Slate

So the debate boils down to this: Which approach can overcome the weakness of human nature? Can the abstinence crowd find a way to keep people chaste? Can the contraception crowd find a way to make people stick to their birth control? Can either side deliver the bottom line: fewer abortions?

A study published Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine (and outlined in Slate by Darshak Sanghavi and Amanda Marcotte) strikes a major blow for the contraception camp. It shows that women prefer long-acting reversible contraceptives (LARCs), that these methods can almost eliminate birth-control failures, and that they shrink the abortion rate by a margin that far exceeds anything offered by the other side.

The full article is not going to make any within the Right particularly happy — except for one part: The definitive ability to drastically reduce abortions in teens and, maybe make them mostly a thing of the past.

(And, best of all, the test was done with those most likely to fail at the task of effective contraception.)

The real question is if both sides can stop the current battle over whether or not teens are going to have sex and realize that stopping abortions really put them both on the same side…

Perhaps delaying or preventing teens from having sex is best when done with teens where birth control is already a done deal?