I keep harping on the law because this is election season and the shape at the law is at the heart of many of the disagreements out there.
I also keep harping on it because there is so much sloppy thinking and frankly deceptive discourse out there on the subject of abortion law.
The sloppy thinking involves claiming that “the pro-life movement has been obsessed with criminalization to its detriment and at the cost of lives…move on” without specific evidence pointing to the truth of this assertion – either that the movement is obsessed at a great cost or that law is ineffective.
The deceptive discourse involves blowing off the issue of the law, declaring all is lost in order to convince one’s listeners to vote for a favorite candidate.
Two recent articles address the issue of the effectiveness of abortion law in the US:
Michael New of the University of Alabama has done much research on the subject. He has a summary article in Public Discourse here and points to the correlation between lower abortion rates and incidence with restrictive legislation.
Richard Doerflinger of NRLC has a similar piece up at the USCCB site.
Also at the USCCB site:
Bishop Martin Holley’s letter on abortion and the African-American community (pdf)

As the research arm of Planned Parenthood, the Guttmacher Institute is shamelessly
trying to build a case for receiving more of our taxpayer dollars. Every year the federal
government gives over $300 million to Planned Parenthood. Last year for the first time, Planned
Parenthood took in over one billion dollars and reported a profit of $51 million. I join my voice
with others in the Black community who have called for the defunding of the abortion industry.
We must demand an end to the victimizing of African American children, women,
families and communities by Planned Parenthood and others in the abortion industry. Over 80
percent of Planned Parenthood clinics are located in minority neighborhoods. Margaret Sanger,
the founder of Planned Parenthood, began the “Negro Project” to reduce the Black population.
We should be shocked and heartbroken by the findings of a recent phone investigation, that
recorded a fundraiser at an Iowa Planned Parenthood clinic saying she was “very excited” about
a donation specifically for aborting Black babies.
My brothers and sisters, we can overcome abortion in our nation. Let us defend our
community by rededicating ourselves to family life and marriage, promoting the gift of chastity
and marital fidelity, committing ourselves to prayer and service to others and defending the life
and dignity of each human person. We can welcome every child as a gift and we can overcome
abortion.

Defunding Planned Parenthood? A political aim. If we say that we should give up on the political aspect of the abortion issue, does that mean we just sit back and let anything fly? That we should not fight those battles? That the cause, say, of which Bishop Holley speaks is a distraction and missing the point?