This is a point I make just about every time I blog about reproductive rights, but here it is again. The BBC reports that a Guttmacher Institute survey of abortion in 197 countries shows clearly that making abortion illegal not only doesn’t stop abortion, it doesn’t even seem to slow it down.

The Guttmacher Institute’s survey found abortion occurs at roughly equal rates in regions where it is legal and regions where it is highly restricted. …

…On some continents this is particularly pronounced: well over 90% of women in South America and Africa live in areas with strict abortion laws, proportions which have barely shifted in a decade.

Where abortions are illegal, abortions go underground. Women abort themselves or find underground networks of providers. This in turn creates all manner of bad outcomes with broad impact.

The costs of unsafe abortions, which can include inserting pouches containing arsenic to back street surgery, can be high: the healthcare bill to deal with conditions from sepsis to organ failure can be four times what it costs to provide family planning services.

Every year, an estimated 70,000 women die as a result of unsafe abortions – leaving nearly a quarter of a million children without a mother – and 5m develop complications.

Anti-reproductive rights activists sometimes make the argument that abortions should be illegal because they are dangerous for women, and I’ve actually seen them cite the 70,000 annual deaths figure in support of their argument without mentioning that nearly all of those deaths occur in places where abortion is illegal.

This is not really news. It’s been obvious from the data for some time that there is no correlation between abortion rate and abortion law, and that some of the highest abortion rates in the world are in nations in which abortion is banned. What is baffling to me is why pro-reproductive rights advocates are not highlighting this fact, posting it on billboards, shouting it from rooftops. If there is any one fact that ought to shut up any argument in favor of criminalizing abortion (not that the crazies will shut up, of course) it’s this.

I realize that many reproductive-rights advocates don’t want to talk about reducing abortion rates, because this amounts to an admission that abortion is something that needs to be reduced. However, I suspect the majority of people who favor keeping abortion entirely or mostly legal feel some ambivalence about it. IMO I’m not interested in arguing whether abortion is “good” or “bad,” because as a moral choice it depends on myriad factors that are unique to every woman who considers it. The question for me is purely whether there is any reason for the government stepping in and criminalizing it, in particular a reason that somehow benefits civil order and societal good. And it’s obvious that there isn’t.

Yet, for some reason, you only find the fact that criminalizing abortion doesn’t stop it buried very deeply in pro-rights arguments. Instead, they favor arguments that women have rights, which is not persuasive to people who think that women are cows.

There is one thing that really does reduce the number of abortions, and that is access to birth control.

Western Europe is held up as an example of what access to contraceptive services can achieve, and the Netherlands – with just 10 abortions per 1,000 women compared to the world’s 29 per 1,000 – is held up as the gold standard.

In the Netherlands, abortions can be performed at any point before viability in a certified hospital or clinic.

Even the UK, which has a relatively high rate, fares well in comparison to the US, where the number of abortions is among the highest in the developed world. The institute says this rate is in part explained by inconsistencies in insurance coverage of contraceptive supplies.

In much of eastern Europe, where abortion was treated as a form of birth control, abortion rates have dropped by 50% in the past decade as contraceptives have become more widely available.

The data that contraceptive use is the one factor that really does reduce abortion rates — far more so than criminalization — could not be clearer. Data is never clear enough for idiots, of course. But an overwhelming majority of Americans are in favor of birth control use, and the connection between birth control use and abortion rate also needs to be broadcast far and wide.

Update: More from Lynn Harris:

In other words: Bans do nothing. Except kill women. (Making their success rate, and irony factor, analogous to that of a virginity pledge.) Specifically: about 70,000 women die each year of complications from unsafe abortion, an estimate that — should it sound familiar — has hardly changed in 10 years. An estimated 8 million women per year experience complications requiring medical treatment. (Only 5 million receive that treatment. Even when quality post-abortion care is available, the study says, “distance, cost and the stigma often associated with Abortion can discourage women from seeking treatment.”) Another new Guttmacher study also found that “the costs of treating medical complications from unsafe abortion constitute a significant financial burden on public health care systems in the developing world.” (Treating complications from unsafe abortion costs Africa and Latin America alone up to $280 million each year.)

Let’s put it this way: Because of death — wholly preventable death — by unsafe abortion, an estimated quarter million children grow up without a mother. “Restrictive abortion laws are an unacceptable infringement of women’s human rights and of medical ethics,” says the study. “Eliminating unsafe abortion and providing access to safe abortion would reduce ill health, death and lost years of productivity among women, and avert the financial burden of treating related health complications. Achieving these goals would lead to enormous individual and societal benefits — for women, their families and countries as a whole.” File all that under What More Data Could You Possibly Need? (Or, depending on your mood, under “How Dare You Call Abortion a ‘Convenience'”?)