bbauska wrote:https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/12/14/tenn-woman-charged-with-attempted-murder-for-failed-coat-hanger-abortion/

How is it that a woman can be charged with attempted murder of something that is not living, is inside her own body, and was her choice to try and remove?

Hmmm

freeman3 wrote:Well...she was at 24 weeks and clinics in Tennessee only do abortions up to 16 weeks (according to your link). Seems pretty clear to me why she did it.

Clearly, one goal of anti-abortion forces is to reduce the availability of places that perform abortion. Did that contribute to what happened here ? I don't know but it's certainly possible

When abortion was illegal, the ability of a woman to obtain an abortion, let alone one that was safe, depended upon her economic situation, her race, and where she lived. Women with money could often leave the country or find a physician who would perform the procedure for a high fee. Poor women, for the most part, were at the mercy of incompetent practitioners with questionable motives.
Often unable to find a provider, poor women and women of color disproportionately turned to dangerous self-abortions, such as inserting knitting needles or coat hangers into the vagina and uterus, douching with dangerous solutions such as lye, or swallowing strong drugs or chemicals. All women were subject to the desperation, shame and fear created by the criminalization of abortion.

... when illegal, abortion still occurred at much the same rate they do today.

While there is very little relationship between abortion legality and abortion incidence, there is a strong correlation between abortion legality and abortion safety.

Estimates of the number of illegal abortions in the United States during the 1950s and 1960s range from 200,000 to 1.2 million per year. Prior to Roe v. Wade, as many as 5,000 American women died annually as a direct result of unsafe abortions

Highly restrictive abortion laws are not associated with lower abortion rates. For example, as Guttmacher Institute explains, the abortion rate is 29 per 1,000 women of childbearing age in Africa, and 32 per 1,000 in Latin America — regions in which abortion is illegal under most circumstances in the majority of countries. The rate is 12 per 1,000 in Western Europe, where abortion is generally permitted on broad grounds.

rickyp wrote:

While there is very little relationship between abortion legality and abortion incidence, there is a strong correlation between abortion legality and abortion safety.

Estimates of the number of illegal abortions in the United States during the 1950s and 1960s range from 200,000 to 1.2 million per year. Prior to Roe v. Wade, as many as 5,000 American women died annually as a direct result of unsafe abortions

.

Highly restrictive abortion laws are not associated with lower abortion rates. For example, as Guttmacher Institute explains, the abortion rate is 29 per 1,000 women of childbearing age in Africa, and 32 per 1,000 in Latin America — regions in which abortion is illegal under most circumstances in the majority of countries. The rate is 12 per 1,000 in Western Europe, where abortion is generally permitted on broad grounds.

http://www.ourbodiesourselves.org/healt ... -abortion/

I'm not impressed with either of those comparisons. In the first you are comparing US today to US 50+ years ago. There has been a lot of societal change since them including contraception, women rights and health care availability. It's just not an apples to apples situation.

In 1965, abortion was so unsafe that 17 percent of all deaths due to pregnancy and childbirth were the result of illegal abortion (Gold, 1990; NCHS, 1967). Today, less than 0.3 percent of women undergoing legal abortions at all gestational ages sustain a serious complication requiring hospitalization (Boonstra et al.,2006; Henshaw, 1999). Among women undergoing legal first-trimester abortion procedures, the percentage sustaining serious complications drops to 0.05 percent (Weitz et al., 2013).

... when illegal, abortion still occurred at much the same rate they do today.

While there is very little relationship between abortion legality and abortion incidence, there is a strong correlation between abortion legality and abortion safety.

Estimates of the number of illegal abortions in the United States during the 1950s and 1960s range from 200,000 to 1.2 million per year. Prior to Roe v. Wade, as many as 5,000 American women died annually as a direct result of unsafe abortions

Estimates of the number of illegal abortions in the 1950s and 1960s ranged from 200,000 to 1.2 million per year. One analysis, extrapolating from data from North Carolina, concluded that an estimated 829,000 illegal or self-induced abortions occurred in 1967.

One stark indication of the prevalence of illegal abortion was the death toll. In 1930, abortion was listed as the official cause of death for almost 2,700 women—nearly one-fifth (18%) of maternal deaths recorded in that year. The death toll had declined to just under 1,700 by 1940, and to just over 300 by 1950 (most likely because of the introduction of antibiotics in the 1940s, which permitted more effective treatment of the infections that frequently developed after illegal abortion). By 1965, the number of deaths due to illegal abortion had fallen to just under 200, but illegal abortion still accounted for 17% of all deaths attributed to pregnancy and childbirth that year. And these are just the number that were officially reported; the actual number was likely much higher.

Poor women and their families were disproportionately impacted. A study of low-income women in New York City in the 1960s found that almost one in 10 (8%) had ever attempted to terminate a pregnancy by illegal abortion; almost four in 10 (38%) said that a friend, relative or acquaintance had attempted to obtain an abortion. Of the low-income women in that study who said they had had an abortion, eight in 10 (77%) said that they had attempted a self-induced procedure, with only 2% saying that a physician had been involved in any way.

These women paid a steep price for illegal procedures. In 1962 alone, nearly 1,600 women were admitted to Harlem Hospital Center in New York City for incomplete abortions, which was one abortion-related hospital admission for every 42 deliveries at that hospital that year. In 1968, the University of Southern California Los Angeles County Medical Center, another large public facility serving primarily indigent patients, admitted 701 women with septic abortions, one admission for every 14 deliveries.

bbauska wrote:If abortion IS legal (I am pretty sure it is in Tennessee), then how is this woman's action OK? Are you absolving this woman of her actions for harming this child in utero? Your comparison to when abortion was illegal is not the point. She had the time to get an abortion before 24 weeks. She had the right to go where she could get an abortion after 24 weeks.

Is she culpable for her actions?

I say yes.