Unsafe Abortions
If abortion becomes illegal, women will find unsafe loopholes that could risk their livelihoods. In the United States, abortion was illegal until the 1973 Roe versus Wade court case. Jane Roe, a pregnant woman, sued her hometown district attorney when the hospital refused to give her an abortion. Roe took her case to the Supreme Court and won, therefore making abortion legal. She was not alone, people all around the nation were openly opposed to the regulations the government had set in place.
Gloria SteinemGloria Steinem was a spokeswoman for the 1960s feminist movement that strongly supported abortion and a mother. According to her, if a mother wished to get an abortion, there were ways to get past the system.
“Either you were lucky enough to find a family doctor to help you or have enough money to go to Puerto Rico or some other country where you could get an abortion.”
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Abortions still occurred when it was illegal in the US, meaning that if abortion were to be banned again in our generation, women would still find solutions. During the 1960s, the laws that restricted abortion were broken up to a million times a year. There were serious consequences that doctors and mothers could face if caught, such as lengthy jail sentences, but many decided that the risk was worth it.
Statistics
Without the proper medical equipment and medicine that would be provided in a
legal abortion, many mothers suffered. (Reversing Roe)
legal abortion, many mothers suffered. (Reversing Roe)
This trend has continued in modern society, 13% of all pregnancy-related deaths worldwide are related to complications of unsafe abortion (MIT Pro-Choice). The majority of these women live in countries where abortion is illegal. They had to improvise by travelling to developing countries or finding willing abortionists. Even with our modern medicine, we can never fully prevent women from having complications in unsafe and illegal abortions. Having legal abortions means having state of the art equipment and sanitary conditions in which the procedure is performed in. If we legalize abortion, the risk of women having unsanitary and possibly life-threatening procedures will decrease greatly.
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