Saturday, December 06, 2014

"Safe and Legal" in 1988

Life Dynamics lists 16-year-old Katrina Poole on their "Blackmun Wallsafe, legal abortions.

LDI notes:
  • Katrina's abortion was performed the afternoon of December 5, 1988, in a doctor's office in Jacksonville, Florida.
  • She suffered a perforated cervix and uterus.
  • She died of hemorrhage the following day.

Supporters of legalized abortion would argue that though Katrina's death was indeed tragic, there would be more such tragic deaths were it not for the lifesaving effects of legalization. Is that assertion true? Look for yourself at the numbers:

During the 1940s, while abortion was still illegal, there was a massive drop in maternal mortality from abortion. The death toll fell from 1,407 in 1940, to 744 in 1945, to 263 in 1950. The graph below, showing illegal abortion deaths in purple and legal deaths in orange, shows the number of abortion deaths in the US each year from 1940 through 2003. The first state to legalize abortion-on-demand was New York in 1970. The Roe vs. Wade decision in 1973 struck down all the laws in the US criminalizing abortion. Would you conclude that legalization is what we have to thank for the fact that abortion deaths are not as commonplace now as they were in the 1930s? Or do you think there were other factors that did the job, and abortion advocates just claimed credit? Explore the question more here.

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