In 1973, the Roe v. Wade decision concluded that women have a constitutionally protected right to safe and legal abortions. That landmark decision wasn't the beginning of women having abortions; it was the end of women dying from abortions.
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President Donald Trump's decision to ban American aid to all organisations that in any way advocate women's right to abortions is very unfortunate. All experience shows that this kind of decision does not reduce the number of abortions; rather, it forces girls and women to revert to life-threatening procedures.
But Sarah Weddingtonhad never told me that what I was signing would allow women to use abortions as a form of birth control. We talked about truly desperate and needy women, not women already wearing maternity clothes.
Perhaps if we saw what was ahead of us, and glimpsed the follies, and misfortunes that would befall us later on, we would all stay in our mother's wombs, and then there would be nobody in the world but a great number of very fat, very irritated women.
Decades ago, women suffered through horrifying back-alley abortions. Or, they used dangerous methods when they had no other recourse. So when the Republican Party launched an all-out assault on women's health, pushing bills to limit access to vital services, we had to ask: Why is the GOP trying to send women back... to the back alley?
There is a huge reservoir of support for abortion rights from ordinary women. I hear all the time from women who had abortions and say it made possible the good life they went on to have. Social shaming silences too many.
At the end of the two years that I was the director [of the Center for Reproductive and Sexual Health in Manhattan], we had done 60,000 abortions. [During my life] I myself, with my own hands, have done 5,000 abortions. I have supervised another 10,000 that residents have done under my direction. So I have 75,000 abortions in my life. Those are pretty good credentials to speak on the subject of abortion.
I had very supportive parents that made the way for me, even at a time when there were very few women - no women, really; maybe two or three women - and very few, fewer than that, African-American women heading in this direction, so there were very few people to look up to. You just had to have faith.
Women need not always keep their mouths shut and their wombs open.
Men worry about childcare with their wallets, women feel it in their wombs.
Another myth we fed to the public through the media was that legalizing abortion would only mean that the abortions taking place i1legally would then be done legally. In fact, of course, abortion is now being used as a primary method of birth control in the U.S. and the annual number of abortions has increased by 1,500 percent since legalization.
There are women who live in U.S. with maybe one abortion clinic. The right wing is trying to make it impossible for women to get abortions, even if they are technically legal. This is done in a literal way? - ?you can't get to a clinic, you can't afford it, you have to tell your parents? - ? and by making it something that young people feel they can't talk about, can't ask for help with, can't do anything about but try to either induce abortions on their own, alone and unsafely, or have children they don't want and can't care for. It's just an assault on all sides.
I had three abortions because I was certain that it would be a disaster for my work.
Here is the trap you are in.... And it's not my trap—I haven't trapped you. Because abortions are illegal, women who need and want them have no choice in the matter, and you—because you know how to perform them—have no choice, either. What has been violated here is your freedom of choice, and every woman's freedom of choice, too. If abortion was legal, a woman would have a choice—and so would you. You could feel free not to do it because someone else would. But the way it is, you're trapped. Women are trapped. Women are victims, and so are you.
Since 'Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights' came out, I've done a fair amount of public speaking, and the two statistics that always make the audience sit up are that nearly one in three women will have had at least one abortion by menopause and 61 percent of women who have abortions are already mothers.