Bam! Don't you love when a politically contested opinion you hold gets backed up by science? Science! It's the best guy to have on your debate team. Except when people don't believe in it. It's a little difficult to throw facts at somebody who doesn't believe in them. But for those who do believe in facts, here are a few to arm yourself with. A study in New Zealand recently found--shockingly enough--that making effective birth control more widely available leads to fewer abortions. Hard to believe that whole cause-and-effect thing still works so far from the equator (is New Zealand even a real place?) but there you go.

The study gave 510 women who had already had one abortion in their lifetimes free intrauterine devices. Compared to women on the pill, those who used an IUD were 64 percent less likely to come in for a repeat abortion. That's not a shabby number. IUDs are nifty little gadgets that don't require their users to remember to take a daily pill or even to swap out a monthly ring. You have them implanted and then you can forget about them for a couple of years. Unless they become dislodged, they're almost entirely effective at preventing the formation of new humans.