{"id":638,"date":"2004-02-23T18:42:22","date_gmt":"2004-02-24T02:42:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2004\/02\/23\/78000-women-killed-each-year-by-unsafe-abortion\/"},"modified":"2004-02-23T18:42:22","modified_gmt":"2004-02-24T02:42:22","slug":"78000-women-killed-each-year-by-unsafe-abortion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=638","title":{"rendered":"78,000 women killed each year by unsafe abortion"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the midst of a pro-life post<\/a>, Sara of Diotima surprised me by pointing out that 70,000 women die each year from unsafe abortions. Sarah linked to an article in Science <\/i>to support this figure; Science<\/i>, in turn, cited the World Health Organization. The WHO has since revised its estimate upwards, to 78,000<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The surprising thing is that Sara seems to consider those deaths an argument against legal abortion. But just the opposite is true: the vast majority of unsafe abortion deaths take place in countries where pro-life forces have successfully restricted or outlawed abortion. Africa – which has by far the highest rate of unsafe abortion deaths<\/a> – also has overwhelmingly pro-life laws. This is unsurprising; where abortion is illegal, women will seek abortions from people without medical training, and fear (or local laws) may keep them from seeking medical help if the unsafe abortion goes wrong.<\/p>\n

The best cure for unsafe abortion is safe abortion – and that means legal abortion. What kind of a difference can legal abortion make? Here’s what happened in Romania when abortion was outlawed, in 1966 – and when it was legalized again, in 1989.<\/p>\n

\"abortion_romania.GIF\"<\/center><\/p>\n

There’s a very clear relationship between legalized abortion and deaths from unsafe abortion.<\/p>\n

There’s also no evidence that outlawing abortion reduces the number of abortions. From a WHO article on unsafe abortion<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Contrary to common belief, legalization of abortion does not necessarily increase abortion rates. The Netherlands, for example, has a non-restrictive abortion law, widely accessible contraceptives and free abortion services, and the lowest abortion rate in the world: 5.5 abortions per 1,000 women of reproductive age per year. Barbados, Canada, Tunisia and Turkey have all changed abortion laws to allow for greater access to legal abortion without increasing abortion rates.<\/div>\n

This is just one of the many ways that pro-life views make no sense. There is no serious doubt that pro-life laws lead to increased death and injuries due to unsafe abortions. Furthermore, as the Netherlands show, it’s possible to have the world’s lowest rate of abortion by concentrating on reducing demand, rather than by threatening doctors and mothers with jail time.<\/p>\n

There’s no reason the US couldn’t have an abortion rate as low as the Netherlands; it would just require the pro-lifers to quit trying to use the law to legislate against women’s freedom, and instead put just as much energy and funds into reducing how likely women are to want <\/i>abortion. In economic terms, the difference between a pro-lifer and a feminist who opposes abortion is that pro-lifers focus on reducing the supply of abortion by taking away women’s and doctor’s freedom; feminists who oppose abortion would rather reduce the demand for abortion, without attacking women’s freedom. The feminist method is at least as effective for reducing abortion – and is far less deadly to women’s lives.<\/p>\n

UPDATE<\/b>: Paul at A Fortiori responds<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Proponents of abortion rights ought to bear in mind that an argument like Ampersand’s only carries any weight at all if you already accept the premise that abortion should not be a crime. After all, if your position is that abortion is tantamount to murder, you can’t be expected to care that it’s dangerous for people to have abortions.<\/p>\n

It’s dangerous to commit a bank robbery, for instance, but we don’t just consider that fact to be insufficient to justify legalizing bank robberies: we think it’s not a point in favor of legalizing bank robberies at all.<\/p><\/div>\n

When making laws, I think it makes sense to both know what your sought-after benefit is, and to keep a cost\/benefit analysis in mind.<\/p>\n

The benefit of outlawing bank robberies is to reduce bank robbery, since our banking system wouldn’t work very well if people felt free to rob banks at will. The cost of outlawing bank robbery – the increased danger to robbers – is probably acceptable, because of the benefits we gain.<\/p>\n

Now, what is the benefit of outlawing abortion? Paul’s post implies that the benefit is to punish evildoers (women, doctors, folks like that). If that is the benefit, then we should indeed outlaw abortion; from a cost\/benefit point of view, more women will be punished if we outlaw abortion than if we don’t.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, many pro-lifers have argued that the purpose of outlawing abortion is not <\/i>punishing women, but reducing the amount of “babies” (actually, zygotes and fetuses) killed by abortion. Furthermore, “pro-life feminists” often argue that outlawing abortion benefits women.<\/p>\n

If that’s the case, then I think my argument – applying a cost\/benefit analysis to see if outlawing abortion actually <\/i>reduces abortion and benefits women – is one that logically should carry weight, even if you believe abortion is murder. If the goal is to reduce abortion and help women, then logically it should be a matter of some concern to pro-lifers that 1) there are fewer abortions per capita in pro-choice Netherlands than in any pro-life country, and 2) pro-life laws appear to increase the number of illegal, unsafe abortions, leading to tens of thousands of women needlessly dying each year.<\/p>\n

The question for pro-lifers, I think, is which is more important to you – saving lives, or punishing women?<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

Further update<\/b>: I know many pro-lifers will respond by reflexively trying to disprove or find a reason to disregard the statistics. Before you do, ask yourself – why are you so against this being the case? Look at this from a point of view apart from partisan politics: If it was true that we could reduce abortion and save more women’s lives without<\/i> forcing anyone to give birth against their will, wouldn’t that actually be a wonderful thing?<\/p>\n

I understand, a world with no abortions at all would be even better. But that will never happen on this Earth; no pro-life state has ever succeeded in eliminating abortion, not even those states that are far more brutal and aggressive in fighting abortion than the USA can ever be.<\/p>\n

Why are pro-lifers so reflexively against even the possibility<\/i> that restricting women’s freedom might not be the most effective way of reducing abortion? So much that virtually no pro-lifers are willing to even consider the possibility, apart from searching for an excuse to dismiss it?<\/p>\n

I’m not being snarky – I sincerely don’t understand it.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

By the way, if <\/i>pro-lifers believe abortion is murder, why do they propose such wimpy penalties for it? Often their proposed laws would only jail the doctor for a couple of years, and wouldn’t punish the woman at all – which begs the question of who gets punished if the woman self-aborts. If abortion is murder, why not seek the murder-level sentences for women and doctors?<\/p>\n

(Okay, now I’m being a little <\/i>snarky. But my previous question was entirely sincere.).<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the midst of a pro-life post, Sara of Diotima surprised me by pointing out that 70,000 women die each year from unsafe abortions. Sarah linked to an article in Science to support this figure; Science, in turn, cited the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-abortion-reproductive-rights"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=638"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/638\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}