But won’t the use of RU-486 still require clinical assisstance?
If the Court shoots down Roe, and the decision to allow or not to allow goes back to the states, for sure, the more liberal, populous states, e.g., New York, California, Mass., Illinois, etc. will have legal abortions.
There are many non-abortion-related meds that cause a spotaneous miscarriage when inserted vaginally.
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2004/may/04051902.html
I’d predict that there’d be no change at first, women will shrug and say that there’s plenty of DIY methods on the Internet. Even without Roe vs. Wade, the number of abortion clinics & abortionists have decreased, and the shame associated with abortion has been increasing, so I suspect we’ve either got a DIY underground movement going on already, or we’re finding that BJs are almost as good as sex, or both.
I refer you to my previous two posts.
Please don’t get me wrong. My post was not a shrug. I was just answering a question based on personal experience. 
It wouldn’t take long to repeal those laws and there’s nothing that says a governor would even have to enforce them.
Law enforcement is usually up to local district attorneys, not the governor, which is why Roe v. Wade named as defendants the district attorneys of every county in Texas. District attorneys are elected, not appointed.
I never took it that way, nor was I trying to argue for a particular position–just making a guess. Someone claimed to me that her aunt had 36 Lysol abortions without sterlization difficulties and that Roe vs. Wade would not reduce any abortions. :eek: I believe her–at least the part that making abortions illegal will not reduce them.
A governor can effectively block enforcement through the use of sweeping pardons or amnesties. The D.A’s can arrest people but the Guv can still prevent them from imposing any penalties. On a temporary basis, a Governor could forstall any prosecutions until the laws were repealed.
I wasn’t sure, but I wanted to clarify just in case.
Fight my ignorance here - what’s a Lysol abortion?
NP.
Lysol abortion = just what it sounds like, douching with Lysol. Googling shows that this does serious damage to the tissue and causes sterilization, which is why I believe that this person was exaggerating about her aunt doing it 36 times and still being able to carry a baby.
The safest thing to do would be to introduce sterile saline into the uterus. That will almost always precipitate a miscarriage (although it’s going to require additional intervention if pregnancy has progressed fairly far along).
It requires a quantum leap more comprehension of medical techniques than simply dumping a cup of Lysol into the vagina, but not substantially more than you’d acquire if you were a curious and proficient student of basic biology and had done some outside reading, especially of reference materials contains words like “cannula”, “dilate”, “speculum”, and “dilating rods”.
As a historian, I’ve done a lot of research into early contraceptive methods, and I’ve never heard of Lysol being used as an abortificatient.
It was commonly used as a contraceptive douche: early glass bottles of Lysol carried directions for using it in that manner. However, many women suffered under the assumption that if a little Lysol was a good spermicide a lot of Lysol would be even better. There are quite a few reports of women being horribly burned.
I’d gather that the woman in the story used it as a contraceptive, and somehow her neice got it confused. Simply squirting Lysol into the vagina would not usually induce abortion, though I wouldn’t call it the safest thing in the world. The woman in the story would have to have managed somehow to get it into the uterus itself, and this would be terribly painful and dangerous, and even then might not cause expulsion of the fetus.
Although this is General Questions, I would like to add some speculation. There is currently very little downside for a politician in a conservative district to talk about how much they oppose abortion. It means nothing, because of the Supreme Court. However, suppose RvW is overturned. Suddenly, a politician’s position on abortin becomes consequential. I think we will find that although many people are opposed to abortion in principle, they are not going to be nearly as doctrinaire as they are currently.
I suspect that if laws against abortion were declared constitutional, we would find very little change in the status quo. Yes, 2/3 of the country is pro-life, but 2/3 of the country is also pro-choice. Sound contradictory? So it’s contradictory.
Of course, at this point the greater issue is why is this thread still in GQ?
As to the OP,
Morning-after pills, RU-486, would no doubt be covertly sold, (and often counterfeited).
Men would again be unhappy over ‘alimony’ payments (child support).
Conservatives would be unhappy about the welfare costs.
Women and men would say ‘no’ more often, but it is hard to say how much more often.
Illegal abortions would increase.
I seem to recall…
Abortions could be obtained illegally. There are many methods, with various drawbacks: danger of injury or death, expense, travel, disgrace. But they often worked.
I remember a source of advice for women seeking abortions. Where rape was an excuse, they suggested that claiming cross-racial rape worked best with many judges, ‘as they don’t want you dropping your mongrel whelps in their town’. This advice may or may not have been based on life experiences.
A lot of the people who were against abortion were (are) also against birth control, and information about birth control.