ACTING LIKE NAZIS
In the same issue of the paper, student Charles Jordan noted the obvious:
…[I]n this debate, you did not see facts being disputed. Instead, you saw the pro-death advocates attack the process used, using hilarious semantics and hateful personal attacks on the pro-lifers.
One dissenter so intelligently devised [sic], 'so you are saying that women who have abortions are Nazis.'
Of course we aren't saying aborting mothers are "Nazis", but we are saying that abortionists are acting very much like the mass murderers of the National Socialist death camps. There are profound differences between the circumstances of the mothers and those of the doctors. Unwilling mothers are often rushed into a precipitous abortion decision by the belief that abortion later in pregnancy becomes more dangerous (true), expensive (true) and morally problematic (false). They are frequently being coerced by parents who are trying to avoid the embarrassment of their daughters' out-of-wedlock pregnancies; boyfriends trying to avoid marriage or child support payments; and husbands trying to avoid the loss of a lifestyle which is dependent on the second income a pregnant wife may no longer be able to earn. The culture is also bombarding reluctant mothers with the message that "this pregnancy will ruin your life." So much for the supposed feminist view that women are "strong and capable."
Doctors, on the other hand, are under no pressure at all. They have the luxury of taking all the time they need to decide whether they will treat and deliver babies or attack and kill them. Most mothers lack a doctor's detailed understanding of prenatal development (it really is a baby – even at the very beginning of pregnancy) and they are carefully shielded from what the doctors fully understand to be the horror of the procedure itself (it really is an act of violence – even at the very beginning of pregnancy). In every way, the doctors' culpability should be vastly greater than that of the mothers' because he enjoys so many more advantages and suffers so many fewer liabilities. The recriminalization of abortion should result in the prosecution of abortion providers, but not aborting mothers because the injurious health consequences of their ill-considered "choice" will punish most aborting mothers more severely than any prison. Concerning Mr. DeSimone's preposterous assertion that abortion is "safe", consider the following:
"SAFE," "LEGAL" ABORTION PUNISHES WOMEN
Although research on the side-effects of abortion can produce conflicting results, a recent government study in Finland shows that women who abort are approximately 4 times more likely to die in the following year than women who carry their pregnancies to term. The researchers found that compared to women who carried to term, women who aborted in the year prior to their deaths were 60% more likely to die of natural causes, 7 times more likely to die of suicide, 4 times more likely to die from injuries related to accidents, and 14 times more likely to die from homicide (Gissler, M., et. al., "Pregnancy – associated deaths in Finland 1987-1994 – definition problems and benefits of record linkage," Acta Obsetrica et Gynecologica Scandinavica 76:651-657 (1997)).
According to cancer researcher Dr. Joel Brind, 13 of 14 studies conducted since 1957 show more breast cancer among American women who chose abortion and 27 of 33 studies worldwide report a similar increase. The average rate of cancer increase among post abortive women was 30% (see generally, Brind, J., et. al., Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, 50:481 (1996).
The influential Archives of General Psychiatry recently acknowledged for the first time the existence of a psychological disorder called "post-abortion syndrome" (PAS). Combining the 1.4% case rate described in the published study with the 40 million US abortions performed since 1973 adds up to over half-a-million cases. Another 20% of the women in the study did not experience full-blown post-abortion syndrome but did report clinical depression. It should also be noted that the study looked only at the experience of women 2 years after aborting. As their sense of immediate relief recedes, a darker mood may emerge in some.
According to Dr. David Reardon of the Elliot Institute, another shortcoming of the study is its high dropout and refusal rates, which suggest substantial underreporting of the prevalence of PAS. Even though women were offered payment to participate, 15% of the post-abortive women who were solicited refused to be part of the study and 50% of those who initially participated dropped out before the follow-up interviews. The lead author of the study said the most often cited reason for this reticence was "guilt and remorse." So it appears that many of the women most likely to experience PAS are least likely to participate in a PAS study (Major, B., et. al., "Psychological responses of women after first-trimester abortion." Archives of General Psychiatry, 57(8):777-84 (2000)).
Some published clinical studies also report that women who abort are measurably more likely to experience cervical, ovarian and liver cancer; uterine perforation; cervical lacerations; pelvic inflammatory disease; endometriosis; and in subsequent pregnancies, placenta previa; other complications of labor; developmentally disabled newborns; and ectopic or tubal pregnancy. Several of these studies also report that some of these disorders become even more prevalent with multiple abortions (see generally, Major Articles and Books Concerning the Detrimental Effects of Abortion, Thomas Strahan, Rutherford Institute, PO Box 7482, Charlottesville, VA 22906-7482 and the Website of the Elliot Institute, at www.afterabortion.org).
In his eye-opening history of abortion in America, Professor Marvin Olasky points out that in the 1800's, "Many states gave immunity to women from all criminality, others gave women immunity from prosecution in exchange for testimony, and virtually every state allowed abortion to protect the life of the mother." The woman was viewed as a "victim" then and "victimization" is likely to remain the public's perception of her association with the death of her baby. If there existed so strong a bias against prosecuting women when "pregnancy termination" was widely condemned, future laws against abortion, to have any hope of passage, should and will prohibit the prosecution of aborting mothers. Even were it not so, the odds of finding district attorneys willing to prosecute, juries inclined to convict and judges disposed to punish such women would rightly near the vanishing point (Abortion Rites, A Social History of Abortion in America, Crossway Books (1992)).
Only the most cruel of societies would further punish women who in large numbers are already suffering the painful sequelae of abortion.
SAFELY OUTLAWING ABORTION
And how should we respond to Mr. DeSimone's intimation that large numbers of women were dying at the hands of "back-alley butchers" before abortion was legalized and will again die by the "thousands" if we outlaw the practice?
In The American Journal of Public Health, July, 1960, Mary Calderone, then Medical Director of Planned Parenthood said the following concerning the safety of unlawful abortions:
… 90% of all illegal abortions are presently being done by physicians …. [A]bortion, whether therapeutic or illegal, is in the main no longer dangerous, because it is being done well by physicians.
If Planned Parenthood, the largest provider of abortions in the US, says that the vast majority of unlawful abortions were being performed "well" and by licensed physicians in the 1960s, we can be certain that the vast majority will again be "well" performed by licensed physicians if abortion is outlawed at some future time. The myth of the "back-alley butcher" is little more than a deceptive rhetorical device with which radical feminists seek to induce hysteria in a naïve public.
Bernard Nathanson, MD, an abortion expert and an obstetrician-gynecologist who once presided over the largest abortion clinic in the world, said the following in his book Aborting America, Doubleday, 1979:
The practice of abortion was revolutionized at virtually the same moment that the laws were revolutionized, through the widespread introduction of suction curettage in 1970. (Even before this, antibiotics and other advances had already dramatically lowered the abortion death rate.) Instead of scraping the soft wall of the pregnant uterus with a sharp instrument, the operator vacuums it out with a plastic suction curette. Though it is preferable that this be done by a licensed physician, one can expect that if abortion is ever driven underground again, even non-physicians will be able to perform this procedure with remarkable safety…. Even without a suction machine, a simple combination of catheter and syringe can produce enough suction to carry out a safe early abortion.
As for the self-induced abortion, by thrusting a coat hanger or other dangerous object into the womb, this will also be a thing of the past.
Concerning the accuracy of feminist estimates of deaths from unlawful abortion, Dr. Nathanson, a founder of what is now called the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League (NARRAL), said:
…[I]t was always '5,000 to 10,000 deaths a year.' I confess that I knew the figures were totally false, and I suppose the others did too …. But in the 'morality' of the revolution, it was a useful figure ….
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