I’m saying that instead of legal, safe, medically supervised abortions, we’d see illegal and unsafe ones. “Medical abortion” is the common term to refer to abortion via drugs, as opposed to “surgical abortion”, done by vacuum aspiration, D&C or, very rarely, D&X (so called “partial-birth” abortion.)
Even RU-486 needs medical supervision to make sure all the uterine contents are expelled so no infection sets in. If it’s not monitored by a doctor or midwife, I don’t consider it safe. Would I use it, without medical supervision, if it was my only option? Hell yes, but I’d be scared. I would expect RU-486 to become available on the black market, yes. But there would also be women looking for cheaper more available alternatives that wouldn’t be…quite so illegal. I mean, it was just TEA, right? I was just having a nice cup of herbal tea and how was I to know it would cause a miscarriage, officer?
I mean, if people are (and they are) considering and performing herbal abortions now, when both medical and surgical abortions are legal, I can only see that number increasing if they’re made illegal. You’d be surprised how many people would prefer a “miscarriage”, a “natural” one from “naturally” toxic plants, rather than a safe surgical or pharmaceutical “abortion”.
Likewise, I expect “accidents” like women falling down stairs or running into counter corners or being hit by boyfriends with fists or baseball bats to induce miscarriage would become popular again, too. Abortion rates are not lower where abortion is illegal. *Safe *abortion rates, however, are.
Those would be the Catholic Right to Lifers. Although not all of us.
I am Catholic and pro-life, but don’t believe in my churches teaching about artificial birth control. And although I can’t find a site, I’ve heard a figure that something like around 90% or more of Catholics here in America also don’t believe in the churches teaching on artificial birth control.
Abortion is still illegal in N Ireland, 41 years after the Abortion Act made it legal and free in the rest of the UK. Women here still have abortions - around 40 women a week - but they have to go to England/Scotland to get them and pay up to £2000 in travel, accommodation and medical costs (they have to pay privately as they can’t get an abortion on the NHS since they won’t be registered with a doctor in that area). Women on Web offers the RU486 pills online - I don’t know anyone who has done that though - but you have to go to hospital afterwards and say you had a ‘miscarriage’ so you can get a checkup.
If Roe V Wade was overturned women would still find ways to have abortions, whether safe or not. They do here.
This. I went to high school in a picket fence neighborhood with very smart kids, mostly middle class. A few girls in my grade got pregnant. No one had a baby. Only one had a surgical abortion (and even she had to travel across two states because she was so far in). The one who ‘got food poisoning’ and the one who was ‘hit with the soccer ball’ were as much in denial as girls who ignore pregnancy symptoms 'til prom night, but sure enough that they couldn’t be mothers. Enough pro-lifers end up in abortion clinics– it seems only natural that people who support abortion can’t bear to make an active (rather than passive) decision about the procedure.