Abortion, Harm, and Accountability
Who Is Harmed? Who Is the Offender?
In situations of abortion, who is harmed? And who is the offender? In 2016, then-presidential candidate Donald Trump said that women, for aborting a fetus, should be subject to “some form of punishment.” Conservatives and liberals alike criticized and denounced his remark. Trump himself recanted, saying that he meant the abortion “doctor or any other person performing this illegal act” should be held responsible.[1]
Most pro-life advocates have held that women are the second victim in an abortion, and should never be prosecuted.[2] It remains to be seen whether there is a tendency among intellectuals to be more disciplined about this point, or among populists to be more punitive.
The incident with then-candidate Trump’s statement highlighted two things. First, many wondered if a conservative had “said the quiet part out loud.” In any situation of an unwanted pregnancy, relative to the father, the mother has to pay a much higher price. This disparity has long troubled observers. Pregnancy itself can often impose health risks on the mother, as pregnancy-related mortality in the U.S. has been increasing in a steady upward trend; in 1987, there were only 7.2 pregnancy-related deaths per 100,000 live births, and in 2018, there were 17.3.[3] The risks are notably higher for Black and Native American women. Also, women in rural areas have nearly double the risk as women in wealthy suburbs. In addition, the mother often has to endure socio-economic consequences and other relational implications such as ongoing contact with the baby’s father, which is not always wanted, and raising the child if she does not give it up for adoption.
Following Trump’s hasty response, however, more anti-abortion conservatives shifted their position towards the more punitive and retributive. In early 2018, Idaho Republican state senator Bob Nonini said that women should be punished, a day after he said that the punishment should include the death penalty, though he later backed off. [4] In March 2018, the Ohio state legislature sought to ban all abortions without exception, and punish physician and woman with a homicide charge punishable with life in prison or the death penalty.[5] That same year, Idaho organization Abolish Abortion backed a ballot initiative to charge both the physician and the woman with first degree murder.[6] After Dobbs, depending on how state laws are interpreted, the person who performs an abortion could include the woman who takes pills causing an abortion, or otherwise self-induces.
Second, the incident highlights the challenge conservatives face when they place abortion in a criminal justice category but do not hold the father fundamentally responsible. They say there are two victims in every abortion: the fetus and the woman. But a victim of who? The answer, according to social conservatives, is: the abortion provider. The infamous case of Kermit Gosnell can be considered an example where that is true on account of his clinic conditions and delegation to others. But that position is difficult, if not absurd, in the main. A woman seeking an abortion wants the service, and is usually quite determined and clear-headed about it. The 2008 Turnaway Study of 667 women across 30 locations in 21 states reported that five years after procuring an abortion, 99 percent of women who did so believed it was the correct decision for them.[7]
The view that abortion providers are the offenders can also be challenged. Physicians often feel a sense of moral weightiness or injury if they do not perform an abortion. Dr. Mildred S. Hanson is one of the physicians featured in the video documentary Voices of Choice: Physicians Who Provided Abortions Before Roe v. Wade. She was head of a hospital committee on abortion and sterilization in the 1960s, overseeing hospital protocol. When explaining her decision to offer abortion services to women, she refers to an incident when she received a call from a frantic young woman. The young woman wanted to know about what the abortion process was like, but never gave her name or phone number. Later, Dr. Hanson learned that she had died by suicide, by jumping out of a 17th story window. Hanson says, “To this day, I still feel responsible for her death.”[8] After the Dobbs decision, many physicians expressed grave reservations about restrictive state laws that delayed or stopped them from removing ectopic pregnancies or fully evacuating a miscarriage from a womb, which prolongs women’s bleeding, or doing anything that could be considered an abortion procedure under poorly crafted laws.[9]
Categorically placing legal responsibility on physicians puts them into a conundrum. Not only are they placed into a situation where they are unable to help the patient before them, society loses the help of medical professionals as gatherers of stories and data as we try to address unintended pregnancy as a wider social problem. If she can safely perform the abortion, and is morally willing to, then she could. She may incur moral injury by doing so, as some physicians report feeling when performing abortions after the first trimester, depending on the reason. However, she might also incur a moral injury by not doing so, because she does not know whether the pregnant woman will seek an abortion under less safe conditions. Three ob-gyns interviewed by Vice News in July 2022 said that state laws prevented them from aborting a fetus when it had fetal abnormalities including having no brain, which can result in fluids swelling the head and endangering the mother.[10] In other words, the abortion provider can be considered a victim, as well.
Redefining the Harm as Unintended Pregnancy, Not Abortion
What if we define unintended pregnancy, not abortion, as a harm? Perhaps abortion rates will come down further—possibly much further—when men are held more responsible for paternity. The science and technology we have today make this possible.
The father’s DNA can be determined from the fetus as part of abortion procedures. The father’s DNA was obtained from an aborted fetus from Planned Parenthood by police via search warrant in Spokane, Washington as they sought evidence for statutory rape committed against a teenage girl.[11] The father’s DNA evidence from an aborted fetus was used to determine the guilt of Samuel Williams in the rape of a young woman in New Orleans.[12] Fathers’ DNA from living, unborn fetuses are being used by women in the UK with more than one male sexual partner to help them identify paternity and decide whether or not to have abortions.[13]
One possibility, then, is to commission health care professionals to perform DNA testing on any candidate for abortion and/or surgically aborted fetus to determine its paternity. Perhaps those paternity records should be placed in a secure health care database, so that a woman concerned for her own physical, mental, and emotional wellness would be able to consult her doctor to inquire as to the man she is starting to date has fathered any children who were aborted, prompting at least a conversation with him about whether he believes abortion is simply a birth control method. We would need to modify existing health care privacy (HIPAA) laws to accommodate for this practice.
Giving women institutional advantages over men in certain key regards is an idea grounded in the Hebrew Bible and Christian church history – which needs elaboration because this is not commonly understood (see below). Conservatives should welcome this idea because they welcome accountability. In fact, some conservatives, like Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, do not believe that a constitutional “right to privacy” exists, so for them, HIPAA privacy is apparently not an absolute. Many secular liberals should welcome this idea, too, because abortion, in their view, is just another form of birth control. What reason do men have to be so private about it? If men feel shame, that is their problem. If the general public believes that a man should be mature enough to disclose to a woman whether he will use a condom, then a man has no legitimate reason to hide this aspect of his personal history.
The Cost to Women and the Health System
Lest this proposal seem invasive, let us consider the fact that women’s health records keep track of past “abortions”—not distinguishing between miscarriages or induced or medically necessary—because it is medically significant from a health perspective for her future care. Do we not think that a man’s record of fathering aborted children might be medically significant to the health care system at large, or to a woman starting to date a man and consulting her doctor for information that would affect her overall well-being?
Studies show that abortion is linked to later health risks and costs. When a woman procures an induced abortion, her chances of getting an ectopic pregnancy at a later time increases, a risk which increases with each successive induced abortion.[14] Various researchers have also argued that increased risks for breast cancer accompany induced abortion, although the issue is debated.
Abortion procedures risk weakening the cervix. Women who have had induced abortions are therefore more at risk for cervical insufficiency, meaning a premature birth with a later pregnancy, where the baby has low birth weight and requires hospital care. Each successive induced abortion increases the likelihood of a premature birth later.[15] In addition, the earlier the premature birth, the higher the risk to the child of having cerebral palsy.[16] Over 140 published medical studies indicate the increased risk of cervical insufficiency.[17]
Some abortion procedures also risk scarring the uterus. For a later pregnancy, a scarred uterus might result in the placenta forming not at the top of the uterus, as it normally does in a healthy pregnancy, but in a place that blocks the cervical opening. This condition is called placenta previa, and if it continues to the onset of labor, increases various risks: need for Caesarian section; hemorrhaging which could be life-threatening to the mother; early onset of labor and birth; low infant birth weight; risk of death to the infant just before or after delivery. A study published in 2003 in Obstetrics and Gynecological Survey found that the risk of placenta previa increases by 30 percent with one induced abortion,[18] which is lower than previous studies that indicated the risk increased by 50 percent, with other studies indicating that the risk significantly increases with each successive abortion.[19]
What is the cost of widespread abortion? In 2007, Calhoun, Shadigian, and Rooney estimated that the cost to the health care system of complications due to preterm birth and low birth weight is $1.2 billion annually.[20] That increased cost is not just due to abortion after-effects alone, but abortion is probably a significant contributing factor. Without identifying or estimating underlying causes, which are many, the World Health Organization observed that the U.S. preterm delivery rate increased by 30 percent from 1981 to 2012.[21] Martin and Osterman find that the rate increased again from 2014 to 2016.[22]
The costs, therefore, localized in the woman’s body, fall in the future. They fall on the woman if she needs mental health support or when she wants to be a mother; on a man who may want to be a father with her; on the woman and the health care professionals who would much rather avoid an ectopic pregnancy, even if there are some promising surgical techniques which could transplant an ectopic pregnancy to the uterus;[23] on the woman and the health care professionals who would rather deliver a healthy baby simply than perform ectopic treatments; and a health care system which would rather pay for a healthy baby to be born, rather than surgically intervene and/or lose the fetus. There is also a cost to the fetus who might be aborted to save the mother’s life in those cases, who would have had a greater chance at healthy development. Risks of an ectopic pregnancy are also higher when women are using an IUD as contraception. In that light, it bears mentioning that one study found that in the U.S., among Medicaid recipients, women of color are more at risk of ectopic pregnancies (Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander and black being highest) than white women,[24] for unexplained reasons, as the researchers only controlled for state and age, not the use of birth control, number of previous children, past abortions or miscarriages, adverse childhood experience, nutrition, stress, etc.
Currently, fathers participate in paying these costs very indirectly, if they are taxpayers. Perhaps fathers of aborted fetuses should be charged a fine commensurate to income/wealth, pay higher health insurance rates, or pay higher taxes. After all, Exodus 21:22–25 called for a financial payment in a restorative justice framework to help undo the harm they cause. Perhaps men collectively should be charged a special federal tax according to the nationwide abortion rate, to help foster a collective atmosphere of male education and personal and interpersonal responsibility. Perhaps men should pay a special tax unless they opt for a vasectomy, especially if he causes an unintended pregnancy. Vasectomies can be reversed if a man wants to be a father, and after all, if the principle of bodily autonomy can be set aside for the woman in favor of the fetus, why not for men with a minor and reversible surgery? Proposals like this are bound to be politically unpopular at the moment, but they would be morally preferable. It is unacceptable on moral grounds why men have largely been able to escape the consequences of their own sexual choices bodily, legally, and economically.
Is it fair for the father to pay something to the government or insurer if the mother has an abortion? Yes, because there are costs that are borne by the mother, the physician, and the larger community whenever an abortion happens, even if it is successful. Those costs are uncertain and not always apparent in the moment, but they exist. Like a corporation that imposes externalities via pollution or injury, a man who causes an unintended pregnancy imposes externalities on others: physical injuries, moral injuries, and financial and emotional burdens.
Defined this way, only one possible party is ultimately responsible for injuring the fetus, the mother, the doctor, and the health care system: the man who impregnated the woman and caused an unintended pregnancy. Unless a man claims that a woman raped him—which is highly unusual, but does happen, and would present a different kind of legal challenge—his agency in the pregnancy needs to be the subject of much more accountability.
If it is argued that a man who wants to be a father is put into a defenseless position if the woman he impregnated wants an abortion, one can actually say that unfortunately, he trusted the wrong woman. He did not spend enough time getting to know the woman in question, restraining his own sexual desires until he did, and/or understanding the contraception available to them. That sounds like a heavy responsibility for a man to bear. Yet consider this: A system which gives institutional advantages to women only puts men into the very same position that women are in today. Women have to think about all those things, anyway. The institutional incentives would then be placed on men to approach women much more carefully, respectfully, wisely, with much more self-restraint, and with much more self-awareness on his part.
Giving Women Institutional Advantages Over Men: Biblical and Christian Precedents
Abortion is an issue that requires us to understand how people’s personal choices are influenced by the systems of power in which they live. Scripture understands systems and structures, especially in relation to the vulnerability of women relative to men in certain situations. In Scripture, there are three situations where women are given institutional advantages over men. And in church history, Christians gave women an institutional advantage over men in a key area of life. Understanding these examples will help us approach the issue of abortion.
The first example in Scripture where women have an institutional advantage over men is in the realm of sex within marriage. In Israel in 1981, a case between a husband and wife went all the way up to the Supreme Court, called Cohen v. State of Israel. While they were estranged, Mr. Cohen violently attacked his wife and forced her to have sex with him against her will. They later divorced. She accused him of rape retroactively. He appealed his conviction on the principle that a man cannot be legally guilty of raping his wife, which at the time was the legal principle upheld in both English and American law. Both English and American law, until the 1980s and 90s, ruled that when a woman said “yes” at the altar, she said “yes” to sex anytime her husband wished it, even if he had contracted a sexually transmitted disease, or was separated, or wanted to impregnate her and she did not wish it. A wife had no legal right to say no to sex.[25] Israeli Judge David Belchor noted the position of English law at the time, since English law influenced the State of Israel before 1948. Repulsed by it, “Judge Belchor stated that he was “delighted” not to have to follow English law on this issue because that would involve endorsing the marital rape exemption… He said, “The people of Israel can take pride in the progressive and liberal approach of their blessed heritage and the position of Jewish law on this matter from time immemorial.”[26]
“Time immemorial”? Dr. Warren Goldstein, chief rabbi of South Africa, explained this position from its sources: the Bible; the Talmud; and the rabbinical commentaries. Not only are women made in the image of God equally with men (Genesis 1:26–28), which is not always the case in other creation stories, but both “creation accounts” stress how God makes His creation get better and better. The Genesis 2 account uses more sophisticated language for the creation of Eve (“fashioned”) than it does for Adam (“formed”), and the reunion-marriage of Adam and Eve is the high point. Every subsequent marriage between man and woman, because of the “leaving and cleaving” of prioritizing the marriage over above family of origin, is portrayed as a “recapitulation” of the original reunion-marriage. The laws from Sinai even grant wives “conjugal rights” which it does not accord to husbands, and intentionally so (Exodus 21:10). Jewish tradition perceives the “vulnerability principle” throughout the Torah, and finds that wives must be accorded protections from their husbands, even sexually. “A man is forbidden to compel his wife to have intercourse with him” (Talmud Eiruvin 100b). “This Talmudic ruling appears in all the major codifications of Jewish law.”[27] “Certainly she is not subject to him incessantly when she does not wish it” (Responsa Maharit 1:5).[28] “According to Jewish law, sexual satisfaction is primarily the husband’s duty and the wife’s right. Married women need legal protection to ensure that their husbands treat them sensitively in the potentially volatile area of sexual relations. Men do not need to be protected; they need to be restrained and educated to think of their wives and not to view them as their sex objects.”[29]
Legally, the right for a woman—including a wife—to withdraw her consent to sex at any time needs to be firmly established, with the backdrop being rape. Giving women that institutional legal advantage over men in such a way not only should result in fewer unintended pregnancies and abortions, it makes sense by itself by various moral principles, including firmly biblical ones. It would also result in a culture change where men must recognize that they are not entitled to sex, and not entitled physically or visually to women’s bodies.
The second case where Scripture gives institutional advantages to women over men is the case of a rape accusation in Deuteronomy 22:25–27. This is significant given the #MeToo movement today. Normally, Jewish law required two or three witnesses to accuse a person (Deuteronomy 17:6). But in the case of rape, this principle is set aside. A woman’s testimony had the force of two or three witnesses. Procedurally, this variation gives significantly greater legal power to the woman over against the man. Apparently, the risk that a woman would abuse this legal procedure is apparently acceptable, and that risk weighs against men. A woman who accused a man of rape was, at least to start, credible.
The third case where Scripture gives an advantage to women in relation to men is in Jesus’ observations about divorce. Jesus said that a man who divorces his wife “makes her commit adultery” (Matthew 5:32). The best explanation for Jesus’ remark is context-specific: in Jesus’ day, an unfairly divorced woman would remarry because she faced the economic threat of poverty otherwise. Based on the way Jesus spoke, he did not hold her responsible for making a choice that met with some disapproval. Instead, Jesus held the divorcing husband responsible for the woman’s choice and subsequent life. This is not an institutional advantage per se, but offsets the institutional realities in which women encounter men. Needless to say, this is but one instance showing that Jesus recognized those power dynamics and systemic issues. Jesus made a similar remark about church leaders or older Christians in the faith causing a new convert to stumble: “Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to stumble” shall bear either a higher degree of responsibility for their misleading direction, or bear direct responsibility for the stumbling of the “little ones” themselves (Matthew 18:6).
From church history, prostitution is an example of giving women institutional advantages over men. Prostitution serves as a very helpful point of comparison to abortion, too, because it demonstrates that Christians understood systems and structures in which people lived. Today, the “Nordic model” is the stance of decriminalizing the (most often female) prostitute while prosecuting the (male) buyer and the (male) manager/pimp.[30] It has been the only successful model of reducing human trafficking. The model allows a prostitute to turn herself (presumably a woman, although sometimes a young man) in to the authorities to seek assistance without fear of being arrested.
Starting from the Council of Elvira, which is dated around 306 AD, church leaders in a council formally expressed the notion that a woman prostitute is more akin to a chattel slave; she was trapped in a social sin.[31] Significantly for the purpose of historical appreciation, councils like Elvira were partly “organizational best practice” agreements where Christian leaders shared and developed pastoral standards; by implication, Christian leaders had been individually handling the issue of prostitution this way well before the Council of Elvira. Thus, seventeen centuries prior to Sweden, the church recognized that there could be many reasons for why a woman was a prostitute: she was desperately poor; she was kidnapped and forced to do it; she was being extorted and blackmailed; she was raised by a pimp or even parents who prostituted her; etc. It is always possible, theoretically, that a woman with sufficient knowledge became a prostitute voluntarily for financial reasons alone, without any coercion or sexual abuse in her background. But as a matter of pastoral or public policy—it was sufficient to assume that such a woman was emotionally wounded, mentally ill, or gravely self-deceived. There was only one reason for a man to purchase sex, though, and that reason was always sinful.
Segue to Retributive vs. Restorative Justice Approaches
Prostitution is an imperfect analogy to abortion, of course. But thinking through prostitution does highlight relevant ethical and pragmatic categories: Women are often both moral agents and moral victims of men. In situations of unwanted pregnancy and abortion, giving women this sort of “institutional advantage” recognizes power dynamics. The reason why a woman confronts an ethical decision to abort her child can be quite complex. She may bear some personal responsibility, but she will already bear the cost of an abortion. Others surrounding the woman—especially the man involved in fathering the child—typically have direct and indirect responsibilities as well. Even when a woman has ostensibly consented to having sex with a man, there are some commonsense reasons today, to consider her to be a victim of male power, or false promises, or deception of some sort. Interestingly, those reasons find positive resonance with principles in Scripture and church history.
This opens us up to consider the broader paradigms of restorative justice and harm reduction in place of strict retributive justice and punitive policies.
[1] Flegenheimer and Haberman, “Donald Trump, Abortion Foe,” and Kertscher, “In Context: Transcript.”
[2] National Review Symposium, “One Untrue Thing.”
[3] Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Reproductive Health: Pregnancy Mortality Surveillance System,” https://www.cdc.gov/reproductivehealth/maternal-mortality/pregnancy-mortality-surveillance-system.htm. See also CDC, “Data on Selected Pregnancy Complications in the United States,” https://www.cdc.gov/reproductivehealth/maternalinfanthealth/pregnancy-complications-data.htm.
[4] Kruesi, “Punishing Women.”
[5] Rosenberg, “Ohio GOP.”
[6] North, “Plenty of Conservatives.”
[7] Ariana Eunjung Cha, “Five Years After an Abortion, Most Women Say They Made the Right Decision,” Washington Post, January 12, 2020; https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/01/12/five-years-after-an-abortion-most-women-say-they-made-right-decision/
[8] Lee, “Doctors Who Performed Abortions.” Physicians for Reproductive Health, Voices.
[9] Rachel Maddow, “Doctors Sound Alarm As Ignorant Abortion Bans Hurt Medical Care, Cause Undue Suffering,” The Rachel Maddow Show | MSNBC, July 19, 2022; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFdLCx6naPU.
[10] VICE News, “Why OB-GYNs Are Scared About Life After Roe,” VICE News, July 16, 2022; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XF-61DNh8Xk.
[11] Ertelt, “Police Obtain DNA.”
[12] Simermann, “DNA Evidence.”
[13] Fernandez, Colin. “Hundreds.”
[14] The American Pregnancy Association, “Ectopic Pregnancy.” Several studies confirm the link: Tharaux-Deneux et al., “Risk of Ectopic Pregnancy”; Parazzini et al., “Induced Abortions.”
[15] Anum et al., “Health Disparities.”
[16] Calhoun, et al., “Cost Consequences.”
[17] Forsythe, Abuse, 254–255.
[18] Thorp, et al., “Long-term,” 75.
[19] Thorp, et al., “Long-term,” 70–71.
[20] Calhoun, et al., “Cost Consequences.”
[21] World Health Organization et al. “Born Too Soon,”
[22] Martin and Osterman, “Describing the Increase.”
[23] Wallace, “Transplantations” describes his successful transplant of an ectopic pregnancy from the fallopian tube to the mother’s uterus, in 1917. Shettles, “Tubal Embryo,” describes the surgical procedure he conducted on a similar patient in 1990. Mavrelos et al., “Efficacy,” conducted a study in London where they found that one-third of 333 pregnant women with ectopic pregnancies resolved and had live births without medical or surgical intervention. Fortenberry and The Personhood Initiative, “Ectopic Pregnancy,” suggest that, according to several recent studies, using surgical transplantation to the uterus, 24 percent of all tubal pregnancies could result in a live birth, and between 5 to 60 percent of all abdominal pregnancies (another form of ectopic pregnancy).
[24] Stulberg, et al., “Ectopic pregnancy,” finds that out of 19,135,106 women, the incidence risk ratio in comparison with white women was highest among Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander (1.61), black (1.47), Asian (1.34), American Indian/Alaskan Native (1.34), and Hispanic (1.16).
[25] Goldstein, Defending, 155–162 summarizes the history. In England in the 1980s and 90s, three cases dealt with the crime of indecent assault within marriage. A wife was deemed to have consented to sexual intercourse with her husband at marriage, even if he had later contracted a venereal disease; additionally: R v. Caswell (1984): A married woman’s consent to sexual intercourse covered all acts preliminary to that intercourse. R v. H (1990): The marital rape exemption applied even to an estranged couple. In the United States, despite some differences between the fifty States, until the late 1970s, all States held that a man was legally entitled to rape his wife. “A husband cannot be guilty of raping his wife unless he forces her to have sexual intercourse with a third person. Immunity shields the husband even though all the other elements of the offense are present–force, penetration, and lack of consent. He is immune from a rape charge in most states, however violent the force he uses and however long he and his wife have been living apart… For instance, a wife whose husband comes home drunk every night and violently forces sex on her… is not protected by the rape laws of forty-six states.” Goldstein cites Pracher, “Marital Rape.”
[26] Goldstein, Defending, 168.
[27] Goldstein, 170 citing Rambam, Hilchot Ishut 15:17; Tur and Code of Jewish Law, Orach Chaim 240:3; Even HaEzer 25:2.
[28] Goldstein, Defending, 168 notes that the agreement from later Jewish commentators is remarkable: “He may not rape her by having intercourse with her against her will, but rather, he must do it with her consent and in an atmosphere of open communication and joy.” (Rambam (1135–1204 AD), Hilchot Ishut 15:17). “If she finds her husband repulsive, she is freed from her conjugal duties.” (Rambam, Hilchot Ishut 14:8, quoted by Goldstein, 172). “Certainly she is not subject to him incessantly when she does not wish it…” (Responsa Maharit 1:5). “Even those who would permit [unconventional sexual intercourse] do so only when the woman is willing, but if a husband forces it upon the woman he is called a sinner” (Responsa Yaskil Avdi 6:25). “The vulnerability principle is the most influential one when it comes to Jewish law’s outlawing of rape in marriage.” (Goldstein, 176) “A woman’s conjugal duty is limited to having intercourse at certain regular intervals . . . determined with reference to, on the one hand, the wife’s needs and, on the other hand, the husband’s capacity (Goldstein, 186). “She is not required at all to ensure that her husband is sexually satisfied. He is responsible to guarantee to the best of his ability that his wife never feels unfulfilled sexual desire, which means that according to Jewish law a man must with great sensitivity constantly attune himself to his wife’s sexual needs… The reason is that fulfilling her desires constitutes a Biblical commandment, whereas fulfilling his does not.” (Goldstein, 184–9)
[29] Goldstein, Defending, 190.
[30] Women’s Justice Center, “Sweden’s Prostitution Solution” says, “In just five years Sweden has dramatically reduced the number of its women in prostitution. In the capital city of Stockholm the number of women in street prostitution has been reduced by two thirds, and the number of johns has been reduced by 80%. There are other major Swedish cities where street prostitution has all but disappeared. Gone too, for the most part, are the renowned Swedish brothels and massage parlors which proliferated during the last three decades of the twentieth century when prostitution in Sweden was legal… In 1999, after years of research and study, Sweden passed legislation that a) criminalizes the buying of sex, and b) decriminalizes the selling of sex.”
[31] Otis, Prostitution, 12–13.