If you are bothered by the
following scenario, help prevent unwanted pregnancies before they happen. Proper
contraceptive measures are critical, among other means.
Bottom
line: there needs to be more efficient ways to prevent
an unwanted pregnancy in the first place.
The Negative Consequences of
Abortion if Made Illegal:
[NOTE: as expressed by a male physician]
A legal
abortion connotes a procedure performed by a licensed medical professional in a
clean, sterile environment, with clean, sterile tools. But what about illegal abortions?
Those who push for more restrictions on
abortion access - really, those who push for abortion to be made illegal - seem unwilling to acknowledge
the bona fide disastrous alternatives. Many who are anti-choice have no
memories of what life was like for woman before Roe v. Wade (1973), nor do they ever truly want
to concede the ghastly truth. We know abortion
rates stay fairly steady, regardless of legality.
What options would exist, then, for those without the money or connections to a
discrete physician should abortion one day be made illegal? To answer these
questions, retired physician Waldo L. Fielding, M.D. wrote an
article for publication
in 2008; in it, he described what he saw while working as a gynecologist in New
York City from 1948 to 1958. Here are his words:
The familiar symbol of illegal abortion is the
infamous “coat hanger” — in other words, the ascribed symbol.
Nonetheless, in no certain terms, is this device a myth. In my years in New
York, several women arrived with a wire hanger still in place. Whoever put it
in — perhaps the patient herself — found it ensnared in the cervix and could
not remove it.
Almost any implement you can imagine had been,
and was, used to start an abortion — darning needles, crochet hooks,
cut-glass salt shakers, soda bottles, the latter sometimes intact, yet sometimes
with the top broken off.
Another method that I did not encounter
personally, but heard about from colleagues in other hospitals, was a soap
solution forced through the cervical canal with a syringe. This could cause
almost immediate death if a bubble in the solution entered a woman's blood
vessel and was transported to the heart as an air embolus.
The worst case I saw, and one I hope no one
else will ever have to face, was that of a nurse who was admitted with what
looked like a partly delivered umbilical cord. Yet as soon as we examined her,
we realized that what we thought was the cord was, in fact, part of her own intestine,
which had been 'hooked' and torn by whatever implement had been used in the
abortion. It took six hours of surgery to remove her infected uterus and
ovaries and repair the part of the bowel that was still functional and had not
undergone necrosis.
"In the afternoon, the day before her
admission, she had attempted to pass into the uterus a knitting needle made
from bone material…During the attempt, the needle broke off short, leaving
about half of it inside her body…For the next four days the woman's temperature
gradually rose, until on the fifth day after admission it was 102.2 F, her pulse
rate 100. On the evening of this day, uterine hemorrhage occurred…and at 6:30
next morning the patient aborted a fetus some 4 in. in length…The needle had
just missed the right border of the rectum, the wall of the sigmoid bowel being
slightly torn superficially…"
Believing herself to be pregnant she had, on
the afternoon preceding admission, injected into her uterus the contents of a medical
syringe filled with turpentine and water. Immediately thereafter, she
experienced a sharp burning sensation which “went all through me up to my
chest.” This was followed by a convulsive seizure. Two hours later she began to
have paroxysms of coughing productive of a bloody sputum.
A case
history from 1961 describes
two women’s attempts to self-abort with Lysol. One woman survived. The
other did not.
The second patient was a 26-year-old French
Canadian woman, married, but separated from her husband. She was…3 ½ months
pregnant. She had used a vaginal douche of concentrated Lysol solution 25 hours
before admission…On examination there was florid erythema of the thighs and vulva. Pieces of
placental tissue were passed, but the abortion remained incomplete. The day
after admission renal shut-down ensued…A full-blown picture of severe
nephrosis [kidney
disease] developed rapidly in this case…The patient’s condition consequently deteriorated
rapidly and she died on the sixth day in acute
pulmonary edema [abnormal
fluid in the lungs].
…this 21-year-old single girl…went to an
abortionist who inserted a catheter and wire into her cervix. The
wire was removed after four days when chills, fever, crampy lower abdominal
pain, nausea, and vomiting developed. Symptoms persisted until she came to the
emergency ward with a temperature of 103 F (39.4 C) and a shaking chill…Her
abdomen was rigid, with diffuse tenderness and complete absence of bowel
sounds. There was tenderness, also, on pelvic and rectal palpation, the uterus
was enlarged with necrotic [dead] tissue extruding from the cervix…She was
discharged to her home after 17 days, only to return 10 days later with a
temperature of 105 F (40.6 C)…Two days later…an exploratory laporotomy was done…and total hysterectomy [removal
of the uterus]… She became…sterile at the age of only 21.
…this 25-year-old married woman was given a soap-and-bleach
douche by an abortionist. Following the douche, fever and chills
developed with vaginal bleeding and crampy lower abdominal pain. On admission
she had a temperature of 103 F (39.4 C), which rose to 106 F (41.4 C)…an emergency
hysterectomy was done, following which she had cardiac arrest. She was
resuscitated, but arrested a second time, and this time did not respond to medical
resuscitation.
Some women attempted to induce miscarriage by
drinking poisons made from either aloe, ergot of rye, or
savin-oil; teas made from tansy, pennyroyal, or
rue, as well as deadly nightshade; high
doses of vitamin C,
and other natural “remedies.”
"The first time I started to think about
abortion was in 1960, when I was in my second year of medical school. I was
assigned the case of a young woman who had died of a septic abortion. She had
aborted herself using slippery elm bark…The young woman in our case
developed an overwhelming infection. At autopsy confirmed she had multiple
abscesses throughout her body, in her brain, lungs, liver and abdomen".
I
have never forgotten that case.
…
I will never forget the 17-year-old girl lying
on a stretcher with 6 feet of small bowel protruding from her vagina either.
She actually survived.
I will never forget the jaundiced woman in irreversible
liver and kidney failure, in septic shock, with very severe anemia, whose life
we were NOT able to save.
Some women were also told that they could
induce miscarriage by undergoing physical stress, such as vigorous exercise, lifting
heavy objects, jumping off tables, belly-flopping onto a hard surface,
receiving punches, kicks or other blows to their stomachs, or throwing
themselves down a flight of stairs.
None of these methods were guaranteed to work.
Contrariwise, women would be left injured, ill, sterile, or dead. Is all of this
hard for you to read? It should be. That
was the reality of pre-Roe America, and for some, it is still their
reality. Those who can’t afford abortions, can’t get to clinics, or can’t tell anyone about their situation, turn to
these methods, and worse. In countries where abortion is still illegal, this is
all that people are offered. You need to understand that not all woman are
allowed to have any voice at all as to whether they engage in sexual intercourse...and,
as a result, pregnancy often follows. Many are faced with bringing a child into
abject poverty... only to watch them suffer or perhaps die. Is this considered
the lesser of two evils, or genuinely humane?
Lysol, carbonic acid, coat hangers, stairs,
and fists are not surgical
instruments. Back alleys, grimy kitchens, and squalid motel rooms are not operating rooms.
Regardless of your opinion on abortion, this
is what happens when abortion is no longer available. History categorically
proves this.
Keeping abortion legal is the only moral
option.
