# Problem with the abortion column **URL:** \ **Category:** Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports\ **Created:** [May 28, 2004, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/problem-with-the-abortion-column/247534 "2004-05-28T16:55:35Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![matt\_mcl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ab992/32.png) [@matt\_mcl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/matt_mcl)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2004, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/problem-with-the-abortion-column/247534/1 "2004-05-28T16:55:35Z")
Cecil doesn’t seem to answer the question he was asked. He goes to great lengths about how many (or few) abortion-related deaths there were before _abortion_ was made legal in the US. However, the quotation in the question asks about abortion deaths before _birth control_ was made legal. One would think the latter total would be higher. * * * Link to column: [Before Roe v Wade, did 10,000 women die each year from illegal abortions?](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/040528.html) – CKDHM ---
**Author:** ![Outpits](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/4bbf92/32.png) [@Outpits](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Outpits)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2004, 5:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/problem-with-the-abortion-column/247534/2 "2004-05-28T17:27:53Z")
Ellen Goodman was born in 1941. The first commercially available oral contraceptive, Enovid, was introduced in 1960. Therefore, she would have been 19 or so when the first oral contraceptives were introduced. But that is not when birth control was illegal, as condoms and other means of contraception have been around for centuries, if not millenia. It seems to be a poorly worded sentence. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2004, 9:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/problem-with-the-abortion-column/247534/3 "2004-05-28T21:36:29Z")
> [@matt\_mcl](#): > > However, the quotation in the question asks about abortion deaths before _birth control_ was made legal. I don’t parse the quotation that way. The quotation goes “After all, those of us who remember [when birth control was illegal] and [when 10,000 American women a year died from illegal abortions] don’t have to imagine a world without choices” (bracketing mine). In other words, Ms. Goodman isn’t saying that the illegal birth control affected the illegal abortions…just that they both eliminated choices. They’re two seperate bad things. And Emily, the questioner, is just asking about the 10,000 number in general. ---
**Author:** ![Chotii](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/71e660/32.png) [@Chotii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chotii)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2004, 1:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/problem-with-the-abortion-column/247534/4 "2004-05-29T01:00:02Z")
I’ve never understood how the American or any other population could stand up under the deaths of 10,000 women per year to illegal abortions, on top of all the women who died as a result of complications of pregnancy or childbirth. The numbers must be inflated when viewed through _any_ lens. Now, I suppose you could look at medical records (if any are available) and see how many women of childbearing age died per year in the US, and what they died of, and you could assume that any woman who didn’t die of a known disease or from a stated complication of childbirth must have died of an abortion, but even that I think would be at best speculation. ---
**Author:** ![MrBishop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/34f0e0/32.png) [@MrBishop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrBishop)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2004, 3:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/problem-with-the-abortion-column/247534/5 "2004-05-29T03:17:12Z")
> [@Chotii](#): > > I’ve never understood how the American or any other population could stand up under the deaths of 10,000 women per year to illegal abortions, on top of all the women who died as a result of complications of pregnancy or childbirth. The numbers must be inflated when viewed through _any_ lens. > > Now, I suppose you could look at medical records (if any are available) and see how many women of childbearing age died per year in the US, and what they died of, and you could assume that any woman who didn’t die of a known disease or from a stated complication of childbirth must have died of an abortion, but even that I think would be at best speculation. The problem inn that statement is “of a known disease”. There must’ve been many deaths from unknown reasons, and to assume that they all must be (or even a good portion of them must be) because of botched abortions is a hell of a leap. Some may have died from drug overdoses, from poisonings, murder, suicide etc…and been written up as ‘unknown’ in order to palcate the families. If you really think about the number in question…it begins to seem preposterously large. Let’s say…just for arguments sake, that about 10-20% of illegal abortions led to complications which in turn led to death. So…10k deaths…50-100k abortions performed illegally per year? From statistics of that era…there’s a listing of about 50,000 deaths of women of childbearing age per annum. To say that 1 in 5 died because of botched abortions? I’m sorry…but that just doesn’t fly. > [@](#): > > Dr. Bernard Nathanson, co-founder of the National Abortion Rights Action League, admits his group lied about the number of women who died from legal abortions when testifying before the Supreme Court in 1972. “We spoke of 5,000 - 10,000 deaths a year… I confess that I knew the figures were totally false … it was a useful figure, widely accepted, so why go out of our way to correct it with honest statistics?” > [@](#): > > In the July 1960 edition of the American Journal of Public Health, an article by Dr. Mary Calderon, then medical director of Planned Parenthood, which stated: > _“90% of illegal abortions are being done by physicians. Call them what you will, abortionists, or anything else, they are still physicians, trained as such; … They must do a pretty good job if the death rate is as low as it is… Abortion, whether therapeutic or illegal, is in the main no longer dangerous, because it is being done well by physicians.”_ ---
**Author:** ![Chotii](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/71e660/32.png) [@Chotii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chotii)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2004, 3:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/problem-with-the-abortion-column/247534/6 "2004-05-29T03:38:26Z")
> [@MrBishop](#): > > If you really think about the number in question…it begins to seem preposterously large. Let’s say…just for arguments sake, that about 10-20% of illegal abortions led to complications which in turn led to death. So…10k deaths…50-100k abortions performed illegally per year? > > From statistics of that era…there’s a listing of about 50,000 deaths of women of childbearing age per annum. To say that 1 in 5 died because of botched abortions? I’m sorry…but that just doesn’t fly. There’s also (I think) the general idea that women were not only so desperate, but also so unaware of physical risks, that 10,000 of them a year would engage in body-destroying actions. We’ve all heard of the lye enemas, the rusty coat-hangers, and all that - but the reality was more likely to be that women would take a ‘medicine’ to ‘bring on their courses’ (there are a number of herbs that work pretty well to bring on a miscarriage - even Vitamin C will do it in large enough doses, early on) or (according to my grandmother) used a crochet hook or a knitting needle. Surely, some women were both desperate and ignorant. Surely, too, some had god knows what done to them by anything-but-sterile-procedure “back alley” abortionists. But I honestly don’t think it does _anyone_ any good to create the image that all women were so desperate as to resort to a rusty coat hanger, nor that they had no other options available, even when the procedure was illegal. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2004, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/problem-with-the-abortion-column/247534/7 "2004-05-29T16:10:45Z")
In 1970, 10,000 deaths from abortions would have been a big thing. (That is, if it were true, and, as Cecil has mentioned, it wasn’t true.) 10,000 deaths from abortions in, say, 1870 wouldn’t have been that big a thing in comparison with other sorts of death for women of child-bearing age. As recently as 1870, lots of women died in childbirth. Maybe it wasn’t that big a deal in 1870 to get an abortion, even if it really was that dangerous, since so many women died without making it through their child-bearing years. I’m not so certain about 1940, though. I would have thought that by that time dying in childbirth was much less common than it was in 1870. I haven’t seen the statistics, though. Can anyone tell us how many births there were per year (in the U.S.) for the years 1870 through 1970 and how many deaths of women in childbirth there were for those years? ---
**Author:** ![Jonathan\_Chance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jonathan_chance/32/701_2.png) [@Jonathan\_Chance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jonathan_Chance)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2004, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/problem-with-the-abortion-column/247534/8 "2004-05-29T16:35:31Z")
A little something to throw in the hopper for you, Wendell… 1860 Death in Childbirth - 4066 1860 Death - Disease of the Uterus - 244 1860 Death - Unknown - 17526 Those are just for women and from the 1860 census. A cursory reading doesn’t give me birth numbers. ---
**Author:** ![Herr\_Orange](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e19adc/32.png) [@Herr\_Orange](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Herr_Orange)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2004, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/problem-with-the-abortion-column/247534/9 "2004-05-29T16:53:30Z")
I also noticed that he skipped any deaths on the other side of the fence. > [@](#): > > (The death total for all abortions, including legal ones, was 88.) That figure is low, thanks to underreporting, but in any case the number of deaths had been dropping sharply for the previous few years. Hmmm maybe deaths of the mother, but of the murdered infant, those are much higher. Do they not count? ---
**Author:** ![Mathochist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c89c15/32.png) [@Mathochist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mathochist)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2004, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/problem-with-the-abortion-column/247534/10 "2004-05-29T18:12:53Z")
> [@Herr Orange](#): > > Hmmm maybe deaths of the mother, but of the murdered infant, those are much higher. Do they not count? Of course not. The figure was used to justify the expansion of abortion rights, which means they wouldn’t have considered it murder. Oh, and just to be pedantic: it’s not murder 'round these parts. The debate is open whether or not it’s homicide, and murder is a strictly legally defined term. ---
**Author:** ![GillianBoardman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bc79bd/32.png) [@GillianBoardman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GillianBoardman)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2004, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/problem-with-the-abortion-column/247534/11 "2004-05-29T18:26:26Z")
> [@Herr Orange](#): > > I also noticed that he skipped any deaths on the other side of the fence. > > Hmmm maybe deaths of the mother, but of the murdered infant, those are much higher. Do they not count? Not to this particular question, no. What’s at debate is the question of whether the numbers of maternal deaths was inflated. Cecil says yes, they were, but since it was underreported nobody can really say by how many. This question isn’t about the morality of abortion, this isn’t the forum for that question, there is a forum for that and other moral debates on this message board, and you shouldn’t be dragging it in here. At least that’s what I think the rules clearly state. ---
**Author:** ![GillianBoardman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bc79bd/32.png) [@GillianBoardman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GillianBoardman)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2004, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/problem-with-the-abortion-column/247534/12 "2004-05-29T18:29:46Z")
Sorry, got distracted by actual work, and posted too late. Didn’t mean to beat the dead horse! :smack: ---
**Author:** ![AskNott](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asknott/32/5790_2.png) [@AskNott](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AskNott)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2004, 10:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/problem-with-the-abortion-column/247534/13 "2004-05-29T22:35:17Z")
The issue **Herr Orange** wants to raise, that of whether a fetus is legally a person, is clearly settled in the US courts. Now, if he wants to debate the moral pros and cons of abortion and his beliefs about the start time of personhood, he’s welcome to do so in Great Debates. That ground has been plowed over there countless times, and I’m sure **Herr Orange’s** rototiller will be welcome there. ---
**Author:** ![rfgdxm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c0e974/32.png) [@rfgdxm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rfgdxm)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2004, 3:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/problem-with-the-abortion-column/247534/14 "2004-05-30T03:25:53Z")
> [@MrBishop](#): > > From statistics of that era…there’s a listing of about 50,000 deaths of women of childbearing age per annum. To say that 1 in 5 died because of botched abortions? I’m sorry…but that just doesn’t fly. Can anyone independent verify that the above statistic is accurate? Use for “women of childbearing age per annum” all females between the ages of 13 and 40. If the number of women that age who died annually is indeed in the ballpark of 50,000 deaths, then the claim of 10,000 deaths from botched abortions annually has gotta be way high. I have a fairly good idea of how this sort of medical statistical reporting works in the real world. Given that abortion back then was illegal, and also had a strong social stigma, only a very small percent of women who ended up in the ER from a botched abortion would admit they had got an abortion. They’d just say something was wrong in the area of the uterus, and list specific symptoms. And, the hospital would just be trying to save their life, and not worrying about exactly what the cause was. As such, unless the woman actually said that she had an abortion, only in cases where this was totally obvious would they report abortion as being involved in the death. Cecil wrote “reported deaths due to illegal abortion declined from 39 in 1972”. That has got to be low from the real number by a minimum of a factor of 10. As such, my SWAG here is that the real number is is at least many hundreds, and less than thousands. 500-1000 would be my best estimate. And, SHAME on Cecil for writing: “To be fair, the number Goodman uses is consistent with estimates that were widely cited prior to the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973. But some say those numbers were knowingly inflated by proponents of abortion rights. The star witness for this claim is Bernard Nathanson, a former abortion clinic doctor who in 1969 cofounded the group now called NARAL Pro-Choice America (the letters originally stood for National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws). Since Roe, though, he’s turned against his former comrades–he made the highly controversial 1984 antiabortion film The Silent Scream and has authored several books describing his conversion on this issue and critiquing the abortion-rights movement. In Aborting America (1979) Nathanson writes: “In NARAL we generally emphasized the drama of the individual case, not the mass statistics, but when we spoke of the latter it was always ‘5,000 to 10,000 deaths a year.’ I confess that I knew the figures were totally false, and I suppose the others did too if they stopped to think of it. But in the ‘morality’ of our revolution, it was a useful figure, widely accepted, so why go out of our way to correct it with honest statistics?” (Emphasis is his.)” “Star witness”??? Cecil must have been on powerful mind altering drugs when he wrote that baloney. Nathanson at this point was an anti-abortion zealot. Nathanson basically has NO credibility. He had every reason to lie about NARAL’s numbers. Why believe that Nathanson was telling the truth later, when while doing so claiming that he was a liar in the past? ---
**Author:** ![beagledave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6de8d8/32.png) [@beagledave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beagledave)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2004, 5:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/problem-with-the-abortion-column/247534/15 "2004-05-30T17:35:02Z")
> [@rfgdxm](#): > > “Star witness”??? Cecil must have been on powerful mind altering drugs when he wrote that baloney. Nathanson at this point was an anti-abortion zealot. Nathanson basically has NO credibility. He had every reason to lie about NARAL’s numbers. Why believe that Nathanson was telling the truth later, when while doing so claiming that he was a liar in the past? Do pro choice “zealots” have any credibility? Do pro choice “zealots” have “every reason” to lie about abortion related stats? (actually…apparently Ms. Goodman already demonstarted the answer to that one, I guess…) Is is the “zealotry” that makes his statements less credible…or just the fact that he is not pro choice? ---
**Author:** ![Mathochist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c89c15/32.png) [@Mathochist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mathochist)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2004, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/problem-with-the-abortion-column/247534/16 "2004-05-30T18:26:26Z")
> [@beagledave](#): > > Do pro choice “zealots” have any credibility? > > Do pro choice “zealots” have “every reason” to lie about abortion related stats? (actually…apparently Ms. Goodman already demonstarted the answer to that one, I guess…) > > Is is the “zealotry” that makes his statements less credible…or just the fact that he is not pro choice? Please, people. GD or the Pit. ---
**Author:** ![rfgdxm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c0e974/32.png) [@rfgdxm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rfgdxm)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2004, 10:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/problem-with-the-abortion-column/247534/17 "2004-05-30T22:17:04Z")
> [@beagledave](#): > > Do pro choice “zealots” have any credibility? > > Do pro choice “zealots” have “every reason” to lie about abortion related stats? (actually…apparently Ms. Goodman already demonstarted the answer to that one, I guess…) > > Is is the “zealotry” that makes his statements less credible…or just the fact that he is not pro choice? It’s his zealotry, rather than which side of the issue he is on (at the moment), that calls into question his credibility. I’d equally question calling some ultra-pro choice zealot as being a “star witness” about these statististics. If you read my post, I stated that I considered 5,000-10,000 deaths a year to be unbelievably high. ---
**Author:** ![Dan\_Norder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4af34b/32.png) [@Dan\_Norder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dan_Norder)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2004, 11:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/problem-with-the-abortion-column/247534/18 "2004-05-30T23:38:46Z")
> [@MrBishop](#): > > From statistics of that era…there’s a listing of about 50,000 deaths of women of childbearing age per annum. To say that 1 in 5 died because of botched abortions? I’m sorry…but that just doesn’t fly. 1 in 5 sounds plausible to me… Why doesn’t that fly? I tend to think the number as used today in these arguments is conveniently rounded up from severe politically based reasoning (much like other percentages used in societal causes all over the political spectrum), but it’s not so completely outrageous for some eras. ---
**Author:** ![Mathochist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c89c15/32.png) [@Mathochist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mathochist)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2004, 6:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/problem-with-the-abortion-column/247534/19 "2004-05-31T06:18:41Z")
> [@Dan Norder](#): > > 1 in 5 sounds plausible to me… Why doesn’t that fly? 1 in 5 what? 1 in five women having abortions died? maybe. What’s at issue is whether or not 1 in 5 women of childbearing age who died _at all_ died of complications from an illegal abortion. ---
**Author:** ![bienville](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4bbf92/32.png) [@bienville](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bienville)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2004, 12:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/problem-with-the-abortion-column/247534/20 "2004-05-31T12:13:16Z")
Um . . . [link, please?](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/040528.html) :smack: [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/problem-with-the-abortion-column/247534.md?page=2)