Bloodless Coup

Consequences of Reducing Women's Reproductive Autonomy

As efforts to reduce women's access to basic reproductive healthcare, contraception, and abortion continue, it pays to remember the consequences. The efforts of those who think they and their god have more to say about your body than you do have been showing results in restricted and reduced access to reproductive health care for women. The real consequences in women's lives?

More U.S. women are having unwanted babies.

U.S. women of childbearing age who were surveyed in 2002 revealed that 14 percent of their recent births were unwanted at the time of conception, federal researchers said Monday.

In a similar 1995 survey, only 9 percent were unwanted at the time of conception.

The article notes that the anti-choice view is that the country is experiencing a moral shift away from abortion. If they were right though, wouldn't the reports of unwanted pregnancies show a downward trend, reflecting a shift toward the acceptance of pregnancy (i.e. every pregnancy is wanted)? Rather than measuring a deep realignment of moral values (given that those reporting unwanted pregnancies is up not down) it is likely those numbers reflect the difficulty women have in getting access to clinics for birth control, and abortion. As I pointed out before, clinics don't just provide abortion, but also birth control, education, and care for those who want to be pregnant.

The number of U.S. abortion providers fell steadily in the last decade, from 2,400 in 1992 to 1,800 in 2000. The reason is not clearly known, although increasing government restrictions of abortions have made it increasingly difficult to provide the procedure, Finer said.

And in addition to the women who are continuing unwanted pregnancies, there are those who aren't. Illegal abortions are on the rise in the United States (hat tip Feministing).

However, Jen's abortion-providing colleagues in other parts of the country, who communicate their experiences through a listserv, share her observation of a recent perceptible rise in illegal abortion in their clinics as well. Indeed, in another eerie echo from the pre-Roe era, the increase in illegal abortion in Jen's area is so significant that a doctor from the hospital mentioned above contacted her. He asked for her help in setting up a special ward for the treatment of illegal abortions when Roe is overturned, because he knows the caseload will mushroom then. "He didn't say 'if' -- he said 'when,'" Jen said. "Chills ran down my spine."

snip

The physical tragedies we are witnessing due to the return of illegal abortion are compounded by the social ones. Recently, two teenage couples, one in Michigan and the other in Texas, faced unwanted pregnancies. Both states have parental consent provisions; in both cases, the young couples received misleading information (in one instance from an anti-abortion "Crisis Pregnancy Center;" in the other, from a private physician's office) about how to obtain a legal abortion. In Michigan, the young man, with his girlfriend's approval, hit her abdomen repeatedly with a baseball bat until she miscarried; in Texas, again with the girlfriend's consent, the male stomped on his girlfriend's belly, producing a stillbirth of twins. Both young men were arrested, and the Texan, Geraldo Flores, is now serving a life sentence for fetal homicide.

It's sick that people would resort to this. It's sick that they can't get accurate information and access to medical care. It's sick that a young woman would submit to this kind of treatment from someone who was supposed to love her. And it's sick that the Crisis Pregnancy Centers are complicit in outcomes like this.

Finally, maternal death from pregnancy complication also increases where access to abortion is reduced. Statistically, as more pregnancies come to term, more women will suffer complications. In additional to "normal" complications to "normal" - though unwanted - pregnancies, there are the women for whom pregnancy carries significant physical and mental threats to her health and well-being, and who would be prevented from safe access to abortion. The WHO reports that "maternal deaths, not abortions, is the most visible consequence of legal restrictions on abortion."

That WHO report is cited in this Planned Parenthood report. People look at reports like that and think that it makes no sense to compare the United States to developing countries, and they think that it can't happen here. One of the tables shows that even in the US, where legal abortion is safer than pregnancy, that the death rate for illegal abortion is over 50 times higher than the rate for legal abortion (again, according to the WHO).

These are real consequences for women, for wives, for students, for mothers, and for everyone who loves a woman and wants her life to be healthy and independent and equally free to pursue her life, her liberty, and her happiness.

Posted by binky at January 29, 2006 04:42 PM | TrackBack | Posted to Extremism | Health | Religion | Reproductive Autonomy