This is not a thread about whether abortion is good or bad, or whether it should be legal or illegal (we have thousands of threads about that).
Rather - it is often claimed that, if abortion were banned nationwide, that women with unwanted pregnancies would resort instead to back-alley abortions or DIY abortions. So I am just asking…roughly what percentage of women would opt for such abortions, as opposed to carrying the unwanted pregnancy to term and giving birth?
Since this is impossible to quantify - it’s all guesswork - I am putting the thread in IMHO. Would it be 90 percent? 95 percent? Or something lower, like 50 percent?
Oh, pretty low, if pre-Roe stats can be trusted. I found an NPR link that said some have estimated 20-25% of pregnancies ended in abortions before Roe v Wade, but that doesn’t exactly answer the question, because some were legal. In California, there was a “medical necessity” exemption that was very easy to qualify for.
I forget where I saw it, but someone once said that Roe v. Wade made no appreciable difference in the abortion rate, though it did lower the number of women who died from botched abortions.
When I was in school pre- legalization, the girls all knew of ways to terminate a pregnancy. Few needed the knowledge, but they could use it if they did.
I know that in Victorian England, a couple of scammers sent out a mass mailing to all the women in the city directory asking for hush money or they’d reveal they had abortions. Despite the fact they had no idea if the women had them or not, they got a truly impressive return.
I suspect it won’t be as bad as it was 50 years ago. Safe abortive drugs will be available on the black market even if abortion becomes much harder to obtain.
That alone may keep the damage down but, christ, how depressing for the USA to even have to consider this. I assume this question is triggered because of the supreme court nomination?
*Women now have far more methods to avoid unwanted pregnancies, as well as safer, easier options for abortion. Many abortions are induced at home with a two-drug combination, and advocacy groups are spreading the word about home abortions using one of the drugs that can be done without a medical professional’s involvement.
At the time of Roe, abortion was broadly legal in four states, allowed under limited circumstances in 16 others, and outlawed under nearly all circumstances in the rest. A reversal of Roe would produce a patchwork map where perhaps 15 or so states would continue to make abortion easily accessible, a dozen or more would ban virtually all abortions unless the mother’s life is at stake, and the rest would thrash out their response in the public arena and the legislatures.
Since a majority of the country approve of abortion rights, I would hope that groups like Planned Parenthood would get a lot of new donations.
Basically ALL pre 12 week abortions are medication abortions using misoprostol and mifepristone. No “back alleys” required, just an internet connection and/or an ulcer diagnosis. I would expect a huge uptick in ulcer diagnoses as smart women would stockpile misoprostol as a “just in case.” The mifepristone isn’t necessary to the abortion, it’s just used to ensure the uterine contents expel in a timely manner. So to answer the other part of the OPs question the percentage of DIY abortions would closely approach 100.