Roe v Wade

Last week in class we went through our last Herstory (history from the womens' prespective) presentations, one of which was Roe v Wade, the famous Supreme Court case that reduced the legal restrictions on abortion. Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner links the decision in Roe v Wade, or, more specifically, the increased right to have an abortion, to a reduction in crime. I wonder what else is linked to abortion rights.

To my knowledge, more secular communities are more likely to be for abortion rights and the opposite is true for more religious communities, and this is regardless of which religion one is discussing at the time. I have also noticed that more secular communities tend to have more womens' rights. So, I began to wonder whether non-religiousity or womens' rights are linked to abortion rights and to what degree. I, personally, believe that both greater womens' rights and greater abortion rights are strongly linked to non-religiousity. A third observation I have made is that secular societies, that have less worship of either god or a person (a "Great Leader", for example), tend to be more prosperous, more financially stable.

If memory serves, during the Roe v Wade presentation, I made a comment linking womens' rights and a country's prosperity. Mr. O'Connor, in polite teacher fashion, shot it down. My question is: why? Did we simply have to move on with the class? Was I taking the conversation in a direction that was too controversial? Did he think I had no proof? Or did he simply disagree with my statement?

O'Connor and Bolos themselves encouraged us to pay attention to their biases via their options for a Final Exam essay. They opened the door, so let's step through it.