a huge issue, and criminalization alone won't solve the problem. Fundamentally, something is wrong when more than 1 in 4 pregnancies are so unwanted that they are terminated. Global Review does not have any easy answers.