Gays will cause 900,000 abortions if they marry, lawyer claims
US lawyer Gene Schaerr, who failed to defend Utah’s ban on same-sex marriages last year, has warned that same-sex weddings would be to blame for 900,000 abortions.
Writing for the conservative Heritage Foundation’s Daily Signal last week, Schaerr claimed that a “reduction in the opposite-sex marriage rate means an increase in the percentage of women who are unmarried and who, according to all available data, have much higher abortion rates than married women.”
According to Mr Schaerr’s somewhat questionable logic, having fewer women married to men means abortion rates would increase dramatically.
He wrote: “Accordingly, with 1.275 million additional women never getting married, nearly 900,000 more children of the next generation would be aborted as a result of their mothers never marrying.”
Schaerr added that same-sex marriages would effectively be wiping out a population equal to “the entire population of the cities of Sacramento and Atlanta combined.”
He also stated that he believed unmarried men would be less likely take part in a girlfriend’s pregnancy if a state had legalized same-sex marriage.
However, Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank refused to take Schaerr’s argument seriously, noting that marriage rates had been declining in states like Texas and Utah during a time in which same-sex marriages were banned, stating that: “… all it takes is a slippery slope and an active imagination to get to 900,000 abortions.”
In March an anti-discrimination bill backed by the Mormon church was been passed in Utah.
The state’s governor pledged to sign the bill, which aims to protect LGBT people from discrimination in the workplace and in housing issues, but also protects religious organisations opposed to homosexuality.
