Abortion is among the most controversial and debated topics in the United States.  As a college professor and debate coach of 25 years, I can easily observe that the most restricted civil right on campuses is the right to speak on behalf of unborn children.  Campus displays and signs by pro-life student groups are regularly vandalized, defaced, torn down, or counterprotested.  It would be easy for these movements to perhaps feel defeated or doomed.  But on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade it is important to observe that they are not failing.  In fact, the American pro-life movement may be one of the greatest successes for human rights and general well-being occurring in the 21st century.

In observing these campus displays for decades, I noted that initially activists often erect displays of thousands of crosses to represent the numbers of abortions performed each day in America against an unborn child.  In the 1990s, these displays featured 4,000 crosses.  Today, these displays feature 3,000 crosses.  Of course, every one is a tragic result.  Nonetheless, this simple statistical change is an empirical measure of profound success.  The abortion rate in the United States has declined by 25% since a peak in the 1980s.  Pro-life activists do not need to feel defensive or antagonized about this because their opponents continually explain: ‘we are not pro-abortion.’  So everyone is happy that abortion is declining dramatically in the United States.  The nation’s largest provider of abortions, Planned Parenthood, may not be making as much profit as a result but the larger question of justice is more secure. 

Attending to the details of this statistic is important.  According to the Guttmacher institute -- an organization that agrees with the legality of abortion -- the rate of abortion among women age 15-44 has declined from roughly 27 per 1,000 women to around 15 per 1,000 women.  The number of abortions per 100 pregnancies has declined from about 27 to about 20.  This means that women are choosing not to have abortions.  This means the arguments of pro-life groups are succeeding.  This means that for the past 25 years roughly 1,000 more children have been born every day because their mothers chose life for them.  By contrast, in 2015 in India 33 out of 100 pregnancies ended in abortion.

These profound results are more significant with regard to the cause of human justice.  As an institutional practice, abortion is a racist and sexist endeavor.  One of the most important original advocates of abortion, Margaret Sanger, envisioned this weapon within a larger set of birth control policies aimed at removing “human weeds” from the “garden of humanity.”  In her book Pivot of Civilization, Sanger wrote her convictions that humanity was a beautiful garden of plants besieged by those who were unfit -- the other races.  Sanger believed that removing black people and non-white ethnic groups would keep the garden strong and effective at producing those desirable fruits.  These repugnant convictions are losing in the court of public opinion and among those people most able to affect this profound moral choice:  women.

Abortion is sexist because in dehumanizing the unborn child, it frees all forms of human prejudice to take aim at an allegedly non-human object:  the unborn child.  This is why nothing is presently making the world more masculine and non-woman than abortion. Every year, roughly 40 million abortions take place.  The strong majority of abortions in the world are directed at female children because females are viewed globally as inferior to males.  The choice to kill women before they are born is making the world more male -- especially across Asia from India to China.  Though it is illegal to do this in India and China, both nations struggle to prevent social bigotry against women from killing them before they are born. It is important to note that it is perfectly legal to abort a child in the United States because she is female.  Abortion is anti-woman and reductions in abortion have saved women’s lives. Academics are eagerly awaiting the 2021 census in India because it will give us an important guide to this important global question of whether we can convince the world that women are as worthy in their humanity as men.  The 2011 census showed that more educated and affluent communities of India were choosing more frequently to abort female children.

As we observe another anniversary of Roe v. Wade, those who argue and advocate for the dignity of unborn children should be encouraged that this violence is subsiding.  Moreover, all persons who profess to oppose abortion, whether through a legal system or a more welcoming social structure regarding pregnancies, can be glad that more children are surviving pregnancy.  It is entirely possible that in the next few decades this violence will come to a complete end. 

Dr. Ben Voth is an associate professor of communication and director of debate at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas.  He is the author of three academic books one the importance of debate in global and American public affairs.