In the late 1920s some 15,000 women a year died from abortions.In the decade before Roe v Wade, 5000 women a year died, mostly Black and Hispanic women.
Well-connected white women with private health insurance were sometimes able to obtain "therapeutic" abortions, a never-defined category that remained legal throughout the epoch of illegal abortion.Even for the privileged, though, access to safe abortion narrowed throughout the fifties.
Under a President McCain (God forbid) Roe v Wade would fade into history upon the next death of a Supreme Court Justice.This would not stop abortions;nothing will ever stop abortions.They have been a part of human history since the beginning and always will be.Under capitalism, women cannot be equal to men without having control over reproduction.But,if Roe v Wade is overturned will abortions be safe?
The purpose of this diary is to acknowledge this fact and more importantly to point out that a majority(I think a vast majority but have no proof of this) of women,whether pro-life or pro-choice,have very little idea of how abortions were performed before Roe v Wade, and who performed them.
In this year's election these women will be able to elect a pro-life or a pro-choice President and in effect will be voting to do away with legal abortion or keep it as the law of the land. So it behooves us to search the historical archives to provide them with the information they need to make an informed decision.
WHEN ABORTION
WAS A CRIME:
Women, Medicine,
and Law in the
United States,
1867-1973
by Leslie J. Reagan.
University of California Press,
387 pages, $29.95
http://books.google.com/...
The above book by Ms.Reagan is considered by most experts as the most thorough,up to date compendium on the subject.
There are a lot of other sources ,of course, and here is some knowledge I have gleaned from them:
Michelle Bollinger wrote an excellent article for Counterpunch in 0ctober, 2005
http://www.counterpunch.org/...
By the early 1960s,in New York, for example, deaths resulting from illegal abortions accounted for 42 percent of the maternal mortality rate. There were fewer abortionists in 1955 than there were in 1940. Across the U.S., larger and larger numbers of women died from illegal abortion after the Second World War than before.
Central to this was a crackdown on illegal abortion that drove it underground and ushered in an era of tragedy and horror for women.
Clinics and midwives' homes and offices were raided and their patients' lives exposed publicly in show trials that mirrored the worst of the anti-communist witch-hunts of the McCarthyist era. Women were accosted by police detectives outside clinics and forced to testify against those who performed abortions. Anyone who didn't cooperate was likely to wake up the next morning with details of their personal lives splashed all over the pages of the newspaper.
Women often tried to induce abortion or cause a miscarriage by throwing themselves down stairs or inflicting violence on themselves. They ingested, douched with or inserted into themselves a chilling variety of chemicals and toxins--from bleach to potassium permanganate to turpentine to gunpowder and whiskey. Knitting needles, crochet hooks, scissors and coat hangers were all among the tools used by women who had no choice but to resort to these means.
Scary as hell isn't it. Of course, National Right to Life will point out that these women were murderers so deserved the consequences of their actions. Other pro-lifers will rationalize that advanced medical procedures 50 years later will make illegal abortions much safer........
Don't bet on it. The AMA is as Republican as the DAR. The wealthy doctors of today would not take a chance on removing a pimple because of malpractice litigation. Does anyone believe these doctor will risk their wealth by performing illegal operations?
No way, so what other recourse will women use? Bleach,turpentine knitting needles? Hardly but they may show up at herbal stores seeking more modern remedies which may prove just as deadly. Or they will find doctors who have lost their licenses for other criminal activities?
We already have seen what will happen to some poor women even before legal abortion disappears completely in America.
Consider Wyoming. In 1988, according to Stanley Henshaw of the Alan Guttmacher Institute, 61 percent of women who had abortions traveled out of state to get them. By 2000, the figure had climbed to 95 percent.
In Mississippi, where the number of places that offer abortion services has shrunk from six to one, 60 percent of women traveled to neighboring states to terminate their pregnancies in 2000, up from 33 percent 12 years earlier.
In Kentucky, the percentage jumped from 22 percent in 1988 to 41 percent in 2000. In South Carolina, the rate also nearly doubled, to 35 percent from 19 percent.
Limits on access to abortions — and long distances separating the dwindling number of providers — are increasingly the norm in rural areas and much of the heartland.
Even with Roe in place, the number of hospitals and doctors performing abortions has diminished nationwide, to the point where 87 percent of counties in America have no abortion providers at all. In South Dakota, only one abortion provider remains, and it is a Planned Parenthood in Sioux Falls.
http://www.nytimes.com/...
An interesting sidebar:
Barack Obama's mentor at Harvard Law School,Laurence H. Tribe, wrote a book about abortion in 1992 ,which I belive was the year Obama received his degree there.
Abortion: The Clash of Absolutes
By Laurence H. Tribe
Published by W. W. Norton & Company, 1992
ISBN 0393309568, 9780393309560
318 pages
A quote from that book:
"If the constitutional protection of our individual rights and human dignity means much of anything, then the freedom to decide whether or not to endure pregnancy must be deemed a fundamental aspect of personal privacy."
And another excellent source:
Kristin Luker
Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood
California Series on Social Choice and Political Economy, 3
$23.95, £13.95 paperback
978-0-520-05597-
Regardless, the death rates will shoot skyward again and the women who don't remember or don't believe what feminists tell them will be shocked out of their minds.
The only practical solution is to realize that the choice or life issue is in fact a "life or death" issue and we liberals must get it out there