Com2kids thread in b b q pit made me think.
What if abortion was suddenly illegal?
Would doctors do it illegally?
I’d read the majority of the public is against abortion.
If the majority does want it legal, what could they do?
Overthrow the government?
huge protests?
What do
you think would happen in America?
Women would die trying.
Lovely thought. :sarcasm:
Honestly, I can’t even think about what would happen. It makes me start shaking when I even consider the possibility. Personally, I would stop having sex if it were outlawed. Having a child would kill me, and I wouldn’t be about to take the risk of not being able to talk a doctor into performing one on me. 
It was illegal before.
Doctors did do it illegally.
Women died, protests were staged (as they are now, just in reverse) What happened then will happen again.
I’m with cercaria - the thought of that upsets me to no end.
I’d celebrate.
If abortions became illegal in my country, I’d move.
I wouldn’t - I don’t want abortion to become illegal (because of the increased dangers and stigma attached to back-street abortions) but I do long for the day that abortion becomes unthinkable.
Grim
Abortions will never be unthinkable or unnecessary. Some women (and their parthers) believe they are ready/able/willing to take on the challenge of children, then for one reason or another, find themselves unable to follow through with that commitment. That can be due to medical reasons, or socio/economic or just personal reasons.
It’s not selfishness, it’s straightout self-LESS-ness, when a woman or couple decide that the advent of a child is not in the CHILD’S best interest. Having an abortion is never an easy option. It’s a bloody hard decision to make at the BEST of times and even in the most fortuitous of circumstances to make it illegal would find many unwanted children born into families that are ill-equipped to cater for them.
Or it would bring back the ‘backyard’ abortionist who, with the aid of blue-cohosh and a coathanger, would, for a sizeable fee, remove the ‘offending matter’ from the uterus.
That process leaves women in an unenviable postition.
I’m with Kayeby, if they were ever made illegal in Australia, I’d move too.
(Rich) women would travel overseas to have abortions.
There would be more unwanted children and possibly more babies available for childless couples to adopt, but also more neglected children.
More women - probably younger ones in particular - would kill themselves, either directly committing suicide or by trying to cause an abortion (hot baths, falling down stairs) and would die that way.
Depending on how total the ban was, women would die from not being allowed life-saving drugs or treatment during pregnancy.
Now we have DNA testing, more men - possibly young men in particular - would be forced to take on financial responsibility for accidental children.
There would be more “backstreet abortions” and more doctors would carry out illegal abortions.
There would be greater infanticide, and more neo-natals abandoned in doorways, etc.
There would be more children born with congenital defects, Downs Syndrome. NB: this is not a pro-eugenics statement - just an observation that many pregnancies are currently terminated after amniocentesis testing(sp?) and would not be if abortion was banned.
Most of the above still happen despite abortion being legal, but they would undoubtedly increase if it was banned.
Personally speaking, if I had an unwanted pregancy and they changed the law, I would go overseas if I could afford it, if not, I would find a sympathetic doctor, if not, I would go backstreet (obviously not a rusty-coathanger, but maybe an ex-midwife, whatever backstreet abortioners used to be. I am sure it rarely literally means “up a dark alley”).
There would be more use of contraceptives.
A very Lysistrata* approach. Think it would work?
“Suddenly illegal” wouldn’t happen that quickly. It would have to go down like this:
The Supreme Court overturns Roe. If they overturned it correctly (there’ll be disagreement here about what that means), the power to decide the illegality of abortion would go back to the states. If the unborn child were held to be a “person” within the meaning of the 14th Amendment, this would only protect the children from state executions (No person…shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of the law), so the best case you could make would be for state-funded hospital abortions.
The court COULD rule that abortion was illegal everywhere, although I have a problem with the Supreme Court having too much power.
Then one of two things would have to happen:
a) Congress (or 3/4 of the states, although this has never happened) passes a constitutional amendment outlawing abortion; or
b) All 50 states, on their own, outlaw abortion. This, I don’t envision; more likely you’d have some states outlawing it except for health reasons; a few might outlaw it outright; the rest (what percent, I don’t know) leave it or restrict it just a little.
If abortion suddenly became illegal, a bunch of middle-aged white lobbyists would think they had solved a problem.
Then most counseling services where they try to convince not to get an abortion would go away, because after all, it’s illegal.
In general, I predict there would be a lot fewer resources for pregnant women in dire situations, because I think a lot of them are available as a ‘stopgap’ until they can make abortion illegal.
After all, making it illegal would solve the whole problem, right?
There are several dozen plants growing wild in the US that can be used to induce a non-surgical abortion.
The best is said to the the bark of the Hawthorne Tree. Brewed into a strong tea, it is taken 3 cups at a time, 3 times a day, until abortion results.
The source I read described it as comparable in safety to surgical procedures.
Note–Neither I nor this Board is responsible legally or in any other way for anybody trying this. If you wreck your life it’s your own d*mmed fault, so don’t sue or otherwise come crying to us, because we didn’t recommend this to anybody. Understand? Good.
<sigh> I do worry about it becoming illegal, simply because there’s a whole slew of people out there who don’t really THINK about the issue. Mr. Athena was one of them - he simply never thought hard about the whole abortion issue, because being male, he never really thought it affected him. After many debates, I’ve at least got him thinking about it more.
Then there’s my mother. Upon hearing me talk about being pro-choice once, she took me to task. “Both your father and I are against abortion! You should be, too!” <sigh> I then asked “Ok, Mom, your 13-year old granddaughter is raped and becomes pregnant. You really think abortion should be illegal?”
Her answer?
“She wouldn’t need an abortion. I’d just take her to the doctor and get a D&C”
???
Mom, um, that IS an abortion. I gave up the argument at that point. I guess my Mom is against abortion as long as, um, nobody around her really needs one. I’m guessing that Mr. Athena was much the same - if he’d gotten a woman pregnant when he was a happy-go-lucky 22 year old sowing his wild oats, I’m guessing he’d be pro-abortion.
Sheeeeesh.
(For those not aware - a D&C is short for Dialation and Curretage - a procedure used to control several conditions such heavy menstrual bleeding. The same procedure is also used for abortions.)
As discussed in the linked which I provided though, the much-rumored preponderance of backyard abortions was a myth.
That link was from a pro-life site, was it not?
Yes, it was. Hardly objective proof of the issue.
EchoKitty and Athena: If you’re going to dispute what the site says, I’d appreciate your providing some cite that constitutes a genuine challenge to their version of the facts. The footnotes on that page seem pretty good to me.
Just because they have an agenda does not mean that what they say is untrue. Especially since they provide the source of their data.
Ha! every search i did on google turned up 90 godzillion pro-life websites! Finally, after much clicking, i found this: http://www.choiceusa.org/facts/surgical.php
Which says there were 160-260 abortion deaths a year in the 50s, when it was illegal. There were probably many more that wen unreported. Mortality rates for legal abortions is less than 1 per 100,000 women. (those numbers are from Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention, "Abortion Surveilance - United
States, 1993 and 1994,* MMWR*, August 8,
1997) As for how many abortions there were a year when it was illegal, that’s anybody’s guess, it’s not like the Back Alley docs were keeping score.