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The problem is that making abortion illegal won't prevent abortions, it'll simply drive the practice back underground. Abortion was made legal to prevent the heartbreaking calamities that used to happen to desperate girls in back-alley 'clinics'. There were no rules about the term of pregnancy, no standards of practice or even cleanliness, no follow-up, no recourse, no hope.
Exactly many women were so desperate not to continue an unwanted pregnancy that even knowing the dangers of a illegal abortions they were willing to risk their lives to end the pregnancy.
From this article:
Repairing the Damage, Before Roe
< SNIP>
I am a retired gynecologist, in my mid-80s. My early formal training in my specialty was spent in New York City, from 1948 to 1953, in two of the city’s large municipal hospitals.
There I saw and treated almost every complication of illegal abortion that one could conjure,
done either by the patient herself or by an abortionist — often unknowing, unskilled and probably uncaring. Yet the patient never told us who did the work, or where and under what conditions it was performed. She was in dire need of our help to complete the process or, as frequently was the case, to correct what damage might have been done.
< SNIP>
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 intestine, which had been hooked and torn by whatever implement had been used in the abortion.
It took six hours of surgery to remove the infected uterus and ovaries and repair the part of the bowel that was still functional.
It is important to remember that Roe v. Wade did not mean that abortions could be performed. They have always been done, dating from ancient Greek days.
What Roe said was that ending a pregnancy could be carried out by medical personnel, in a medically accepted setting, thus conferring on women, finally, the full rights of first-class citizens — and freeing their doctors to treat them as such.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/03/h...=1&adxnnlx=1337817945-qUmxUKfKUDcWQfT4MEbi5A&