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In general, abortion has become safer since legalization. New York State recorded 21 fatalities in 1968, 24 in 1969; since the new law took effect, the state has recorded only eight, or 4.8 per 100,000 legal abortions. (The U.S. maternal-mortality rate is 27.4 per 100,000 births.) Abortion complications, which can include perforation of the uterus, hemorrhage and infection, are far less frequent in legal than in illegal procedures.
HOW IT FEELS. Many women find early abortions less traumatic than they had expected. Alice Johnson, who was seven weeks pregnant, reported to Manhattan's nonprofit Women's Services early in the morning to find the waiting room already crowded. "All these girls were sitting there with their boy friends or mothers or fathers or all alone," she said. After an examination and blood tests, Alice was given an explanation of the procedure, birth control information and a tranquilizer. Then she was escorted to an operating room, where a doctor gave her a shot of Novocain; the vacuum-aspiration abortion itself, though painful, took only five minutes. Alice rested in a recovery room, chatted with other young women who had undergone the same experience. "Most of us had been very tense," she said, "but now we were relaxed, and we were laughing and saying we never wanted to see a man again." An hour later, she paid $125 and left.
Most well-educated and relatively "liberated" women say that they have no regrets. But many older women, and some girls who feel conflict with their religious or ethical upbringing, find the experience psychologically scarring. Cindy, 17 and single, felt exhilarated immediately after her abortion. But when her hospital roommate, going into labor from a saline induction, began to moan with pain, Cindy's cheer gave way to guilt at the ease with which she herself had ended her pregnancy. She broke down and wept.
A woman's reaction often depends upon her relationship with the man. Some single women say that abortion ends any affection they might have felt for the man responsible. Another factor, according to Psychoanalyst Theodor Reik, is that women may unconsciously see abortion as a man does castration.
CHANGING ATTITUDES. The setting can have a profound effect on a woman's reaction. Most of those who have illegal abortions find the experience horrifying and degrading. Women who have abortions in public hospitals, where nurses and doctors are sometimes overworked and brusque, are often unhappy too. But women who undergo early abortions in specialized outpatient clinics are far less subject to depression. Many of the clinics are staffed by young women who have had abortions themselves and understand the patients' feelings.