# 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:** 12\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![John\_W.Kennedy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_w.kennedy/32/1031_2.png) [@John\_W.Kennedy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_W.Kennedy)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2004, 1:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/problem-with-the-abortion-column/247534/21 "2004-05-31T13:25:23Z")
> [@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. I believe you are misreading Cecil’s statement, which is to the effect that the _younger_ Nathanson was the “star witness” in support of the higher figure, in which case the older Nathanson’s recantation must be seriously considered. ---
**Author:** ![Phlosphr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/c68b51/32.png) [@Phlosphr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Phlosphr)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2004, 2:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/problem-with-the-abortion-column/247534/22 "2004-05-31T14:59:01Z")
I really do not have much to add to this thread…however, I’d like to say the corresponding picture to cecil’s column is quite disturbing, and distasteful. Carry on. ---
**Author:** ![rfgdxm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c0e974/32.png) [@rfgdxm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rfgdxm)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2004, 4:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/problem-with-the-abortion-column/247534/23 "2004-05-31T16:06:48Z")
> [@Phlosphr](#): > > I really do not have much to add to this thread…however, I’d like to say the corresponding picture to cecil’s column is quite disturbing, and distasteful. That picture was just a stereotyped image consistent with what pro-choice people refer to about the days when abortions were performed by “back alley butchers”. Years ago women did get abortions from people who were like the guy in that picture. Particularly poor women. Years ago, wealthier women could find abortionists who did have some serious medical training; although such abortionists often were as stated in the report not in good standing with the medical profession. However, poor women had little choice other than abortionists who knew little about medicine. Also, the question was asking if 10,000 women a year died from illegal abortions? If _that_ were true (which Cecil responds almost surely was not), then the sort of people performing abortions would have had to be like that guy in the picture. ---
**Author:** ![C\_K\_Dexter\_Haven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b2d939/32.png) [@C\_K\_Dexter\_Haven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/C_K_Dexter_Haven)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2004, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/problem-with-the-abortion-column/247534/24 "2004-05-31T16:35:49Z")
The words “good taste” have never been applied to any of Slug’s pictures for THE STRAIGHT DOPE. ---
**Author:** ![Askance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/askance/32/8281_2.png) [@Askance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askance)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2004, 3:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/problem-with-the-abortion-column/247534/25 "2004-06-01T03:46:21Z")
> [@C K Dexter Haven](#): > > The words “good taste” have never been applied to any of Slug’s pictures for THE STRAIGHT DOPE. … except when prefaced by the words “not in”. ---
**Author:** ![JThunder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e95f7d/32.png) [@JThunder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JThunder)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2004, 4:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/problem-with-the-abortion-column/247534/26 "2004-06-02T04:58:04Z")
> [@Chotii](#): > > 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. Heck, it’s preposterious to think that they would deliberately use a _rusty_ coat hanger, when clean ones are so readily available. One would have to question the sanity of any woman who would resort to such means. I have yet to uncover _any_ reports of women dying from coat hanger abortions – or indeed, of [coat hanger abortions being performed at all](http://www.anglican.tk/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=544). ---
**Author:** ![Chotii](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/71e660/32.png) [@Chotii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chotii)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2004, 7:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/problem-with-the-abortion-column/247534/27 "2004-06-02T07:11:19Z")
I think [this little essay](http://www.ama-assn.org/amednews/2003/01/27/hlsa0127.htm) is fascinating. There’s a doctor in it quoted as saying “you can’t do an abortion with a coat-hanger, that’s stupid.” I suppose you might perforate your cervix or your vagina, and if the pain didn’t make you stop, you might possibly rupture the sac (maybe) and cause a miscarriage to follow. Maybe. ---
**Author:** ![lawoot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/35a633/32.png) [@lawoot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lawoot)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2004, 11:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/problem-with-the-abortion-column/247534/28 "2004-06-02T11:55:44Z")
Here’s [the original](http://www.postwritersgroup.com/archives/good0422.htm) Ellen Goodman article, where she states the 10,000 figure… And [the follow up](http://www.postwritersgroup.com/archives/good0511.htm) , where she goes into more detail (and responds to those who don’t like the 10,000 figure). ---
**Author:** ![JillGat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/9fc29f/32.png) [@JillGat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JillGat)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2004, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/problem-with-the-abortion-column/247534/29 "2004-06-03T15:20:07Z")
I have no problem with people who honestly oppose abortion on spiritual grounds (I wish they wouldn’t usually be the same people who also fight sex education and access to family planning services, but that’s for another thread). My problem is when opponents to abortion - or people on either side of this issue, for that matter - present biased, scientifically flawed arguments to try to support their case. I agree that Bernard Nathanson is an “iffy” witness for this column, at best. His testimonies, and particularly his film, “The Silent Scream” are riddled with scientific, medical, and legal inaccuracies. It is unfortunate that accurate, complete data are not collected on morbidity and mortality associated with abortions performed outside of qualified medical facilities. Because of the stigma associated with abortion, we’ll probably never have reliable statistics about this. It’s worth mentioning that in countries where abortion is illegal there are often limited resources for women’s health as a whole, and this complicates any efforts to separate out and compare what causes premature death in women of child-bearing age. When Reagan was president, and now that Bush is in, U.S. funds have been withdrawn from any women’s health programs overseas in which abortions are one of the services offered or even referred to (even though abortion is legal in the US). This means that, along with the number of illegal abortions going up, other gyno. services, family planning, sex education, and women’s health programs as a whole etc. in some needy parts of the world have been compromised - or stopped - as well when when international aid dried up. ---
**Author:** ![tracer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tracer/32/20578_2.png) [@tracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tracer)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2004, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/problem-with-the-abortion-column/247534/30 "2004-06-03T21:12:19Z")
> [@Captain Amazing](#): > > I don’t parse the quotation that way. Well, apparently Cecil did, because the **title** of the article is “When birth control was illegal, did 10,000 women a year die from illegal abortions?” ---
**Author:** ![Chotii](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/71e660/32.png) [@Chotii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chotii)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2004, 10:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/problem-with-the-abortion-column/247534/31 "2004-06-03T22:29:45Z")
> [@Mathochist](#): > > 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. Since, as has been noted already, there were other options for abortion to the type done with instruments of any sort - I mean, herbals and toxins - and some herbs are particularly strong abortifacients, and you can believe that women knew about them…it seems very unlikely to me that 1 in 5 women who died, died of complications from an illegal abortion. Keep mind what was killing people back then. EVERYTHING. With rampant communicable diseases, and no vaccines, and no antibiotics, you could come down with pneumonia one day, and be dead a couple of days later. I mean in 1840, not 1940, although I suppose it may have been true then, too. Scarlet Fever, Yellow Fever, Measels, infection from an incomplete spontaneous miscarriage (which by the way would have also accounted for a number of women who died of induced abortions - that’s why we have D&C’s today), undiagnosed and uncontrollable diabetes, lordie, the list goes on. I just find it hard to believe. Did women die of induced abortions of all kinds? Absolutely. Was it 1 in every 5 women who died? I doubt it. ---
**Author:** ![mythago](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/278dde/32.png) [@mythago](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mythago)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2004, 1:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/problem-with-the-abortion-column/247534/32 "2004-06-04T13:28:38Z")
> [@Chotii](#): > > Thbut 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. Er. Those ‘medicines’ and herbs that are abortifactients are poisonous and dangeorus, especially herbs; you can’t guess from a handful of tansy leaves exactly how powerful or concentrated the relevant chemicals are and how much is dangerous. Crochet hooks et al are not much better than coat hangers. First, the cervical os is very small and easy to damage if you stuff something into it; then you’re introducing a foreign object, with all its infection potential, into the uterus; and the truly life-threatening risk of a punctured uterus is still present. As Cecil pointed out, a lot of illegal abortions were performed outside the country, and/or by physicians and nurses working underground. > [@Outpits](#): > > 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. In 1965, the Supreme Court overturned the conviction of a doctor, in Connecticut, for giving contraceptives to a married couple. (_Griswold v. Connecticut_) It wasn’t until 1972 that the Supremes held that states could not criminalize giving contraception to unmarried persons, and that you couldn’t require people distributing say, vaginal foam, to be licensed physicians. (_Eisenstadt v. Baird_) In our modern age, it’s easy to assume that it was _always_ easy for a young woman to get the Pill from Planned Parenthood, or to walk into a Walgreen’s and anonymously buy a box of condoms off the shelf. T’aint so, anymore than it was the case that effective, affordable, safe contraception has been around “for centuries.” [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/problem-with-the-abortion-column/247534.md?page=1)