Abortion

So, my ethics class actually tackled the topic of abortion on Wednesday. It was actually far more interesting than I had expected. A couple points were made that I thought were interesting.

1) Abortion was actually legal before the Civil War. Like, advertisements in newspaper legal. Very legal. It was actually outlawed because a lot of the products and services being offered were dangerous to women. Apparently there were a lot of poisoning and botched procedures.

2)Abortion was pretty common throughout the 1920s - 1950s. I was skeptical at first - I mean, if these were backroom procedures, how could they quantify them? I asked about it, and apparently the number was determined through some kind of forsenic records. Some historian somewhere went through the records of hospitals around the time period and counted the number of deaths related to births/massive infection - the number isn't very firm (the range is huge), but the lowest bound is far greater than I ever would have expected (200,000).

3)Abortion is common today. It was estimated that a third of women would have an abortion at some point. It has a bimodal distribution - a big peak in the teens (obviously) and a big peak in the forties (that was a little surprising).

4)Legally, the law only says that women are allowed to have an abortion (at certain points in the pregancy). It doesn't state that the government has to assist in any way (primarily a financially point).

5)Most states require women to go through counseling before they are allowed to have the procedure. This feeds back into the previous point.

I actually didn't have any problems with points #4 and 5. I don't particularly like abortion when there are other options (I think abortion in incest, rape and medical necessity cases is pretty black and white.) but I support the right of women to make that choice. I feel like if a woman is so desperate that she will stick a knitting needle up her vagina, than she might as well have access to sterilized tools and a safe environment.

That's the crux of the argument to me. I don't think outlawing abortion will magically make the problem go away. It will just jeopardize the safety of a lot of women, mostly poor women.