Remembering Life Before Roe

[niyad]

Remembering Life Before Roe


This week as we raise awareness about the Hyde Amendment and the millions of women who face monumental barriers to abortion access because of how they get their health insurance, it’s important to remember why the United States moved to legalize abortion in the first place. In the 1950s and 1960s rates of illegal or self-induced abortions ranged from 200,000 to 1.2 million per year. Just as it is today, women of means had greater access to contraception and greater ability to travel or pay private doctors to terminate a pregnancy. It has always been low-income women, and disproportionately women of color, who have suffered the most.

A 1960s study of low-income women in New York City found that one in ten had attempted to terminate a pregnancy. While one-in-four childbirth related deaths among white women were caused by an abortion, the rate skyrocketed to half of all childbirth related deaths among non-white and Puerto Rican women.

In 1962, 1,600 women were admitted to Harlem Hospital Center in New York City for botched abortions, nearly 1 per 42 deliveries. At the University of Southern California Los Angeles County Medical Center, there was one admission for incomplete abortions per 14 deliveries. In 1965 around 200 women were reported to have died from an illegal abortion, though the actual number is believed to be much higher.

By the time the Supreme Court guaranteed women the constitutional right to abortion in the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling, 17 states had already begun allowing legal abortions in some reviewed cases. However, many of these cases required that the woman have a long standing relationship with a physician who could testify on her behalf, a relationship that was only available to women of means.

. . . . .

http://feminist.org/blog/index.php/2016/09/29/remembering-life-before-roe/

[Arkansas Granny]

1. I can remember my horror when at age 13 a classmate told me that her sister had gotten pregnant,

but they took her to an old woman who lived in our neighborhood and she "took care of it". I knew who this woman was. She was an old granny woman who lived way back in the woods without running water to her shack. I can only imagine what a terrible experience it must have been. This was in rural SW Missouri in the 1950's. I have often thought of the desperation that drove these girls to seek help in such horrible circumstances and wondered how it affected their lives.

WE CAN'T EVER GO BACK THERE!

[niyad]

6. and yet, this is the horror to which these woman-hating gestational slavers would have

us return. I truly despise them.

[Coventina]

2. I was an unwanted pregnancy pre-Roe.

My mother's doctor, after confirming the pregnancy, offered to arrange a special "vacation" to Japan for her to get it taken care of.

My mother, being a Bible-thumper, blew up at him, and never saw him again (she married my father, as was often the custom in such cases).

I'm not sorry I was born, but I suppose I would never care if she had gone to Japan...as a quasi-Buddhist, I guess I see it as she would have been just sending me on to the next life in the cycle....

I often think of that poor doctor, who probably thought he was just helping a young woman in a difficult situation and giving her options, and getting screamed at for it.

In my heart, I thank him, because I have to assume he did the same for other women who saw him as well.

on edit: clarity

[niyad]

7. bless that doctor for caring. but, we are glad that you are here!

[Coventina]

16. Aw, you're too kind! Funny thing is, when my mother told me that story

she expected me to explode with outrage and horror that "her doctor tried to kill me!"

Instead, I immediately felt bad for the doctor.

Granted, it certainly would not have been an option for probably most women with unwanted pregnancies at the time. My mother was a bit unusual in that she was already in her 20s, and was a working professional, and therefore had income to take such a trip.

Thanks again, for all your kind words to me personally, and all the work you do for women globally.

[mrmpa]

3. I've a friend.......

who died about 9 years ago. Her mom died in a botched abortion when she was 5. It is even mentioned in my friend's obituary. Due to being motherless, I believe, this was the impetus behind much of the good work she did. I know that she missed her mother on a daily basis.

http://www.post-gazette.com/news/obituaries/2007/05/14/Obituary-Gwendolyn-J-Gwen-Elliott-Retired-Pittsburgh-police-commander/stories/200705140193

At about the same time my friend was orphaned, my mom had two miscarriages in quick succession. Her doctor handed a diaphragm to my mom in a brown paper bag. He felt she was getting pregnant too quickly. If the doctor and my mother had been found out they could have gone to prison.

I do not want to go back to those days.

[Warpy]

4. I lost a friend to a septic abortion in the 60s

She died hard and never told anyone whether it was self induced or done by a butcher.

Never again.

[irisblue]

5. A friend died from a self induced abortion @ 15 in the late 60s.

I cannot imagine her terror as she bled out in her bedroom. Kathy

[niyad]

8. and the woman-haters would happily have us return to this nightmare.

[smirkymonkey]

10. Exactly. They don't care if women die in illegal, back alley abortions.

Their attitude is such that "serves the slut right". For them, any consequences are deserved.

[niyad]

11. they really are no different in attitudes than the mindset that created fgm, whose

purpose is to control women's sexuality.

[JanMichael]

12. ...so incredibley sad...nt

[niyad]

9. . . . .

[awoke_in_2003]

13. Rec for exposure

We can't afford to lose the SC, which will happen if tRump wins.

[Solly Mack]

14. K&R

[Warren DeMontague]

15. K&R

[niyad]

17. k and r

[MineralMan]

18. Never, Ever Again!

Period.

[niyad]

19. exactly!!

[niyad]

20. . . .

[kskiska]

21. I remember the Catholic "homes for wayward girls."

There was one in Hartford, CT - St. Agnes. Girls "in trouble" were sent there by parents who were ashamed of them, and no girl left the home with a baby. There's a movie, "The Magdelene Sisters," about those sorts of places in Ireland.

[niyad]

22. the magdalene laundries in ireland were an abomination. the movie "philomena" with dame judi

dench in 2013 was based on a true story of those horrors, which the damned catholic church denies to this day.