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TechnoratiWomen Will Get Abortions, Legal or Not, so Keep it Safe
For years feminists and abortion rights supporters have pointed out that women have abortions whether or not the procedure is legal.
That was true here before Roe v. Wade, and it is true today in countries where abortion is restricted or banned. The difference is that when abortion is legal it is a remarkably safe procedure; when it is illegal, women are injured, women die, children are left motherless. (True, these are already existing, sinful children, not embryos or fetuses, but still.) This simple public health argument has gotten lost in a thicket of theology, sexual morality, "family values," politics, spin and outright disinformation. The coat hanger has become a political clich�, a relic of the '60s, like the peace sign. Oh, that old thing.
Now comes an article in The Lancet that shows in cold hard data how right we've been all along. "Induced Abortion: Estimated Rates and Trends Worldwide," a study conducted by the World Health Organization and the Guttmacher Institute, is the first global analysis of abortion incidence since 1995. It finds that rates of abortion (the number of abortions per 1,000 women) are relatively unaffected by whether it is legal. Thus, in South America, where abortion is largely illegal, the rate is 33; in northern America, where it is legal, the rate is 21. "The legal status of abortion doesn't predict whether abortions occur," study co-author Gilda Sedgh told me by phone. "It predicts whether they are safe. South Africa liberalized its abortion laws in l997, and maternal deaths from unsafe abortion have plummeted by 90 percent." Around the world 48 percent of abortions are unsafe -- that's more than 20 million. Some 67,000 women die from unsafe abortions -- 13 percent of maternal deaths, almost all of them in the developing world, where abortion is mostly restricted or banned. Many times that number are injured or maimed.
The good news is that the global trend is toward legalization: As Susan Cohen reports in the upcoming Guttmacher Policy Review, since the Beijing conference on women, 17 countries have liberalized their abortion laws, while three have tightened restrictions (including, most recently, Nicaragua, where abortion is now illegal, even to save the woman's life -- thank you, Daniel Ortega). The bad news is that, due to population growth, the percentage of abortions that are unsafe has increased since 1995.
The big takeaway from the Lancet article is this: There is basically only one thing that lowers the rate of abortion for more than the minute and a half it takes women to figure out how to evade a new legal restriction: contraception. The countries with the lowest abortion rates, like the Netherlands, have few abortion restrictions and lots of birth control. Consider Eastern Europe. Under communism, abortion was virtually the only family planning method. As contraception has become more available, the abortion rate has plummeted -- from 90 in 1995 to 44 in 2003. Indeed, Eastern Europe accounts for almost the entire worldwide decline in abortion in the period covered by the study. Meanwhile, for all our storm and stress, with women in many states having to jump through more hoops than a circus tiger, the decline in the U.S. abortion rate has been small.
I was curious to know how abortion opponents would respond to what certainly seems like a devastating refutation of their position. "Anybody can look at data and pick and choose whatever they want," Jim Sedlak, vice president of the American Life League, told me. "The real fact is that abortion is ending life in the womb and should never be legal." I asked him if he accepted the finding that abortion was more dangerous where it was illegal. No, he said. "When something is illegal, people are more careful." So legal abortion is more unsafe? According to Sedlak, it is indeed.
As for contraception lowering the rate of abortion, that's an illusion: Contraception is abortion. "Most methods of birth control kill babies in the womb by preventing implantation," said Sedlak, who'd like to see the pill, the IUD and most other methods outlawed. The American Life League, although not an official Catholic organization, explicitly follows Catholic teaching -- unlike most Catholics, as Sedlak admitted. But so far as I know (and Sedlak agreed with me here) there is no organization that opposes abortion and endorses contraception. Not one. Even Democrats for Life of America has refused to support congressional legislation expanding funding for contraception. "Between Title X and Medicaid, the government has made a tremendous investment in contraception," DLA Executive Director Kristen Day told me. Actually, the government has done the opposite. Title X, which finances contraception for low-income women, has 61 percent less money in real terms than it had in 1980, to serve a much larger population. Had funding merely kept pace with inflation, it would be more than $725 million, instead of $283 million. As for Medicaid, skewed eligibility rules actually deny contraceptive benefits to many poor women who qualify for pregnancy care.
In the past few months, due to a technicality in the 2005 Deficit Reduction Act, the price of contraception in campus clinics has skyrocketed, from around $15 for a pack of pills to more than $50. Some college health centers have simply stopped offering the pill. When you consider that 3 million college women take the pill -- 38 percent of female students -- you can see the disaster in the making. That won't bother the new head of the Health and Human Services Office of Family Planning, Susan Orr, a longtime opponent of birth control formerly with the Family Research Council. "We're quite pleased, because fertility is not a disease," Orr told The Washington Post in 2001, praising a Bush proposal to stop mandating contraceptive coverage in federal employees' health plans.
Between facts and theology, abortion opponents choose the latter every time.
Copyright © 2006 The Nation
18 Comments so far
Show AllDisclaimer: I'm male.
Lisa said:
"If you want an abortion, figure out how to do it for yourself. That is truly the only way to keep the government out of your womb."
That statement shines a light on the "pro-life" (ask them to oppose executions, or stop bombing Iraqi and Afghani babies and they tend to fall silent) crowd's true stance. They don't give a damn about abortions being performed or not. They just want to ban safe, legal abortions, i.e., they want to impose their moral views on the rest of us.
Last year I engaged a "pro-life" protester in debate. I asked him if he would still be out on the streets protesting against abortion if they were made illegal. "Of course not, why would I?" he replied. When I said that banning abortions would not stop abortions, that they'd only be done in unsanitary back rooms, he admitted that he'd never thought of that! Ironically, he said that if his wife was ever raped, and became pregnant, he'd want her to have access a safe, legal abortion...
Women use to manage this issue themselves. There are many natural methods to prevent conception, but this is lost knowledge and is part of a bigger issue. It is true that unmetabolized components of birthcontrol pills is a mesurable source of pollution affecting unintended species. There are sound medical reasons for abortion regardless of the social implications or theological arguments that only confuse the issue of natural fertility rites.
If they're women's bodies, why won't men let them decide this themselves?
I think it is unwise to use abortion as a means of birth control. If a woman is raped by a stranger or her husband, she should not be forced to carry that child, but to just use abortion as a way to rid herself of an unwanted pregnancy is wrong. There are lots of childless couples who would love to adopt a child.
Every pregnancy is different. I expect the decision to have an abortion is often a torturous one. When abortion is illegal the secrecy that has to be maintained probably keeps women from exploring their options and possibly finding an alternative they find acceptable. A young, frightened girl decides alone that abortion is the only way. Through the grapevine at school she locates an abortionist. She pays cash and is driven blindfolded to a boarded up house. A bit of time blindfolded atop an old kitchen table and her "problem" is solved. Or is it? It better be because the secrecy must be maintained. In this atmosphere complications can be deadly.
It always seem to amaze me hoe so many people are so concern about what a woman does with her body. For one Lisa woman meant that as a mean of not allowing the government imposing their morality on them. has nothing to do with having an abortion. This whole thing of do no harm only applies if the doctor is not certified and may end up hurting the woman if it is not done correctly. His patient is the woman. By the way doesnt anyone think to themselves if she does it herself and botches it that she would have to go to the emergency room where he would have to correct it. This would have not have had to happen if she would have been able to get it safely done. Woman have been having abortions since bibical days since when do we start to make a big deal about it. I dont see it as harming the fetus most abortion occur when the fetus is about the size of a dot at the end of a sentence. what hurt are you talking about? since when do we put the lives over a cell compare to a full fledge human being standing in front of you. Do you honestly think if a man can get pregnant abortion would be a issue? Pretty soon I think all of us need to talk about maybe helping woman seek sterilization it doesnt seem worth it to have woman walk around in fear just because they have a uterus that works.
That should be; Lisa, you said a woman thinks she should have the right to keep people away from her womb unless she needs and abortion.
Lisa,you said a woman shouldn't have the right to tell people to keep away from her womb unless she decides to change her stance on that because she needs and abortion. You think it's immoral and hypocritical.
If a woman has several children and no means to support them adequately, discovers she is pregnant again,(and perhaps thru no fault of her own ,after a stranger rape, or a husband who doesn't respect her " No!") and can't support a baby, then she should just have a dangerous abortion, or have the baby -- and do what with it? Adoption?
What if she is a third world mother, or a Mom living in an ' undesirable' area, a homeless Mom, perhaps, or an Appalachian Mom,or an urban ghetto Mom? There are only a limited number of people willing and in a position to adopt, and they might head to China before they took the one of these babies.They want middle American Baptist teenage Mom's unexpected babies to adopt.
So, starving the baby as well as its siblings is better in your opinion than an abortion?
Contraception? That may now be beyond her means, too, or her pharmacist objects, etc. Just say no?!!What does she do, in your opinion?
Honestly, I think we need to get our priorities straight. Until every child that is here outside of a womb has access to good food, good medical care, and good education, we don't need to worry about the unborn.
Just because women want to harm themselves or their fetuses does not mean the government should supply them with board-certified physicians to help them do it. This argument is like saying, people will continue to abuse drugs, so we might as well let doctors just prescribe dangerous, addictive drugs to people, since if we don't, addicts will continue to find them on their own and abuse them anyway.
Doctors take an oath to "first, do no harm." If women want to kill their fetuses, I believe they have every right to do that. But I don't know how government-certified physicians got mixed up in the picture. Pregnancy is not a cancer. If the pregnancy poses no physical threat to the mother's life, doctors should not be involved in terminating a pregnancy. I keep hearing women say, "keep the government out of my womb." Yet, when they decide they want an abortion, then suddenly they need a government-certified physician, government-approved drugs, government-inspected medical equipment, and a government-court to run to if it doesn't turn out the way they want. What an incredible hypocrisy. If you want an abortion, figure out how to do it for yourself. That is truly the only way to keep the government out of your womb.
Something of interest regarding the use of oral birth control pills, David Suzuki, Canadian environmentalist, says the waste products that filter back into the water systems is affecting the male fish.
Reproductive health is a medical issue between a woman and her physician or health advocate. It is a personal issue and anyone that objects to abortion does not have to consent to one, even when it would save thier life. What these statistics show is that women consider this a fundamental right.
Bill Maher doesn`t waste time with inane statements but gets to the point and it usually a prescient one. I will bet it would have been ok with most of we progressives if Barbara had had three of them. Think of the lives that would have been saved! Of course if they are not white, rich, conservative, fundamental Christians, their lives do not matter anyway. However, we still have to try to force women around the world to bear children that they must watch starve or die of disease,even if they are of lesser value than we chosen ones.
Good for Bill Maher! Who among us really believe the majority of repugs actually give a rats ass about abortion, or the life of a fetus. They saw it as a means to an end, i.e., getting elected. There are the idiots, like Guilini who don't realize if they use it like a cloak to suit their current purpose, it'll come back to bite them in the butt, but then he isn't really a repug.
Last nite Bill Maher asked Repugs "would it have been okay with you if Hillary's mother would have had an abortion?"
Early women's liberationists who wanted to go the legislative route to de-criminalize abortion were pushed aside by those who wanted to go to the Supreme Court; their warnings have been borne out by the subsequent history.
Had Democrats truly wanted to keep Roe intact, they would never have confirmed Thomas when they had a clear majority in the Senate, and they wouldn't have caved into the Frist threats to get rid of the filibuster if they filibustered either Roberts or Alito; the Republicans would never have gone for the 'nuclear option' because they were well aware that it would be used against them once they lost a majority. It didn't matter -- Democrats wanted an excuse not to fight those nominees, just as Diane Feinstein wanted an excuse not to fight the confirmation of Southwick on the 5th appeals court.
Thomas, Scalia, Alito and Roberts show, by their support of war, torture, and the wide spread of gun possession that their adherence to Catholicism is extremely superficial, a matter of show: how many children do they have, collectively? I count five from three "Catholic" justices, who supposedly believe that the primary purpose of marriage is having and raising children. Scalia is consistent in having 9, but not exactly consistent in, oh, truth telling. In addition to being father of nine children, he has helped shield the lies of the administration.
So what we have are faux-supporters of legal abortion, who only use it as a wedge to keep those who want women not to undergo the dangers involved in illegal abortion voting for them, facing off against faux-Catholics, who use it in the same way.
Kabuki politics, with fatal fallout for many.
What seems so bizarre to me is the fact that so many in the Supreme Court who'll be moving us back to the dark ages with their votes are catholic, especially the ones mentioned above. Which basically means the Pope is deciding U.S. policy. And people worried about J.F.K. Funny.
What's been really puzzling me though is the fundamentalists' view of Catholicism. I spent enough time in my younger years in some of those churches, and have dealt with enough members of them since, to understand that view.
Maybe there's a master plan in there somewhere.
Roberts, Alito, Scalia, Thomas and the next strict constructionist Justice absolutely will overturn Roe.