Wednesday, August 22nd, 2012
Stephan: Backroom abortions are coming back to the U.S. Abortion is already more prevalent in Red Value states. If Republicans prevail and abortion is outlawed, illegal abortions will go up. It is inevitable.
I am old enough to remember life before the pill, and Roe v Wade. I lost one friend to such an abortion, and remember to this day the last time I saw her. And almost lost another, watching both times what it did to all the families involved.
Here is the research study that spells out where we are headed if Romney and Ryan win. That is not a partisan statement. If you have read SR for a while you know I don't care about politics in that way. I care about data, and social outcomes, and wellness from individual to planetary.
This obsession is driven I think by a kind of racism -- we need more white babies -- and a desire to return to a world where women are subordiinate, and accept this. Take a look at QuiverFull.com. Go into the SR archives and read the piece on the Saudis creating all women cities, and the piece on ultra-orthodox Jews buying eyeglasses that limit their vision so they will not have to look at women. The perversion of sexuality in the service of theology or ideology is a powerful force in the world.
Countries restricting abortions, particularly in Africa and Latin America, have higher rates of unsafe abortion than those that allow the procedure, according to a study published today in The Lancet journal.
The rate of unsafe abortion in Africa was 28 per 1,000 women of childbearing age and 31 per 1,000 in Latin America, regions where abortion is highly restricted in almost all countries, according to the study led by Gilda Sedgh at the Guttmacher Institute in New York, using the most recent data gathered in 2008. That compares with less than 0.5 per 1,000 in western Europe and North America.
The World Health Organization defines unsafe abortion as a procedure for terminating a pregnancy that is performed by an individual lacking the necessary skills or in an environment that doesn’t conform to minimal standards. Legally restricting abortions leads to unsafe procedures as women have more difficulty locating practitioners and the ones they do find are less likely to be adequately trained, Sedgh said.
‘The data continue to confirm what we have known for decades: that women who wish to terminate unwanted pregnancies will seek abortion at any cost, even when it is illegal or involves risks to their own lives,
