Source: http://blogs.tiu.edu/bioethics/2018/09/04/reducing-abortion-regardless-of-roe-v-wade/
Timestamp: 2019-04-21 13:06:22+00:00

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The selection of the next Supreme Court Justice has perhaps naturally unleashed a flurry of op-eds describing the post-apocalyptic world that will result from any partial or complete reversal of Roe v. Wade. In the July 18th, 2018 Perspective in the NEJM, Dr. Julie Ingelfinger offers the tragic case of a foreign nursing student she befriended while both were training in New York in the late 1960s. The student was finishing her final nursing year and was engaged to be married when she became pregnant despite the use of contraceptives. Per Dr. Ingelfinger, neither the student nor fiancé had “the means to provide for a baby, so they reluctantly decided that terminating the pregnancy was the only choice.” The only abortion option available at that time, pre-Roe v. Wade, was a “back-alley abortion.” After the abortion, the student developed sepsis, resulting in a hysterectomy and kidney failure. Dr. Ingelfinger oversaw the dialysis and despite appropriate medical care, the student died suddenly from complications of the dialysis. Dr. Ingelfinger’s reason for sharing this story now is to remind us that back-alley abortions resulted in similar complications in many other young women pre-Roe v. Wade and warn that if Roe v. Wade is overturned in the future, young women seeking abortion will again suffer the same fate as her nursing student friend.
In both articles, the focus is unilaterally on the health and life of the mother. Ms. Campoamor’s position is easily challenged, if not decimated, by including the health and life of the baby in her calculus. Dr. Ingelfinger’s premise requires more unpacking.
Her position appears to be that all future unwanted pregnancies in an overturned-Roe v. Wade world would require a pre-Roe v. Wade “back-alley” surgical abortion. Many Latin American countries have never legalized abortion yet their illegal abortion fatalities have dropped as medical abortifacients (morning after pills) have replaced surgical abortion methods. Interestingly, both the author of the previously linked article on the Latin American experience and Dr. Ingelfinger cited economics (and not legality) as a main reason for choosing abortion. Analysis of the statistics on why women in the US choose to abort challenges this assertion. A clear understanding of these statistics might help identify strategies that lead to a voluntary reduction in the number of abortions, absent changes in the legal status of abortion.
There is a nearly 15-fold increased risk to carry a baby to full-term than it is to have an elective abortion. We have “successfully” divorced sexual activity from the risk and responsibility of bearing and rearing a child, as long as we are willing to use abortion as the definitive stop gap in maintaining our birth control. From my standpoint, this success and this control has come at a terrible price, namely the deaths of over 60 million babies in the US alone. Sadly, I pessimistically do not believe that there will be a meaningful change in the Federal law regarding abortion, regardless of who becomes our next Supreme Court Justice (link requires subscription). There are simply too many women and men who have come to rely upon the type of control of their future activities that abortion provides. Therefore, I ask Dr. Ingelfinger, Ms. Campoamor and all of those on the other side of the abortion divide: must all unwanted pregnancies end in abortion (medical or surgical), regardless of the status of Roe v. Wade?

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