From 1.6 million down to 1.2 million.
That’s still over a million abortions per year.
And how many abortions were there in the U.S. in 1965?
We know that there were already over 600,000
legal abortions just prior to roe v. wade. But we really have no idea how many illegal abortions have occured. The problem is that there is seemingly nothing tangible to count.
We know abortion was widespread when abortion laws were first passed in the mid-late 19th century. And we know that illegal abortion existed for all of the century that it was illegal. For example, we can find thousands of abortion related maternal deaths each year from the 1870s up though the 1940’s. But after plasma and antibiotics, even that metric all but vanished. Just prior to Roe v. Wade there are only about 200 abortion related maternal deaths each year. The actual number was probably a little higher because of family doctors fudging death certificates, but since back-alley abortionists were really a myth by Roe v. Wade (we were only ‘catching’ medical professionals), there is no reason to infer that abortions were fewer during ‘free love’ than during WW-II.
If it wasn’t clear, my point above was not to dismiss what is obviously a good thing. My point was just that there is a difference between what the researchers found and the causal theories expressed in the article. Remember, the Guttmacher Institute was involved with a huge WHO study which appears to show that, since the advent of chemical abortificants - which are legal in much of the western industrialized world, legal status, which has never proven to be a particularly effective deterrent, has almost not measurable impact on abortion rates at all.
Although it is an upsetting thought, it makes sense. We can’t stop the flow of narcotics into the country as it is, and non surgical abortions are generally done in the privacy of a woman’s home now. Since so many miscarriages occur anyway, it also would be extremely difficult to enforce. Since there are no significant tell tail signs, how do you tell a chemically induced miscarriage from a normal, spontaneous one?
Let’s hope that the Guttmacher Institute is correct about it’s own research and we really are seeing a change in societal attitudes.
