Not an abortion debate, but looking for data: In places or time periods when abortion was illegal, generally how many women with unwanted pregnancies chose to carry them to term, and how many opted for DIY or illegal abortions?
Data on that is nearly impossible to find - as good data is on any activity which is illegal or done at home.
I wonder if you might have more luck finding out how many women died / were injured from botched DIY abortions / attempts. Deaths (and their causes) / hospitalizations are relatively well-documented.
We can look at modern day examples and it might not be as high as we think. Malta is the only country in Europe with illegal abortion. They have about 4000 births a year. Roughly 70 women a year travel to the UK to get an abortion. That’s a low estimate since they could travel to other countries as well, but the UK is assumed to be their main destination. About 20% of UK pregnancies end in abortion, so we should assume 1000 abortions if it were legal. The number is obviously much, much lower.
We can also look at maternal mortality to look for botched abortions and largely it tracks with other EU countries. What is interesting though is that the birth rate in Malta is extremely low. What seems to be happening is high levels of birth control use with 91% of people reportedly using some form.
Back in Victorian times, some con men sent out blackmail letters to the women in the equivalent of the city directory accusing them of having had, or contemplated having an abortion. They got money from around 10% of those they contacted.
While you can argue what the numbers actually mean, it’s clear that abortion wasn’t all that rare back then.
This book where the author looked at google trends and google searches to figure out what people really do and really believe had some interesting parts about how information on how searches for info on how to terminate a pregnancy is higher in areas with abortion restrictions.
I believe he said birth rates in areas with easy access to abortion are the same as areas w/o abortion. And pregnancy rates are the same, so the missing pregnancies are from self induced abortions. I’m not sure if there is a number though.
https://www.populationconnectionaction.org/2017/06/15/abortioncrisis/
During the four years I was in college, 1967-1971, three women in the various colleges I went to died from illegal/self abortions, two women committed suicide and were later found to be pregnant (one had a friend who knew she was pregnant), and who knows how many did something else. I know a few who did. One of the ones who died, BTW, already had four children. She was 29 and had just gotten it together to to back to school.
That’s too many.