Abortion was criminalized in an era when available medicine was not able to discover or diagnose problems with a fetus, and also in a very paternalistic society. Since there was no way to know that there was a medical problem for certain, the choice to get an abortion was nearly always based on social issues - the shame of unwed motherhood, the disaster of another mouth to feed on a family that couldn't feed the children it already had. There was no birth control, and unwanted children weren't adopted, they were either abandoned or sent to orphanages where the survival rate was abysmal.
The survival rate of women who were desperate enough to seek an abortion anyway despite the illegality was also abysmal.
The attitude toward abortion engendered in those circumstances, that it was practiced only by the poor, the foolish, the soiled, the evil, the dregs of society, has somehow managed to carry over today into a world to which it has no tie, and makes no sense.
There would not have been a need to legalize abortion if there had not been first a criminalization of it. There was already no "neutrality."
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2008-08-31 10:17 pm (UTC)The survival rate of women who were desperate enough to seek an abortion anyway despite the illegality was also abysmal.
The attitude toward abortion engendered in those circumstances, that it was practiced only by the poor, the foolish, the soiled, the evil, the dregs of society, has somehow managed to carry over today into a world to which it has no tie, and makes no sense.
There would not have been a need to legalize abortion if there had not been first a criminalization of it. There was already no "neutrality."