While at the American Heartland Forum in Columbia, Missouri, an efficient Rick Santorum killed two birds with one stone, pushing the myth of death panels and longing for the golden days of illegal abortions.
“fifty years ago… sixty years ago, people who did abortions were, you know, in the shadows, were people who people who were considered really bad doctors. Now, abortion is something to that is just accepted.”
Oh, what I wouldn’t do to bring back those shadows, to push abortion back into the underbelly of crime, shame, and death! Sadly I was too young to experience that pre-Roe v. Wade time but luckily, it’s captured by a report by The Guttmacher Institute, Lessons from Before Roe: Will Past be Prologue?
I didn’t get to live through the 1950s and 1960s when, it’s estimated, there were between 200,000 and 1.2 million ilegal abortions each year. I wasn’t alive in 1930, when abortion was listed as the official cause of death for almost 2,700 women, accounting for almost one fifth of maternal deaths recorded in that year. Even by 1956, illegal abortion still accounted for 17% of all deaths attributed to pregnancy and childbirth. And remember, these were only the reported deaths, because these abortions were, thankfully, being performed “in the shadows” where they belonged.
How I long for the days of 1962, when the Harlem Hospital Center in New York City admitted almost 1,600 women for incomplete abortions, or the days of 1968, when the UCLA Medical Center admitted 701 women who had had septic abortions.
Thank you, “pro-life” Republicans, for fighting to bring back that golden age of death, incomplete abortions, sepsis and shadows!
Abortion Mortality The number of deaths from abortion has declined dramatically since Roe v. Wade.
Source: The Alan Guttmacher Institute, Trends in Abortion in the United States, 1973-2000, January 2003.
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What We Missed
Today is Black HIV/AIDs Awareness Day. A good article about what’s behind the HIV/AIDs epidemic in the Black community.
Some advice from Jezebel about preparing for a pelvic exam if you’re a sexual assault survivor.
Republican Congressman thinks Onion story about Planned Parenthood is true.
An article in the Yale Daily News covering my event where I talked about my experiences growing up in a Cuban immigrant family as part of their annual Sex Week events.
Only two days left til the big ol’ fundraiser for the New York Abortion Access Fund. If you’re in NYC, you should really be there. If you’re not, you can still support their super important work.
A 2010 memoir from the founder of the Komen Foundation shows that she supports partnering with Planned Parenthood for the access it gives “rural women, poor women, Native American women, many women of color who were underserved” and that not supporting those centers would be turning “our backs on these women.” Via Colorlines.