Accurate figures for women injured by illegal abortion before 1967 are not available, as many women would not admit that their injuries resulted from abortion for fear of incriminating themselves and the illegal abortionist. In 1959, however, it was estimated by a parliamentary committee that the treatment of abortion accounted for as many as 20% of gynaelogical admissions withing the NHS. In 1966 the Home Office estimated that 100,000 abortions were being carried out each year. Other estimates put this figure at 150,000.

bbauska wrote:

Danivon wrote:1) When did she discover she was pregnant?
2) Was any issue raised during pregnancy with her or the foetus (such as abnormalities)?
3) If there was, at what point?
4) Does she have much in the way of income or assets?
5) What was the position of her family?

1) Doesn't say. The articles are not providing any info there.
2) Same as #1
3) Same as #1

4) Shouldn't matter. Those of lesser means are just as responsible to follow laws as others
5) Shouldn't matter. Family is nice support, but does not absolve one from actions.

What would you charge her with?

I think she attempted to kill her child in utero. If there were reasons that would absolve her or bring some help her way, then that should have been done before she performed this heinous act. It is sad that she had sex, , got pregnant, did not ask for help, go to a clinic, and killed this baby in utero.

Her reasons are for the judge to hear in the mitigating phase of the trial.

danivon wrote:RJ - I think you are being a bit hard on Ricky here. There is data that show illegal abortions pre-Roe v Wade were quite a problem, even at a level of the lowest estimate of 200,000 a year.

We won't get much more accurate data because it was a long while ago and it was illegal in many states, which means that it will have been hidden.

In England and Wales we had two periods we can look at.

Up to 1958 there were no recorded legal abortions at all. Between 1958 and 1966 it was very limited legally, and we saw a rate of 15-20,000 legal abortions a year in that period.

In 1967 the Abortion Act was passed and the NHS was supported to carry out abortions. The legal rate soon after (by the early 1970s, to allow for the expansion of provision) was about 150,000 a year. However, that includes non-residents. For residents only it was about 110,000 during the 1970s. source for numbers: http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/policy/ ... wales.html

In 1966 (the year before the , the Home Office estimated a rate of illegal abortions of about 100,000 a year. source: http://www.efc.org.uk/young_people/fact ... rtion.html

Accurate figures for women injured by illegal abortion before 1967 are not available, as many women would not admit that their injuries resulted from abortion for fear of incriminating themselves and the illegal abortionist. In 1959, however, it was estimated by a parliamentary committee that the treatment of abortion accounted for as many as 20% of gynaelogical admissions withing the NHS. In 1966 the Home Office estimated that 100,000 abortions were being carried out each year. Other estimates put this figure at 150,000.

Now, if we assume that we would have had few people come to England and Wales just to get an illegal abortion before 1967 (and we would have had a fair number come over from Ireland and Europe after legalisation, declining as abortion laws were changed in other countries), it seems that we did have a very similar rate of abortion for residents before legalisation and after:

1966: c. 100,000 illegal + 21,400 legal

1972: 108,656 legal (residents of England and Wales only)

danivon wrote:

bbauska wrote:

Danivon wrote:1) When did she discover she was pregnant?
2) Was any issue raised during pregnancy with her or the foetus (such as abnormalities)?
3) If there was, at what point?
4) Does she have much in the way of income or assets?
5) What was the position of her family?

1) Doesn't say. The articles are not providing any info there.
2) Same as #1
3) Same as #1

Indeed. So perhaps she did not find out she was pregnant until a time when getting an abortion at a nearby clinic would have expired. Or she knew but was given a diagnosis of an abnormality later

4) Shouldn't matter. Those of lesser means are just as responsible to follow laws as others
5) Shouldn't matter. Family is nice support, but does not absolve one from actions.

You brought up the idea that she was 2 hours from St Louis. I checked Google Maps and it is not quite that close... 5 hours by car from Murfreesboro to St Louis in normal traffic. A 1 hour flight from Nashville, but it takes a while to get to and from airports etc. Now, those methods of travel are not usually free. So her financial situation (or the level of support from her family both for an abortion and to help her obtain one) do matter in terms of addressing your point.

What would you charge her with?

Not sure what the Tennessee laws are, but in England and Wales we have the offence of "child destruction" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_destruction) which has a maximum life sentence. It is used for the following situations:

1) assault on a pregnant woman that causes the foetus to die
2) late-term and unlicensed abortion
3) killing during birth

Basically, when we legalised abortion in 1967, what happened was that we limited the application of the 1929 law that introduced "child destruction".

So a lesser charge of attempted child destruction would seem reasonable to me.

I think she attempted to kill her child in utero. If there were reasons that would absolve her or bring some help her way, then that should have been done before she performed this heinous act. It is sad that she had sex, , got pregnant, did not ask for help, go to a clinic, and killed this baby in utero.

Anyone who says that last bit is misinformed or lying. The baby was born and still lives.

Her reasons are for the judge to hear in the mitigating phase of the trial.

Well, yes. She has at this point been charged rather than found guilty though. But you seem to have already done the judging and decreed she is guilty, as well as that any possible mitigations are irrelevant. Meh.

Ray Jay wrote:I appreciate your trying to answer the question with data. I can quibble with your numbers, but it probably is unanswerable.

However, the claim that the legality of abortion does not impact the rate of abortion doesn't make sense to me. I don't believe that all women who want an abortion would simply ignore the legality of their action. Also, the fact that abortion becomes less safe must have some impact on the decision. After all, Planned Parenthood touts the fact that abortion is safer for the mother than actual pregnancy.

I'm in favor of legal abortion in the first trimester, but I think we have to be honest about the implication of how we've approached this issue as a society. When you legalize something more of it happens. Claiming otherwise doesn't make sense to me. Not everyone who gets an abortion is desperate.

I appreciate your trying to answer the question with data. I can quibble with your numbers, but it probably is unanswerable

The illegality of abortion has hidden the existence of an unarticulated, alternative, popular morality, which supported women who had abortions. This popular ethic contradicted the law, the official attitude of the medical profession, and the teachings of some religions. Private discussions among family and friends, conversations between women and doctors, and the behavior of women (and the people who aided them) suggest that traditional ideas that accepted early abortions endured into the twentieth century. Furthermore, through the 1920s at least, working-class women did not make a distinction between contraceptives and abortion. What I call a popular morality that accepted abortion was almost never publicly expressed but was rooted in people's daily lives. Americans have a long history of accepting abortion in certain situations as a necessity and as a decision that, implicitly, belongs to women to make. This popular attitude made itself felt in the courts and in doctors' offices: prosecutors found it difficult to convict abortionists because juries regularly nullified the law by acquitting abortionists, and few physicians escaped the pressure from women for abortions. Throughout the period of illegal abortion, women asserted their need for abortion and, in doing so, implicitly asserted their sense of having a right to control their own reproduction.

I am not suggesting a "gap" between people's beliefs and their ability to live up to them, but different, even oppositional, moral perspectives. The values expressed by ordinary people deserve to be taken seriously rather than categorized and dismissed as sinful or mistaken. Though some felt guilt about abortion and found ways to justify their behavior, others never held the official antiabortion views. Prescribed morality and popular morality may not be identical. Analysis of women's practices and ideas -- popular behavior and belief -- rather than exclusive focus on the statements of male theologians and philosophers suggests that it is incorrect to conclude that hostility to abortion is "almost an absolute value in history." The reverse may be more accurate

danivon wrote:

Ray Jay wrote:I appreciate your trying to answer the question with data. I can quibble with your numbers, but it probably is unanswerable.

However, the claim that the legality of abortion does not impact the rate of abortion doesn't make sense to me. I don't believe that all women who want an abortion would simply ignore the legality of their action. Also, the fact that abortion becomes less safe must have some impact on the decision. After all, Planned Parenthood touts the fact that abortion is safer for the mother than actual pregnancy.

Well, what makes "sense" based on conjecture does not always stack up to the data. We call it counter-intuitive, but it's quite common.

There are perhaps some explanations. One is that going to a proper practioner and clinic means seeing people who can give a full picture of the implications of decisions, whereas a backstreet abortionist doing it for the money would have different priorities. Or perhaps the openness of it makes people think over it more than if it has to be hastily and secretly arranged.

Another is (as you have indicated), that at the same time as out countries were legalising abortion, we were also introducing and making more popular methods of contraception, so an increase in abortions through legalisation is possibly offset by a decrease due to the pill.

Also, we have looked at absolute numbers. But the baby boom was coming to an end at the same time as well, so the number of pregnancies fell (in the UK from over 850,000 in the mid-60s to about 600,000 by the mid-70s). This means that the rate of abortions per pregnancy did go up. But of course as the main measure of pregnancies is the number of births + number of abortions + an unknown number of miscarriages there may be some inaccuracies. On the other hand, the population was still growing so abortions per woman is a different measure again.

I'm in favor of legal abortion in the first trimester, but I think we have to be honest about the implication of how we've approached this issue as a society. When you legalize something more of it happens. Claiming otherwise doesn't make sense to me. Not everyone who gets an abortion is desperate.

It is not necessarily always true that "when you legalise something more of it happens", it is a nice rule of thumb but can be overturned on a case-by-case basis by observation.

What we can say is that before legalisation there were a lot of illegal abortions, and the methods used were often far worse for both the mother and the foetus.

I'm not saying that this proves my contention that abortion legality will influence abortion rates, but it certainly does not prove Ricky's contention that it has no effect.

rickyp wrote:ray

I'm not saying that this proves my contention that abortion legality will influence abortion rates, but it certainly does not prove Ricky's contention that it has no effect.

I'll refer you to the book I refered to... I know thats not as easy as refering to one piece of data somewhere..
However, I'll point out that if something is illegal, then it is very hard to find official statistics available in a straight forward tabulation. Understanding the prevalence of abortion when it was illegal takes a great deal of extrapolated research which the book has accomplished

And refer you to the statistics that show that the reasons for legalizing abortion were about the all too frequent deaths and serious injuries caused by illegal abortion... Why do you think abortion was legalized Ray?
And what has changed since it was legalized that would alter the rationale for societies decision to make the option of abortion a woman's' choice rather than illegal?

In other words, you cannot back up your assertion.

Your point has been that making abortions illegal "had to have had a leavening effect on the numbers of women having abortions".

Ricky, you need to stop lying about what I said and about what you said

However, the claim that the legality of abortion does not impact the rate of abortion doesn't make sense to me. I don't believe that all women who want an abortion would simply ignore the legality of their action. Also, the fact that abortion becomes less safe must have some impact on the decision. After all, Planned Parenthood touts the fact that abortion is safer for the mother than actual pregnancy.

conjectur

More than seven in 10 U.S. women obtaining an abortion report a religious affiliation (37% protestant, 28% Catholic and 7% other), and 25% attend religious services at least once a month.[38] The abortion rate for protestant women is 15 per 1,000 women, while Catholic women have a slightly higher rate, 22 per 1,000.[32]