An Open Conduit Reduces Flow?

According to Glenn Reynolds, "Eric Olsen notes that current U.S. abortion policy is resulting in steadily falling numbers of abortions." That's an interesting turn of events, making me wonder what other undesirable activities we ought to make completely legal, without restrictions. Theft? Murder?

Olsen doesn't so explicitly assert causation, but he does conclude:

... after the steam was released following Roe, abortion has decreased steadily if slowly over the last two decades, and those that are being performed are occurring earlier in pregnancies - exactly the trends a responsible but realistic populace would want to see.

From what I understand, the CDC data that Olsen cites is generally accepted to be low, but I'll go with it for my purposes here. After Roe, the number of abortions increased from 615,831 in 1973 to 1,297,606 in 1980 — 211%. That number peaked at 1,429,247 in 1990 — 110% from 1980 and 232% from 1973. By 2001, however, the number (again, using low CDC data) had dropped to 853,485 — still 139% of the 1973 number.

There are two parts to the trend, up then down, and one could argue that the numbers will continue to decline to a sort of "natural" annual tally of abortions. However, if you believe, as I do, that those being aborted are human beings with a right to life, then the difference between a half million and a million and a half is only a matter of degree of abomination. The only common ground for discussion, therefore, is whether things are improving or getting worse, and the trends thus far tell us nothing about the likely future, in part because they tell us nothing about the causes of each stage of the trend. Consider this chart of abortions as a percentage of conceptions that I made for a post back in March:

Granted that this is a limited sample of countries, but with the exceptions of the U.S. and (barely) Denmark, every trend line shows a large increase, some form of dip, and then a return to increase. This brings to mind a common observation about Europeans' finding the United States a curious nation because of our continued battle over something as mundane as abortion.

Could it be that it is the advocacy against abortion that has led to the decline? If that is the case, and if too many decades of being thwarted eventually lead to increasing numbers of pro-lifers who just accept — as Reynolds and Olsen ostensibly believe they should — that abortion is simply a fact of American life, then the numbers will begin to climb again.

Of course, the abortionists will eventually reach a point at which they can no longer find any additional parents willing to kill their children. But that wouldn't be an equilibrium; it would be maximized slaughter.