Does Abortion Save Women’s Lives?
“Even if abortion, when legal, is safer for women than illegal—even if we were to concede that—is it ethical to legalize homicide just to make it safer for those who participate in it?” - Breakpoint
It’s worth noting here that, first of all, the estimates of “thousands” of deaths due to back alley abortions prior to Roe was a wild overestimate, A couple of hundred—really comparable to maternal death rates—was closer to the truth, and even today, botched abortions are killing women.
Another point of reference is that one thing abortion does is to create a culture where men can bed and impregnate women without risking the proverbial “shotgun wedding”, or even a court order for child support. Hence it promotes the culture of “loving and leaving” that correlates very well to domestic violence deaths, crime rates among children of unwed parents, and drug overdoses. So even if abortion does reduce maternal death in a “ceterus parabus” (all else the same) scenario, it most likely has a horrendous butcher’s bill in terms of murder rates and drug overdose rates.
Some may object to the inclusion of murder rates by children of unwed parents, but it does turn out that the same demographics that have the highest abortion rates also have high rates of unwed parenting. The two phenomena are linked.
Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.
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