What happens if abortion is illegal

This is what banning abortion looks like in And this is where the United States could be headed if the courts permit cruel state laws like those passed in Georgia and Alabama to weaken or dismantle the rights protected in the landmark Roe v. Wade decision. Clandestine abortion is safer than it used to be because of medication, but even in , women still die from unsafe abortion.

In Brazil, a country where abortion is illegal except in strictly limited circumstances, Ingriane Barbosa Carvalho, a mother of three in her early 30s, died last year from a botched abortion by a back-alley provider. An obstetrician-gynecologist in the Dominican Republic told me about a year-old woman who came to the hospital in septic shock after an unsafe abortion two years before. When abortion is heavily restricted or banned, women from poor, rural and marginalized communities suffer most, as they may not be able to afford to travel to places where abortion is legal, or pay what it costs.

Around the world, an estimated 8 to 11 percent of maternal deaths are caused by unsafe abortion. In May, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released data showing that hundreds of women die in the United States each year from preventable complications related to pregnancy.

Preventable maternal deaths will only increase if access to abortion is further restricted. But abortion-related deaths are much less common than they were a few decades ago, especially in countries with functional health-care systems. Unsafe abortions are more common in countries where the practice is illegal. While fewer women are perforating their uterus or dying of sepsis, if women who attempt to perform their own abortion are taken to the hospital with complications, they might be reported to the authorities and face jail time.

When Michelle Oberman, a Santa Clara University law professor, began her research on abortion in El Salvador, where abortion is outlawed , she expected to enter hospital wards full of women dying of perforated uteruses. For one thing, doctors have gotten better at controlling bleeding in recent decades.

But there has also been a major revolution in how clandestine abortions are performed. Since the s, women around the world have been able to take a common and cheap stomach-ulcer drug, misoprostol , to end their pregnancies without anyone knowing.

Read: Pro-abortion-rights activists won in Ireland, but not Argentina. The drug combination has made it so that in Brazil alone, since , the treatment rate for severe complications from abortion has declined by 76 percent. In Latin America overall, the rate of complications from abortions declined by a third since Meanwhile, the rate of abortions there has only increased. Even though abortion is illegal in El Salvador, one in three pregnancies still ends in abortion, Oberman says.

Having previously been hidden from the world, images emerged of stick-thin children, many of whom had been beaten and abused. Some were left shackled to metal bed frames. Born and raised in Romania, Bucur describes herself as a product of the abortion ban, after her mother twice failed to have an abortion. On Wednesday, a day after it was passed by the legislature, Alabama Gov.

But the Trump administration took a swipe at birth control in when it allowed employers to opt out of providing it as part of employee insurance plans on the grounds of religious belief. This decision was halted by a federal judge in January of this year.

The legal tussle between the courts over abortion looks set to continue as anti-abortion groups seek to push through laws they hope will be upheld by a newly conservative Supreme Court, to which U. President Donald Trump has appointed two new members. So far this year, over a dozen other states have attempted to outlaw abortions after six weeks of gestation—before many people even realize they are pregnant. Last week, Georgia became the sixth state to successfully pass such a bill.

Already, six states in the United States have only one abortion clinic left. Although the laws may be struck down by the courts, anti-abortion advocates hope that they will eventually reach the Supreme Court to challenge the precedent set by the Roe v. Wade decision, which enshrined the right to seek an abortion. Alabama State Rep. But the exact number ultimately should not matter to anyone for whom even one such death is unacceptable, to anyone who understands the enormous cascade of consequences restricting access to abortion in this country will have.

Fundamentally, Dr. Wen is correct—recent political shifts that threaten to undermine Roe will kill many, and simply should be unacceptable to anyone who cares about the health of women. Boston University moderates comments to facilitate an informed, substantive, civil conversation. Abusive, profane, self-promotional, misleading, incoherent or off-topic comments will be rejected. Moderators are staffed during regular business hours EST and can only accept comments written in English. Statistics or facts must include a citation or a link to the citation.

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