The figure of 5,000 may be a minimum estimate.” Richard Schwarz, SEPTIC ABORTION 7 (1968); “One recent study at the University of California...
Read More’s School of Public Health estimated 5,000 to 10,000 abortion deaths annually.” Lawrence Lader, ABORTION 3 (1966);
“[M]ore than five thousand women may have died as a direct result [of criminal abortion in the United States in 1962].” Zad Leavy & Jerome M. Kummer, Criminal Abortion: Human Hardship and Unyielding Laws, 35 S. CAL. L. REV. 123, 124 (1962);
“Taussig and others have concluded that the abortion death rate during the late 1920s was about 1.2% and amounted to over 8,000 deaths per year.” Russell S. Fisher, Criminal Abortion, in Harold Rosen, THERAPEUTIC ABORTION, MEDICAL PSYCHIATRIC, LEGAL, ANTHROPOLOGICAL, AND RELIGIOUS CONSIDERATIONS 8 (1954).
For me this is the reason for supporting reproductive rights. It's not an issue of personal autonomy. It is the simple fact that when abortion is inaccessible, women die and I just refuse to accept that.
When I said, "You are hypocrites," (admittedly an overstatement but I've never been one to shy away from heavy-handed rhetoric) I was speaking to the fact that in all the debates I've had over this issue, I've never heard a good response from somebody from the anti-abortion side as to what they have to say about those 5,000 women every year who died from illegal and unsafe abortions.
When I said that Roe saves lives, these are the lives I'm talking about.There are women I care about who very possibly could have been in danger if they had not been able to see a doctor to terminate their pregnancy and admittedly that makes this issue very personal to me.
Figuring in the 5,000 women who died every year from illegal abortions, a conservative estimate would put the number of womens' lives that Roe saved at well over 150,000.
And that is simply why I am pro-choice.
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