The Coathanger Buzzword
"Prior to Roe, pro-choicers were fond of saying that nearly a million women every year obtained illegal abortions performed with rusty coat hangers in back-alleys that resulted in thousands of fatalities. Given the gravity of the issue at hand, it would go beyond the duty of kindness to call such claims an exaggeration, because several well-attested facts establish that the pro-choice movement was simply lying."
The "coat hanger" argument is one of the most emotionally compelling appeals of abortion activists. It is also misleading and would seem to have little substance.
- Some women have chosen dangerous methods to rid themselves of their children in the past and some died as a result.
- People often choose a course of action that has disastrous consequences.
- Many of the women aborting today would never have chosen an illegal abortion.
- Most 'legal' abortion related deaths are misreported and misrecorded.
- Women are 600% more likely to commit suicide after having an abortion.
- The Life Information Website, New Zealand, "The Coat Hanger Argument"
Do you want to return to the days of back alley abortion?
The idea of widespread and dangerous "back alley" abortions prior to the nationwide legalization of abortion in 1973 is not supported by the facts. The medical director of Planned Parenthood wrote in 1960:
Ninety percent of illegal abortions are being done by physicians. Call them what you will, abortionists or anything else, they are still physicians, trained as such;... They must do a pretty good job if the death rate is as low as it is...Abortion, whether therapeutic or illegal, is in the main no longer dangerous because it is being done well by physicians [1].
It is impossible to know exactly how many illegal abortions were performed prior to 1973 for the simple reason that they were not reported. However, records were kept for the number of women who died from illegal abortions. When a woman was seriously injured during an abortion, she went to another doctor for care. If she died, the physician would not deliberately falsify her death certificate—an act punishable as a felony—to protect the abortionist. Thus, it stands to reason that prior to the nationwide legalization of abortion, deaths from illegal abortions were reported accurately.
The graph at right [2] was used on the floor of the U. S. Senate during hearings on abortion in 1981. Compiled from statistics from the National Center for Health Statistics, it was not challenged by abortion supporters.
As you can see, after Penicillin became available to control infections, the number of deaths from abortion stabilized in the 1950s to about 250 per year. By 1966, when abortion was still illegal in all 50 states, the number of deaths had gradually dropped to half that number. And, in 1972, the year before the Supreme Court legalized abortion, only 39 women died—fewer than one per state.
The bottom line is that prior to the legalization of abortion, either there were not many illegal abortions, or illegal abortions were relatively safe.
Notes
- 1. M. Calderone, "Illegal abortion as a public health problem," American Journal of Public Health, July 1960, 50 (7): 949
- 2. Chart compiled with data from the National Center for Health Statistics