The Paradox of Contraception

World Contraception Day takes place on September 26, every year. On this occasion, Claire de La Hougue and Grégor Puppinck explain the paradox of contraception, whereby the rate of abortion increases proportionally with the rate of contraception. They took part in the writing of the book “Abortion: Law and Prevention in Europe” (LEH publisher) which was released on fall 2016.

Article published in Valeurs Actuelles.

“Contraception would allow avoiding unplanned pregnancies and, accordingly, abortions”. This argument, which sustained the policy of all governments since the passing of the Veil and Neuwirth laws, is not confirmed by statistical data, which, on the contrary, reveal a proportional correlation between the rate of contraception and abortion.

While States in which contraception is widely spread, still have a high number of abortions, other States which use less contraception have managed to contain or even deeply reduce this number.

Among the Western European countries which have the widest rate of contraceptive coverage, above 70 % of women of reproductive age, one can find France and the Nordic countries, with the record by the United-Kingdom, with a rate above 80 %.

Yet, in France, not only does the number of abortions not decrease, but it even tends to rise: it increased from 206,000 in 2003 to more than 216,600 in 2013 according to the INED[1]; at the same time, the abortion rate, that is to say the number of abortions for 1,000 women of reproductive age rose from 14.2 to 15.3 ‰, and even to more than 18 ‰ in the Ile-de-France region.

It is the same in Sweden, where the very high number of abortions keeps rising, from 17.2 ‰ to 20.2 ‰ between 1983 and 2014, and it even reaches 29.6 ‰ among 20-24 years-old. The United-Kingdom also has very high abortion rate and numbers (more than 16 ‰ in total, and 28.7 ‰ at the age of 21), as well as 38 % of repeated abortions.

Yet, countries in which contraception is less widely spread have weak and decreasing abortion rates. Thus, the abortion rate in Italy is one of the lowest in Europe: it was reduced by more than half between 1982 and 2013, with a number of abortions dropping from 234,801 to 102,644 a year.

There is thus a correlation between contraception and abortion rates. It can be explained by the fact that most of the women who have an abortion were using a contraception when they became pregnant. In France, the Inspection générale des affaires sociales[2] observed in 2010 that “72 % of abortions are carried out on women who used a contraception and in 42 % of the cases, this contraception relied on a medical method, in theory very efficient (pill or coil)”. The figures are similar in the United-Kingdom.

What is clear here is that developing contraception does not allow a reduction beside a threshold proportional to the failure rate of contraception. While there are, indeed, less unplanned pregnancies in proportion to the number of sexual intercourse because of contraception, the number of “unplanned” pregnancies remains high and amounts to one third of pregnancies, whereas, in 4 times out of 10, the concerned women used a contraception with a high theoretical rate of success. Among these “unplanned” pregnancies, a higher proportion is ended with an abortion: four out of ten in 1975, and six out of ten nowadays. This explains the fact that the abortions level remain high.  The massive recourse to contraception increases risky behaviours, it psychologically, but not biologically, excludes the possibility of becoming a parent, and leads to abortion.

The massive recourse to contraception, as any other technology, gives the illusion to control nature and to be able to avoid the natural consequences of a sexual relationship. From then, sex-education at school is inappropriate when it reduces the sense of the responsibility to using contraception and condoms. Teaching that a responsible sexuality consists mainly in using technical means allows to avoid having to assume the natural consequences of one’s actions is teaching irresponsibility.

This “paradox of contraception” also explains why abortions keep increasing, in particular among the youth who would mainly need an education to responsibility. The example of other European countries shows that this is possible.

[1] Institut national d'études démographiques (National Institute for Demographic Studies)

[2] General Inspection of Social Affairs

Translated by BMG