The pro-life vs. pro-choice debate on abortion has undoubtedly ruffled many feathers on both sides. However, regardless of religion, sex, or self-righteousness, it is a fact that the effects of limited access to legal and safe abortion services are deadly.
Do you know what happens when women do not have access to legal abortion? Women perform the abortions themselves.
Many women, especially in developing countries with unsanitary conditions, use wire hangers, knitting needles, or other sharp objects in an attempt to pierce the fetus and terminate the pregnancy. This causes major internal injury and infection, sometimes leading to the deaths of the fetus and the mother. I do not know about you, but this does not sound pro-life to me.
Women have also turned to popping pills of all kinds, pouring bleach or gasoline into their vaginas, purposely falling down flights of stairs, drinking far too much alcohol, or drastically overheating or freezing the body.
Now, I know people are thinking, “That is the woman’s fault for throwing herself down a flight of stairs!” However, that is not the point. The point is, if women had access to a legal, safe abortion in the first place, they would never have thrown themselves down a flight of stairs, injuring or killing both them and their fetuses. With a legal, safe abortion, at least one life would have been saved.
Before Roe v. Wade legalized abortion, up to 5,000 women died from DIY abortion methods every year in America. According to a report by the Texas Policy Evaluation Project, somewhere between 100,000 and 240,000 Texas women attempted self-induced abortions in 2015.
If women cannot get abortions, they may have to give their babies up for adoption. Now, many people see absolutely no problem with this. But please, explain that to the seven million children who are currently in institutional care worldwide. If adoption is so “good” and “easy” and “available,” please explain that to the 120,000 orphans currently living in America, the 27,000 of those orphans who will age out of the system with no financial or emotional support each year, and the 25% of those who will have no high school diploma or GED, according to SOS Children’s Villages. There is also plenty of research supporting that neglected foster children are more susceptible to falling into a life of crime. In 2005, the U.S. Department of Justice concluded that 30% to 40% of foster children have been arrested after exiting the system. According to the California State Legislature, over 70% of State Penitentiary inmates were once in foster care. When children are left in a series of homes that are rocky at best, the odds of stability are stacked against them.
If these statistics do not phase you, are you really pro-life? I think the more accurate phase would be “anti-abortion access.” Regardless of political standing, it is completely undeniable that the effects of closing abortion clinics are fatal and damaging for women and their fetuses, the latter of which will become their children.
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