Image: People's World/Flickr
I know a woman who worked in an inner city hospital before the passage of Roe v Wade. Every week, staff there saw women come in battling massive infection or blood loss. They actually reserved beds for women like this because it was so common.
The cause? Illegal, unsafe abortions.
But that was then, right? That was 42 years ago, right? That doesn’t happen anymore, right?
Wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. If you want a stark narrative of what an unsafe abortion today looks like, read Jennifer Gunter, MD’s gut-wrenching essay, Anatomy of an Unsafe Abortion. I defy you to read it without wanting to howl with rage and grief.
Once you’re done with that, take a look at this recent piece from the New York Times analyzing search engine results for phrases like “how to self-abort,” “how to have a miscarriage,” “abortion pills online,” and “how to do a coat hanger abortion.”
If there are any gods out there, may they forgive us for sending 1,300 women searching for how to end a pregnancy with a coat hanger.
In all, 2015 saw some 700,000 searches for means of ending a pregnancy. That’s apart from the 3.4 million searches for abortion clinics. These searches for DIY abortions methods were clustered in the states with the most restrictions on abortion.
700,000 women looked for a safe, legal abortion clinic and, finding none accessible to them, searched for another way to end an unwanted pregnancy. In 2015. Last year. Not 40 years ago. Last year.
I have said over and over again that blocking access to legal abortion doesn’t stop abortions: It only stops medically safe abortions.
Now we have the numbers to prove that terrifying assertion: 700,000 women willing to consider abortion methods that range from shady to barbaric because the pro-life movement has seen to it that no safer method is available to them. 700,000 women so desperate to end pregnancies that they will risk their health, their future fertility, and their lives to do so.
This is why I so strongly support keeping abortion safe and legal and accessible. Because unsafe abortion is too horrible a burden for our nation to bear.
