I’m a Catholic who is morally opposed to abortion.
But I’m against most legislation against abortion.
Because here’s the thing: Abortion is never going to just go away. It’s never going to stop. Passing harsh restrictions limiting access, banning it all together, it’s never going to magically make women stop having abortions. It’s never going to lead to abortion no longer being a thing that happens.
Abortion has been happening since long before this modern age. The practice dates back to at least 1550 BCE Egypt. Hippocrates, the greek physician upon whose practices the Hippocratic Oath is based, provided abortions. Women got abortions in ancient times when the methods were risky at best and life threatening at worst. They got abortions in Colonial America when the practice was shamed and had to be done in secret. They got abortions before Roe vs. Wade was passed, and they’ll continue to get abortions no matter how many restrictions and bans are put in place.
This is not an issue that can be simplified by putting it in religious and moral terms. It’s not an issue that can be simplified by saying it’s “about life”.
And if your goal is to stop all abortion forever, well… for one thing, you’re looking at the issue all wrong and you’re going to be pushing a boulder the size of the universe up a very steep hill for the rest of time. You’re also ignoring history and statistics if you think that outlawing abortion will make any kind of movement toward that goal.
Illegal abortions before Roe v. Wade were not some kind of rare thing. They were common. Estimates put the number of illegal and self-induced abortions that took place in the 1950s and 1960s between the hundreds of thousands and around one million. And thousands of women died from illegal and self-induced abortions. In 1930 abortion was listed as the cause of death for at least 2700 women. These numbers decreased with the introduction of antibiotics that could fight infections that came from these procedures, but by 1965 illegal abortions still made up 17% of all pregnancy and childbirth related deaths. And those number are almost certainly quite a bit higher in reality as many women who died or became sick as the result of an illegal abortion were not reported as such.
I don’t think a lot people really consider what illegal abortion means. Many just assume that it’s just the same thing that happens in the legal clinics, but it just happens without being protected by law. This is most often not the case. Without legal protections for abortions, doctors who perform the procedure can’t easily get the materials needed to make abortion as safe as possible. And without any kind of oversight to ensure safety that the practice would get were it legal and regulated, the people performing it, whether it’s a well meaning doctor or a person looking to prey on women in desperate situations, are accountable to nobody. There’s nobody making sure they’re safe.
This is already happening. Abortion providers are being shut down at huge rates, leaving some entire states with only one provider, if that. Many women who want an abortion but can’t get one because they’re unable to travel to another state to acquire one (whether it’s because they can’t afford it, they have no transportation, their family situation makes it impossible) aren’t just going to “oh well, I guess I’m going to just have to have it.” Despite popular opinion among anti-abortion advocates, abortion is not an easy choice for most women. It’s not just some easy method of birth control. The rates of abortion throughout history show that, as do many testimonials. If a women wants, or needs an abortion, she’s going to do whatever she can to get it. And if she can’t get one by safe and legal means, there’s a decent chance she’ll get one by any means necessary. Which means either looking to illegal, unregulate, and unsafe providers, or incredibly dangerous self-induced methods.
This is happening now. Further restrictions, more clinics being shutdown, will not somehow magically make it stop.
Before Roe v. Wade, hundreds, and sometimes thousands of women died every year from abortions because they were illegal and therefor unregulated and unsafe. Today, yearly deaths from abortion rank in the 10s. Not the 10s of thousands. The 10s. And yes, some of that has to do with improved technology and methods. But even in 1976, just a few years after Roe v. Wade, death as a result of abortion had fallen to 1 in 100,000. (These are all numbers from just the US. Worldwide numbers tend to follow similar trends.)
Banning abortion does not stop abortion. Safe, legal abortion saves lives.
If you care about life, that is not something that should be ignored. And I continue to stress, nor should the fact that banning abortion will not stop abortion. It never has and it never will. Many countries where abortion is illegal actually show slightly higher abortion rates than those where abortion is legal.
That last sentence is the really important part. Not just because it further shows that banning and restricting abortion does not stop or even reduce abortion, but because it demonstrates a far better alternative if you want to reduce abortion.
No, countries where abortion is legal don’t have lower abortion rates because of some weird logic of “if you can have it you don’t want it”. It because usually, legal and accessible abortion goes hand in hand with accessible and affordable contraception and sexual education.
Abortion isn’t going to magically go away. If you’re opposed to abortion and you’re putting all your efforts toward ending it, you’re fighting a losing battle and ignoring areas that can help abortion rate be reduced. That’s what people who say they they’re for protecting life should be focusing on. Ways to reduce abortion.
Banning abortion isn’t going to do that. Minimizing the number of women who get pregnant who don’t want to be is. That doesn’t happen by telling women not to have sex. It happens by making sure contraception, all forms of contraception are inexpensive and readily available to all women and men. It happens by making sure men and women get comprehensive sexual education before they start having sex. It happens by making sure men and women know how to effectively use contraception before they start having sex. So yes, that means comprehensive sexual education in middle school and high school (at the very least). It’s important for men and women to be educated in the ways both the male and the female body work, how sex and reproduction work for both genders, and exactly how different forms of birth control prevent pregnancy.
It also happens by more support and funding for programs that provide healthcare for women during and after their pregnancies for women who can’t afford it. It happens by support and funding for programs that help and support financially struggling women and parents who choose to keep their baby. It happens by support and funding for programs that provide healthcare for children in low-income families. It can’t be ignored that one of the motivations for a woman to seek an abortion is often not being able to support it. And unfortunately it’s not uncommon for states with the stricter abortion laws to also have the fewest policies in place for these kinds of programs and this type of support.
Abortion is not the beginning of the equation. It’s the result of complex series of events and circumstances, and often those circumstances are things completely beyond the control of the woman seeking and abortion. The problem isn’t solved by outlawing the result of that equation. You have to change the circumstances that lead to it.
The pro-life movement needs to realize that abortion is not something that can be simplified to a one sentence tagline about caring about or protecting life. Not when criminalized abortion leads to hundreds to thousands more losses of life. Not when criminalized abortion does nothing to stop that loss of life. They need to realize that you don’t solve a problem by trying to stop it at the finale step, that you have to go to the root of the problem and start there. And the root of the problem is not that abortion exists. It’s that our country has startlingly poor sexual education for a developed country. It’s that because of that, people don’t know how to use birth control effectively, they don’t know how reproduction and the reproductive system of the opposite gender, and sometimes their own gender, works. It’s because many types of contraception are not as inexpensive and accessible as they should be thinks to things like the Hobby Lobby ruling.
Look outside of your bubble. Do research. Don’t get all of your information for Christian and “pro-life” sources. Be curious. Be skeptical, but also open minded. Look into your sources and make sure the sites/journals/etc. aren’t exclusively a pro-life OR a pro-choice site/publication/etc. I’m not sure there’s any such thing as a completely unbiased source when it comes to things like this, but make sure you’re looking a the most unbiased choices you can find. Think about what being pro-life actually means beyond the usual taglines.
Banning abortion is not “pro-life”. All of the statistics show that to be a fact. If you’re going to call yourself pro-life, you need to look at options that are actually effective and that don’t lead to even more death.
http://womenshistory.about.com/od/abortion/a/ancientabortion.htm
https://broadly.vice.com/en_us/article/banning-abortion-doesnt-actually-reduce-abortion-rates-at-all
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/women-in-countries-where-abortion-is-illegal-just-as-likely-to-have-one-as-countries-where-it-is-a7025671.html
https://www.guttmacher.org/journals/psrh/2004/01/public-health-impact-legal-abortion-30-years-later
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-a-grimes/the-bad-old-days-abortion_b_6324610.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/03/back-alley-abortions_n_5065301.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/julie-burkhart/access-to-contraception-a_b_7595654.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/01/abortion-womens-health_n_5912648.html
http://www.nationalpartnership.org/issues/repro/reports/a-double-bind.html?referrer=https://www.google.com/
