Would legalized abortion ultimatley lead to less abortion in the long run?

[Capitalism Prevails]

Yes i know abortion is legal. I'll re phrase the question. If abortion were made illegal today, would we have more abortions in the long run? My thinking is that abortion helps parents or single moms because it allows them to raise children when they can afford to pay for better services like better schooling, live in better neighborhoods, etc. If children have a bad upbringing, they are more likely to have unplanned pregnancies which they will abort.

[Patrick]

Abortion already IS legal...

[Kevy]

I can't imagine why/how would that happen?

Abortion is currently legal.

[Bert Weidemeier]

It already is legal, but, so you can understand better, maybe you mean should the make it illegal, and if they did, allot of abortions would never take place to begin with.

I think that's what you would rather want to see.

[Aleconomixt]

I think you are trying to compare with drug addiction and nudity ... could be, legalized means records and then more trouble , so they may care to adopt other measures.
Note :- abortions do not always have poverty and child -care angles. may be very rarely. those are excuses to save face.

[lwhhow]

It's really an interesting 'economic science' question.
Much has been written economically on the so called...'sin restrictions' by government/ religious interference in economics and free economic/ social choices that 'capitalist free market free choice societies' are supposed to be based on.
Free market economics sees....abortion, illegal drugs, prostitution, pornography etc. etc. as simple economic commodities/ services....to be put in the free market without government restriction and left up to consumer choice like anything else.
If so, economics holds that the amount of these commodities would be naturally set at their 'equilibrium point' based on....demand/ supply/ cost/ consumer preference...and that this point may be lower or no different than where government and religious interference keeps it at great cost and trouble.
If 'prohibition' is any example....History has proved that the natural and free equilibrium point for alcohol use/ abuse in the US was the same when it was legal as when it was illegal....but less the cost of 100,000 cops 50,000 mafia, and $billions wasted each year trying to enforce a 'sin restriction' that didn't factually matter anyway.
Chances are....abortions would stay about the same but with less cost, less economic loss, less trouble and expense than now, when we try to keep an atificial restriction.
By the same economic science...if this country legalized 'illegal drugs' we could save the cost of 100,000's of policemen, 100,000's of mafia, save the nation $1 trillion in economic loss each year....and have about the same drug problem we have now....according to sound economic theory.

[Anjaree]

Yes,it would for Christians, because they never get abortion,neither legally or illegally. But for average people, I doubt it. It might also be health insurance against abortion. It is the same reason that our job today will not be there in the long run. Economists know only 30% of the future.