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In all the talk about the terrible, tragic, politically-motivated murder of George Tiller, and about how such an act sets back choice, how it sets back dialogue, how it sets back our presumptions that women should not be, need not be, afraid to exercise choice, that doctors should not be, need not be, afraid to aid women in the exercise of choice, we've been overlooking this: for many women, in many parts of the world, abortion is only suffered in conditions of tremendous fear. Where abortion is outlawed, women die. Mothers die.
In a New York Times article this week, Denise Grady writes about the terrible fate that awaits women with unwanted pregnancies in Tanzania:
A handwritten ledger at the hospital tells a grim story. For the month of January, 17 of the 31 minor surgical procedures here were done to
repair the results of “incomplete abortions.” A few may have been miscarriages, but most were botched operations by untrained, clumsy hands.Abortion is illegal in Tanzania (except to save the mother’s life or health), so women and girls turn to amateurs, who may dose them with herbs or other concoctions, pummel their bellies or insert objects vaginally. Infections, bleeding and punctures of the uterus or bowel can result, and can be fatal. Doctors treating women after these bungled attempts sometimes have no choice but to remove the uterus. Pregnancy and childbirth are among the greatest dangers that women face in Africa, which has the world’s highest rates of maternal mortality — at least 100 times those in developed countries. Abortion accounts for a significant part of the death toll.
I'm old enough to remember Roe vs. Wade, which means that I'm also old enough to remember stories about bent clothes hangers and gin baths, horrors that were before my time, but not before my mother's time, nor my grandmother's time. I'm old enough to remember that outlawing abortion - and jailing abortion doctors - doesn't reduce the demand for abortions so much as it increases the rate of mutilation and death of women - young women, not-so-young women, single women, married women, mothers.
But you don't need to be of a certain age to see the evidence of Tanzania and other parts of the world, where a variation on our clothes-hanger history is being lived out with sticks and knives right now. Where women are losing their uteruses, or their lives.
Abortion might be deplorable - but what our own history teaches us, and what the now of Tanzania teaches us, is that that very well might be beside the point. Wherever and whenever women get pregnant, they will sometimes - for a variety of reasons - seek to terminate some pregnancies, regardless of whether it is legal to do so. Regardless of whether it is safe to do so.
Whether those women live or die very much depends upon whether there are doctors like George Tiller nearby.
Something to think about.
Catherine Connors blogs at Her Bad Mother - where she's quaffing Tylenol and praying for sleep - and at Their Bad Mother - where she's doing that and wringing her hands over abortion debates. Her Bad Mother, needless to say, is the happier read this week.
