Sep
1
About Those Back-Alley Abortions…
“These are the faces of women who died because they could not obtain safe and legal abortions. If Roe v. Wade is overturned, these pictures could include your daughter, sister, mother, best friend, granddaughter.” — found on home page (in 2005) for the website of the National Organization for Women (NOW) when Justice O’Connor announced her retirement
We are all familiar with the claim by Democrats and others that outlawing abortion will cause untold deaths of women that are then forced to get unsafe abortions — usually involving a coat hanger — in “back-alley” locations. I find myself wondering things like how accurate the claimed death rates are and who exactly is forcing these women to get procedures that threaten their lives. Plus, now that Roe v. Wade has been neutralized, why aren’t we hearing evidence of a now-realized epidemic of women dying in back-alleys from coat-hanger abortions?
Thankfully, pro-life apologist Scott Klusendorf has included a brief chapter on this very topic in his book The Case for Life, 2nd ed. I have reproduced most of it in the citation below:
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Kris Hamel, founding member and organizer of DANFORR (Detroit Action Network For Reproductive Rights) claims that before Roe v. Wade legalized abortion in 1973, “an estimated 5,000 to 10,000 women died each year in the United States as a result of a million unsafe, illegal abortions.
NOW and Hamel were making an implied threat: keep abortion legal or women will again be forced to procure dangerous illegal abortions in the back alleys of America. Besides, the law can’t stop all abortions, so why not keep things just the way they are?
The appeal for safe and legal abortion has strong emotional pull. Who in their right mind wants any woman to die needlessly? Nevertheless, it’s not a good argument for keeping abortion legal.
First, it begs the question. Unless you begin with the assumption that the unborn are not fully human, you’re making the highly questionable claim that because some people will die attempting to kill others, the state should make it safe and legal for them to do so. Why should the law be faulted for making it more risky for one human being to take the life of another, completely innocent one? Should we legalize bank robbery so it is safer for felons? As abortion-choice advocate Mary Anne Warren points out, “The fact that restricting access to abortion has tragic side effects does not, in itself, show that the restrictions are unjustified, since murder is wrong regardless of the consequences of prohibiting it.”
Second, the objection that the law cannot stop all abortions is silly. Of course it can’t, any more than laws against rape stop all rape. But it can stop most. For example, researchers Barbara Syska, Thomas Hilgers, and Dennis O’Hare estimate that the number of illegal abortions prior to 1967 ranged from thirty-nine thousand in 1950 to two hundred and ten thousand in 1961, with a mean of ninety-eight thousand. Within seven years of legalization, abortion totals jumped to over 1.2 million annually. True, there will always be lawbreakers, but the issue here is first and foremost the status of the unborn: Are they human beings? If so, we should legally protect them the way we would any other group that is unjustly harmed….
Third, women aren’t forced to have illegal abortions; they choose to have them. As a pro-lifer, I mourn the loss of any woman who dies from abortion. But I reject the premise that women must seek illegal abortions. Suppose the laws are changed to protect the unborn. Why should anyone believe that just because a woman wants an abortion, she can’t stop herself from having one? Such a view demeans women in general. “A woman is no more forced into the back alley when abortion is outlawed than a young man is forced to rob banks because the state won’t put him on welfare,” says Gregory Koukl. “Both have other options.”
Finally, while some women died from illegal abortions prior to Roe v. Wade, the claim that thousands died each year is just false. Dr. Mary Calderone, former medical director for Planned Parenthood, wrote in 1960 that illegal abortions were performed safely by physicians in good standing in their communities. True, this doesn’t prove no woman will ever die from an illegal abortion, but it does call into question the claim of high mortality rates prior to legalization. Here’s Calderone’s quote in context:
“Fact No. 3 — Abortion is no longer a dangerous procedure. This applies not just to therapeutic abortions as performed in hospitals but also to so-called illegal abortions as done by physicians. In 1957 there were only 260 deaths in the whole country attributed to abortions of any kind. In New York City in 1921 there were 144 abortion deaths, in 1951 there were only 15; and, while the abortion death rate was going down so strikingly in that 30 year period, we know what happened to the population and the birth rate.
Two corollary factors must be mentioned here: first, chemotherapy and antibiotics have come in, benefitting all surgical procedures as well as abortion. Second, and even more important, the conference estimated that 90 percent of all illegal abortions are presently being done by physicians. Call them what you will, abortionists or anything else, they are still physicians, trained as such; and many of them are in good standing in their communities. They must do a pretty good job if the death rate is as low as it is. Whatever trouble arises usually comes after self-induced abortions, which comprise approximately 8 percent, or with the very small percentage that go to some kind of nonmedical abortionist. Another corollary fact: physicians of impeccable standing are referring their patients for these illegal abortions to the colleagues whom they know are willing to perform them, or they are sending their patients to certain sources outside of this country where abortion is performed under excellent medical conditions.
The acceptance of these facts was such that one outstanding gynecologist at the conference declared: “From the ethical standpoint, I see no difference between recommending an abortion and performing it. The moral responsibility is equal.” So remember fact number three; abortion, whether therapeutic or illegal, is in the main no longer dangerous, because it is being done well by physicians.”
Dr. Christopher Tietze, a statistician whose work was prominently featured in Planned Parenthood’s own publications during the sixties and seventies, called the claim of five thousand to ten thousand deaths a year “unmitigated nonsense.” Noting that forty-five thousand American women of reproductive age die each year from all causes, Tietze stated, “It is inconceivable that so large a number as 5,000-10,000 are from one source.” His own estimates put the number of illegal abortion deaths at five hundred annually for the years leading up to Roe v. Wade.
Make no mistake, every one of those deaths is a tragedy. But as Stephen Schwarz points out in The Moral Question of Abortion, “The true response to back-alley abortions is to be outraged at all abortions, to condemn all abortions — not to propose one kind (legal) in place of another (illegal).”
Ultimately, our critics do not find fault with pro-life laws because of the back-alley issue; they find fault with pro-life laws because they don’t see the unborn as human beings. I often ask: “Suppose that no women died from illegal abortions. Would you support laws protecting the unborn?” The answer is always ‘no’, which means the back-alley objection is largely a smokescreen.
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Well, that explains that. Very enlightening, but not very surprising.
P.S. Of course, this does not address the incidences of women being seriously injured in abortion clinics supposedly under physician care (even while Roe was in force). But, that’s another topic for another time.
