The Tartan

By Peter Herz

As a senior at Carnegie Mellon in 1983, I wrote a letter to the Editor about the dangers of oversimplifying abortion. Less than 12 years earlier, the Supreme Court had decided Roe v. Wade and in theory enshrined into law a woman’s right to decide matters having to do with her own body. Even then, there was a wide range of opinions on that decision, including whether granting a woman bodily autonomy was even legitimate. 

In the intervening years, I’ve gone on to found a non-profit and a venture capital firm devoted to the food system and improving the health of people and our planet. I’ve also remained an advocate in the reproductive justice space, as a member of the coalition VCs For Repro.

After 40 years, I find myself writing again because, despite all that has changed, one thing remains frustratingly the same: We continue to oversimplify complex issues. In states that are restricting access to abortion, legislators are using the wrong tools to address the issue of unplanned or unwanted pregnancies. 

Just as I have found in my work on food, using the wrong tools and methodologies to tackle complex problems creates even more problems, rather than improving the situation. Consequently, things get worse. The wrong tools we use have a name: Reductionism. 

Reductionism is the methodology I was trained to use as an engineer at Carnegie Mellon — you simplify a problem down to its basic building blocks, solve each block in isolation, and then glue them back together for a complete solution. It’s tremendously powerful and effective when you are designing complicated systems like computers, smart phones, and software. But these tools do not work when applied to complex systems like food and human wellbeing. I encounter this every day in my work, where people keep trying to engineer novel approaches to food production, resulting in greater environmental damage and markedly worse human health. 

Similarly, on the topic of abortion, legislating simple rules for the complex system of human biology is foolish. The range of conditions and circumstances that women and their doctors face in a pregnancy is too large and nuanced. Blanket abortion bans do not consider how a person became pregnant (whether their birth control failed or they were raped), why they cannot be pregnant, or what support they may have once they give birth. These are all factors that legislation simply cannot encompass.

This push to ban abortion is not about finding solutions, it’s about exerting control over women. Ironically, but not surprisingly, the October 2023 Society for Family Report shows that the U.S. abortion rate has actually increased since the 2022 Dobbs decision. As is often the case when applying reductionist tools to complex problems, the outcome is not what was desired.

If the goal is to reduce unplanned and unwanted pregnancies, use the right tools for the job! What we need is more access to birth control and medical abortions, not less. More sex education, not less. More support for women who choose to become mothers and for their young children, not less.

What we need is for pregnant people to have the right to choose. The best tool here is choice.

Peter Herz ECE/Math 1984, 
General Partner, 1st Course Capital and CFO, Food System 6