General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Being pro-life doesn’t make me any less of a lefty [View all]liberalhistorian
(20,818 posts)is really going to magically, suddenly stop them? Do you not know the history of abortion and how many thousands of women died and/or suffered horribly from illegal, botched abortions before '73?
Do you honestly believe that making something illegal is going to magically stop people from doing it? How's that drug war thing working out so far? No one ever uses or goes to jail for using or dealing drugs because it's illegal now, right? No one ever commits burglary or murder because it's illegal, right? Right.
My grandmother, who'd be 93 now, personally knew women her age who'd died of abortions when she was a younger gal. And so did my mother, aunts and cousins. My sociology professor had a student come into her office, in the late fifties, begging for help because she was bleeding to death from an abortion. She died before the professor could get her to the hospital. There are thousands more stories like this. And you have the unmitigated nerve to claim that just because abortion is illegal it will never happen and women won't be harmed. Right. Or maybe you don't give a damn about that. I remember attending a women's march in D.C. in the mid-80's and there were many older women there who could tell some real horror stories about themselves or other women they'd known. And I remember one woman with a huge sign, written in scraggly red letters to depict blood, that said "My mom had an illegal abortion. I don't miss the baby. I miss my mom." She talked about losing her mom over twenty years before, when she was fairly young, and how angry she'd get when people wouldn't say anything about her mom, but would only ask "don't you wish you'd had that brother or sister. That poor baby." Not a word about the mother she was close to.
And speaking of which, there's a DUer here who is the daughter of a woman who died horribly from an illegal abortion, who bled to death in her hotel room after being abandoned by her lover when things went bad. There's a famous picture of it, a graphic one, that was said to have helped galvanize the legalization movement back when it happened, in 1963. The picture is in this thread, if you even give a damn, take a good long look and then tell that DUer to her face why her mother deserved to suffer and die the way she did:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10021189621
But chances are you don't give a damn because it would ruin your little fantasy of there magically being no more abortions once it's illegal. And because you probably think, like a lot of anti-choicers, that she "deserved" it or "brought it on herself". Totally ignoring the role of men in pregnancy, of course. And, pray tell, what do you think should happen to women who have abortions if it's illegal? Brand them with a huge scarlet A for the rest of their lives? Jail them for life? Hang them, like they did in Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale", hanging both the women and the doctors who performed the abortions? And your attitude is frighteningly like that frightening book, the Handmaid's Tale, which I just read this summer. You and the RW nutballs we've had to deal with lately sound just like the leaders in that book.