Listener Email: Back-Alley Abortion Statistics
Among the many praster rem issues brought up in response to my adamantly pro-life position, one is that if abortion is illegal, women will go into back alleys where their health and even lives will be unnecessarily imperiled. Here’s an e-mail I received a few months ago along those lines:
I have a non-Christian friend who is from another country. We were talking about abortion. Her argument for not making it illegal is that in other countries where abortion is illegal women just have unsafe, “back-alley” abortions where the many of the women sustain permanent damage if they live. I know this is how it was in our country years ago. Also, I was reading about women’s abortion stories online and I was saddened by the womens’ reasons for having an abortion. There were a range of reasons from “I want to have fun. It’s my life” women to “I’m a Christian and I prayed about it” women to “I don’t think I’d make a good parent” women. Several of the women professed to having been pro-Life. Basically, it just seemed that most would find any reason to do what believed was necessary to preserve some aspect of their lives. I don’t see much change happening in a country where the vast majority seems to care more about themselves than the baby. I didn’t read about one (unmarried) woman, Christain or non-Christain, who seemed to give even a cursory thought to stopping the behavior that got them pregnant. It appears that as long as Satan controls this world abortion and the risky behaviors that lead to abortions will always be an option. It seems that if abortion was made illegal, then this would be sentencing the women and the babies to death. Since the risky behavior is unlikely to stop, then the death toll could possibly double when the mothers die. What’s your take on this?
I have omitted the author’s name only because she may still be dealing with her friend.
Here is the reply I sent her:
I don’t have the time to give a full and fair answer to your excellent e-mail. But I can put a brief answer which is accurate if not sufficient.
Since my view is based on the fundamental worth of human beings, I believe we should give the same respect and protection to life in the womb which we are willing to give to life outside the womb. So I would not create legal assassination rooms even if assassins were being picked off in the performance of their jobs [out in the real world, or in back alleys]. Of course, most mothers/doctors don’t consider themselves as ill-willed as assassins, but that’s the point of “the banality of evil.”
Also, the number of women and children who die because of illegal abortions would be practically nil compared to the 1.3 millions children who die due to abortions each year–even with the significant restrictions of the past 8 years (down from about 1.6 million per year under Bill Clinton). Without editing or correction, the most any pro-abortion advocates claim is that about 10,000 women died each year from back alley abortions [when abortion was illegal]. Middle of the road estimates are actually about 1,000 per year. Conservative estimates put the number at about 40. [And all of these statistics exclude the mitigating comparison which ought to be made with the number of women injured or killed through legal abortions---which is not insubstantial.] But, even using the worst possible numbers [from the pro-life perspective], the number of children [alone] who die each year with abortion legal is 130 times greater [than the number of women killed through back-alley procedures before abortion was legalized]—that is, it would take 130 years of back alley abortions (using pro-choice inflated statistics, mind you) to account for the death toll of one year’s worth of abortions.
I hope that helps, and thanks for your note.
I put clarifying remarks which were not in the original email in [brackets]. And, of course, I ignored the fact that the women being mentioned were not caught in unfortunate circumstances, but were pursuing desperate measures to bring about their babies’ deaths.
Utilitarianism, the use of statistics to determine what is “right” based on what “works best”, is a terrible ethical system. The back-alley argument is a utilitarian argument. So, to re-word my conclusion using the pro-choice utilitarian perspective, and using the language which puts mothers’ interests in direct competition with their offspring: to make things come out evenly, let’s make abortion legal for one year once every 130 years. That should give mothers and babies about the same number of fatalities in a given period.
Tags: Abortion
I think your suggestion that we legalize abortion for one year every 130 years is brilliant! My opinion on the matter is harsh – if women are willing to do dangerous things in order to kill their babies, then they deserve to reap the consequences of their actions. The same is true for the actions that lead to pregnancy, they should be responsible for the outcome of those actions, not be able to escape from them by killing their babies. I know that God doesn’t make any mistakes, we do all the time, but He does not. All that happens to us is part of His plan, and abortions work on thwarting it. I’m afraid that one day these people will be shown the roads that they chose not to travel, ones that He designed for their eternal happiness that they decided not to follow, and I know that they will regret it.