This new administration has started out with a bang! A journey that’s taking the American people in an uncertain spiral to the “bad, old days”.
As I watched the “pro-life” march on T.V., I couldn’t help but get frustrated with their inaccurate message…. If they reverse Roe vs Wade and make abortion illegal, then it will somehow go away?! No-oooo!! It won’t go away. It will just lead to unsafe procedures for women to terminate their pregnancies. This administration wants to eliminate funding to Planned Parenthood and other facilities that perform abortions. What they don’t realize is that by eliminating funding to facilities that perform abortions, they are also eliminating the resources for these women to be educated and receive effective birth control. If women don’t receive effective birth control, then they are more likely to have an unintended pregnancy that leads to abortion.
With no funding, we find women performing their own abortions leading to unsafe procedures that leads to infection, illness and even death.
Taking away Roe vs Wade doesn’t take away abortions. It makes these procedures unsafe.
More then 5000 American women died each year as a direct result from unsafe and largely self-induced abortions before Roe vs Wade. Now, with the legalization of abortion, less than 1 in every 100,000 women who use a medical abortion die making it safer than childbirth according to the World Health Organization!
According to the CDC, the rate of abortions has continued to decline through the 1990’s with the total number, rate and ratio of reported abortions decreasing by 5% from 2012-2013.
So if you take away funding (and the Affordable Care Act), the rate of abortions will go up with women using unsafe practices and the rate of deaths will also increase. This will increase our national health care costs in trying to save women from these unsafe procedures that could have been prevented. The primary method for preventing unsafe abortions is less restrictive abortion laws and greater contraceptive use and education!
Please don’t let us go back to the “bad old days”. We have come so far…
I have contacted my local senators and I ask that you do the same. I have asked that they please respect women and their reproductive rights.
This means open access to safe, legal, affordable abortion and birth control for all people, regardless of income, location, or education.