FOR a century, state laws in the U. S. have generally made abortion a crime except where necessary to save a woman's life. The ban is enforced by religious beliefs, medical ethics, fear of social scandal. Yet it is flouted throughout the country—in the same pattern, though not in the same numbers, as Prohibition was decades ago. Written by men, anti-abortion laws cannot quell the desperation of women for whom a particular pregnancy is a hateful foreign object. At their time of despair, women agree with Author Marya Mannes, who reviles such laws as the work of "the inseminators, not the bearers."
How women react to unwanted pregnancy is the most crucial—and least acknowledged—issue in the current debate over U. S. abortion laws. Each year, an estimated 25 million legal abortions occur throughout the world (v. roughly 120 million live births). The fact is that women have always practiced abortion, defying all laws or taboos against it, including the death penalty, which still exists in Pakistan. The inevitable Egyptian papyrus mentions it; Aristotle urged it in general terms, and so did Plato for every woman after 40; Roman husbands were entitled to order it. Anthropologist George Devereux has catalogued dozens of ancient methods—magical incantations, jumping from high places, applying hot coals to the abdomen. Hawaiian women fashioned stilettos representing Kupo, god of abortions, then thrust them into the uterus. Even now, Ceylonese girls brew an abortifacient by boiling a poisonous yam in cow urine or liquid dung, and then swallow the stuff for seven days.
It is a male theory (or unconscious demand) that women feel deep guilt after abortion. In fact, most women react with a feeling of great relief. None of this should obscure the biological fact that abortion is abnormal, a product of grave medical, economic and psychological pressures. Says a twice-aborted schoolteacher: "No one would go through it unless they had to."
Practice v. Policy
How many women have illegal abortions rather than suffer the far-reaching effects of unwanted pregnancy? Estimates range from 200,000 to 1,500,000 a year in the U. S. (v. 3,700,000 live births). No one records illegal abortions; all statistics are extrapolated from shaky sample studies going as far back as Germany in the 1920s. As for deaths resulting from abortions, which are better recorded, the annual toll is probably about 1,000. No one can accurately add up the number of U. S. women who go to Puerto Rico, Japan, and other places where abortions are easily, if expensively, obtained. The firmest figure is the number of legal abortions (10,000 a year) performed in hospitals—and they are decreasing. In the early 1940s, one pregnancy in 150 was aborted to save women with such diseases as di abetes, tuberculosis and hypertension. Now medical advances have helped to cut the ratio to one in 500.