Well, if you want a concrete example, El Salvador does not allow abortions for any reason, not even the health of the mother. They used to allow for it in the past, and they voted in 1997 to make it illegal in every medical case. This is not mentioning the recent famous case in Ireland where medical staff put off removing a fetus in the process of miscarrying, and as a result, the mother died of sepsis (because removing it too early would be an abortion, and that was illegal). So yes, there are certainly cases where the health of the mother has not been considered a good enough reason, and there have even been countries that have regressed to laws of this type.
Why not make it a more realistic hypothetical:
Assuming, that
(1) You are pregnant, and
(2) You really don’t want to carry the pregnancy to term, and
(3) you live in the center of a large state which has outlawed abortion. Nearby states have also outlawed abortion.
(4) You won’t face any legal penalty for getting an abortion anyway, but the illegal clinics or do-it-yourself methods carry an extreme risk of death or serious injury.
(5) You can’t afford to travel to a coastal state where abortion is still legal
Would you carry the pregnancy to term or get a hazardous abortion?
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Because that’s a situation that a lot of real women will be in, and it doesn’t require any weird rules.
I would have the baby, more than likely. I’m too poor to pay for illegal operations and I don’t have the nerve for do-it-yourself. Any hospital in the US would take me if I came in to the ER in labor, and I’d either live with my sin and just be all the poorer or if my situation was too desperate I’d walk away after the birth.
This is probably a good time to mention that it’s not hard to perform abortions at home - provided you do it early enough.
There are videos and books that will teach how to perform a procedure called menstrual extraction. This is a basic sort of vacuum-powered procedure that works well in the first two months. It also works as a means of ending your period in just a couple of hours, even if you’re not pregnant!
The tools needed for this are easy to acquire. You can buy kits ready made online, of course. Here’s a site that gives an overview.
There are also the drugs protocols, of course. Nowadays, these safe & effective medicines are easy to acquire and are the number one way of ending early pregnancies. Again - the earlier you get these, the better they will work.
Taken together, mifepristone and misoprostol will end 95% of pregnancies in the first two months. It safe to take after two months, but it becomes less effective.
Misoprostal can also be taken by itself, but it’s not quite as effective. Again, earlier is better. This drug, with the brand name Cytotec, is used as an ulcer treatment. In fact, it can cause miscarriages in women who might not want abortions, so handle with caution.
Both of these drugs, together and alone, are generally safe to use. In some countries they are even available without prescriptions. But like all drugs, they can cause side effects, so women who take them should be vigilant and call an ambulance or friend if the bleeding becomes too heavy.
Finally, women-led groups, taking inspiration from the Jane Collective, are learning to provide abortions at home as outpatient procedures. The internet and society’s growing acceptance for women-led health management has made it easier to learn and teach the procedures necessary for managing reproductive choices. For now, Planned Parenthood is still our best resource. But it’s not our only resource. Knowledge, as we all know, is power.
I very much think there would be an underground selling of abortion pills, for one thing. As long as they are originally purchased from places where abortion is legal and regulated, they’d be safe enough.
But, in a true hypothetical world where abortion is unsafe and illegal, I would think that what would happen is just a lot of babies being discarded or even killed after birth, with it reported as a stillbirth. The safer of the unsafe methods might be tried to cause an actual stillbirth.
This was the case in the past, and I see no reason for it to not go back to being the case should society revert to the past.
Unless it was medically necessarily, I’d probably just go through with the pregnancy. Only because the idea of a DIY abortion scares the shit out of me – I’ve read way too many horror stories.