Safe-n-Legal in the 20th Century
We've already looked at the pre-legalization death claims and horror stories. Now let's take a look at claims that legal abortion is ever so safe, and that the legal abortion ended the nightmares of sexual abuse, malpractice, botched abortions, misery, and death.
As we've already seen, roughly 90% of pre-legalization abortions were done by physicians. After legalization, they could hang out their shingles, and that they did, in droves. With that in mind, here's an interesting question for you: What happens to the safety of physician-induced abortions when the threat of going to prison for botching them is all but removed? It would be hard to argue that a physician abortionist would exercise greater care the more leeway he's given. After all, he was a criminal to begin with; given to doing exactly as much as he thought he could get away with. When abortion was illegal, merely getting caught doing abortions could land you in jail or get your license yanked. Legalization meant that you had to really, really mess up to get into trouble. And even then, odds are pretty good that the pro choice community will come skipping to your rescue. Let's take a quick look at some of the situations that arose when abortionists got caught before legalization: Criminal Abortion: The Carnage Begins looks at cases where the abortionist let a patient die. These doctors are arrested, put in jail, put on trial, put through quite an ordeal. What about cases where the patient did not die? A May 23, 1928 story in the New York Times describes the arrest of Dr. Charles Brancatti after a 19-year-old fingered him as her abortionist. Brancatti was araigned and had to put up $2,500 bail. The New York Times Index for 1944 shows Drs. C. V. Dukoff, L. W. A. Brandenburg, A. M. Mulholland, M. Weiss, J. and S. Leslie, A. Chairman, and L. S. Barnett being arrested for doing abortions, along with a few non-physicians also caught doing abortions. Some doctors were so traumatized by being arrested and charged with abortion that they committed suicide. Clearly, doing anything that might call undue attention to your abortion practice was a risky gambit, unless one had friends in high places. |
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What about those who botch abortions after Roe? Merely sending a woman to the emergency room won't even raise eyebrows unless you're making a habit of it. Putting her in the hospital with life-threatening complications might get you sued or called before the medical board, but pro choice activists may well come and bail you out of your troubles, as they did for Steve Brigham. Even killing a patient is likely to stir up little trouble unless her family gets the idea to sue or somebody decides to report you to the medical board. And again, the pro choice community will very likely be behind you 100%, as they were for Raymond Showery after the death of Mickey Apodaca and Bruce Steir after the death of Sharon Hamption. Prosecution is rare and sporadic. Harvey Johnson and Frank Robinson, for example, each sent a patient home to bleed to death, but Robinson was charged with manslaughter and Johnson didn't even attract attention. Arnold Bickham shoved the moribund Sylvia Moore out of his clinic on New Years' Eve of 1988, and even though the manner of death was officially declared to be homicide, no charges were brought against the abortionist.
Frankly, it seems that the biggest impact legalization had on physician abortionists was to make them cocky. Milan Vuitch, for example, had a clean record (no patient deaths) prior to legalization. The only reason Vuitch even got arrested is that he was deliberately trying to get arrested so he'd have a chance to challenge the District of Columbia abortion laws in court. After legalization, he went on to kill two of his legal abortion patients: Wilma Harris and Georgianna "Jeannie" English. Another criminal abortionist who waited until after legalization to start taking wild risks with patients was Jesse Ketchum, who managed to kill two hysterotomy abortion patients in just four months once New York legalized elective abortions. |
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Any illusions about the improvements of legalization of abortion practice among physicians should quickly be dispelled by looking at their handiwork: Abortion Compliactions, Abortion Mortality, Behind Closed Doors, and the cream of the crop, the National Abortion Federation.
But, you may wonder, what about non-physician abortionists? Surely legalization got rid of them, right? Wrong. During the mid 1970's in the Chicago area, two chiropractors and a witch doctor were caught doing abortions. One chiropractors was getting referrals from a referral service that led patients to believe he was a physician. A midwife was caught doing abortions in McAllen, Texas, after the death of a patient in 1977. Clinic worker Joy Davis reports that she ended up doing abortions when the doctor was too doped up on recreational drugs to do them himself. Alicia Hanna was caught in California passing herself off as a doctor and running an abortion clinic after the death of a patient in 1993. If anything, legalization has made it easier for non-physicians to do abortions because unless somebody complains, the odds of anybody investigating are slim as long as they act boldly and pretend that everything is legal. Women will simply assume that if the place is operating openly, it is operating legally, and that the abortionist is actually a physician. |
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But, you may wonder, didn't legalization do away with self-induced and amateur abortions at least? Evidently not, because illegal abortion deaths continued their century-old downward trend after legalization and leveled off at about one per year. In 1981, the CDC noted the case of a woman who, for unknown reasons, did not consult a physician about her pregnancy but instead tried to do an abortion on herself with a plastic straw, resulting in air embolism and death. One woman died in Mansfield, Ohio, in 1989, after trying to do an abortion on herself with an air compressor. In 1990 a California woman let her boyfriend do an abortion on her with a tube instead of keeping her legal abortion appointment; she developed infection and died. Until we address the root causes of these amateur abortions, we can not eliminate them, or the misery they cause.
But still, you may protest, the numbers did go down, did they not? Well, yes and no. The number of reported legal abortion deaths climbed steadily until 1976, when suddenly they became utterly erratic. Since there was no significant change in abortion practice at that time, the only logical explanation is that the data collection system fell apart. We know that early in the 1970's, the CDC sent out letters to physicians soliciting information about abortion mortality; I have not been able to pinpoint when that practice fell by the wayside. However, the abortion mortality numbers suggest that it was 1976 -- the year legal abortion deaths stopped climbing steadily and instead fell precipitiouly. Over the next ten years, the yearly death toll shot up to 22, fell to 11, and flitted about just about everywhere in between. Something strange happened. And those with inside knowledge are not being forthright about exactly what went on within the abortion community. The only thing we do know for certain is that in the early 1970's, the Centers for Disease Control vigorously pursued abortion deaths, and that by 1977 they had become complacent. I have my theories about what happened between 1975 and 1977 -- but you can be certain that whatever happened, it was not a true fall in the actual number of abortion deaths.
It makes sense that legal abortion deaths would steadily rise. After all, the number of abortions was steadily rising every year, and there was no significant change in practice to account for any sudden change in the death rate. Odds are that what really happened is that they leveled off when the abortion rate peaked, and then started coming down as instillation abortions fell out of favor. As far as the falling criminal abortion deaths go, it's true that abortion enthusiasts try to give legalization credit for that. But the criminal abortion death rate had been falling rapidly for nearly a hundred years before anybody got the idea to loosen up the abortion laws. Criminal abortion deaths merely kept on their old downward trend, and are probably roughly the same now as they would have been had abortion remained illegal.
Who are the real benefactors of legalization?
1. Abortionists. The threat of prison has been virtually abolished, as has the risk of losing one's medical license. It's hard to say what the impact has been on overhead -- paying bribes to law enforcement has, after all, been replaced by making "donations" to pro-abortion organizations and politicians. Legal or illegal, the wheels have to stay greased for the mill to grind on.
2. Irresponsible men. The threat of prison has been eliminated; even if the woman dies from an abortion he arranges, the man will be viewed as a victim rather than as a co-conspirator. Statutory rape goes unreported, and a man is no longer looked on as a lout if he treats women like sex toys (witness the glamor of Hugh Heffner). Best of all, from the irresponsible man's point of view, is that instead of demanding respect and marriage, women's rights groups applaud men who facilitate abortions as being "progressive" and "compassionate." In other words, legalization made it possible to be a cad and be hailed as a paragon of virtue. |
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3. Pimps. Before legalization, shipping prostitutes off to the abortionist did entail some risk, because if she died, the pimp who arranged the abortion would be an accessory to the woman's murder. Nowadays a pimp could probably get away with suing an abortionist for lost revenues -- although he probably wouldn't do so, since the pimp needs the abortionist to stay in business. One doesn't sue one's friends.
4. Socialites. The vast majority of the women trudging into abortion mills don't want to be there; they'd far rather have the means to have their babies. The vast majority of women trudging into abortion mills get the same indifferent care they'd have gotten from a criminal abortionist -- if that. But rich women for whom abortion is a purely elective endeavor, or who are merely avoiding social embarrassment, who could have arranged sanitary illegal abortions, no longer have to cope with stigma. Instead of skulking about, they can discuss their abortions openly and even elicit sympathy instead of censure.
5. Eugenicists and racists. Those who consider themselves to be superior genetically gained great sympathy in their crusade to cull out the disabled and the ailing. Those who consider people with paler skin to be superior to those with darker pigmentation can pursue their goals of squashing other races under the guise of "public health" and "progress," rather than emperialism.
There are plenty of people who have gained much from decriminalization of abortion. One would be hard pressed to argue that the typical American woman is among them.
Related Links
"Confession
of an Ex Abortionist"
"More on Illegal
Abortion Myths"
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