HISTORY OF ABORTION

Over several centuries and in different cultures, there is a rich history of women helping each
other to abort. Until the late 1800s, women healers in Western Europe and the U.S. provided
abortions and trained other women to do so, without legal prohibitions.

The State didn't prohibit abortion until the 19th century, nor did the Church lead in this new
repression. In 1803, Britain first passed antiabortion laws, which then became stricter throughout
the century. The U.S. followed as individual states began to outlaw abortion. By 1880, most
abortions were illegal in the U.S., except those ``necessary to save the life of the woman.'' But
the tradition of women's right to early abortion was rooted in U.S. society by then; abortionists
continued to practice openly with public support, and juries refused to convict them.

Abortion became a crime and a sin for several reasons. A trend of humanitarian reform in the
mid-19th century broadened liberal support for criminalization, because at that time abortion was
a dangerous procedure done with crude methods, few antiseptics, and high mortality rates. But
this alone cannot explain the attack on abortion. For instance, other risky surgical techniques
were considered necessary for people's health and welfare and were not prohibited. ``Protecting''
women from the dangers of abortion was actually meant to control them and restrict them to their
traditional child-bearing role. Antiabortion legislation was part of an antifeminist backlash to the
growing movements for suffrage, voluntary motherhood, and other women's rights in the 19th
century. *For more information, see Linda Gordon's Woman's Body, Woman's Right, rev. ed.
(New York: Penguin Books, 1990).

At the same time, male doctors were tightening their control over the medical profession.
Doctors considered midwives, who attended births and performed abortions as part of their
regular practice, a threat to their own economic and social power. The medical establishment
actively took up the antiabortion cause in the second half of the 19th century as part of its effort
to eliminate midwives.

Finally, with the declining birth rate among whites in the late 1800s, the U.S. government and
the eugenics movement warned against the danger of ``race suicide'' and urged white, native-
born women to reproduce. Budding industrial capitalism relied on women to be unpaid
household workers, low-paid menial workers, reproducers, and socializers of the next generation
of workers. Without legal abortion, women found it more difficult to resist the limitations of
these roles.

Then, as now, making abortion illegal neither eliminated the need for abortion nor prevented its
practice. In the 1890s, doctors estimated that there were two million abortions a year in the U.S.
(compared with one and a half million today). Women who are determined not to carry an
unwanted pregnancy have always found some way to try to abort. All too often, they have
resorted to dangerous, sometimes deadly methods, such as inserting knitting needles or coat
hangers into the vagina and uterus, douching with dangerous solutions like lye, or swallowing
strong drugs or chemicals. The coat hanger has become a symbol of the desperation of millions
of women who have risked death to end a pregnancy. When these attempts harmed them, it was
hard for women to obtain medical treatment; when these methods failed, women still had to find
an abortionist.

Illegal Abortion

Many of us do not know what it was like to need an abortion before legalization. Women who
could afford to pay skilled doctors or go to another country had the safest and easiest abortions.
Most women found it difficult if not impossible to arrange and pay for abortions in medical
settings.

With one exception, the doctors whom I asked for an abortion treated me with contempt, their
attitudes ranging from hostile to insulting. One said to me, ``You tramps like to break the rules,
but when you get caught you all come crawling for help in the same way.''

The secret world of illegal abortion was mostly frightening and expensive. Although there were
skilled and dedicated laywomen and doctors who performed safe, illegal abortions, most illegal
abortionists, doctors, and those who claimed to be doctors cared only about being well rewarded
for their trouble. In the 1960s, abortionists often turned women away if they could not pay
$1,000 or more in cash. Some male abortionists insisted on having sexual relations before the
abortion.

Abortionists emphasized speed and their own protection. They often didn't use anesthesia
because it took too long for women to recover, and they wanted women out of the office as
quickly as possible. Some abortionists were rough and sadistic. Almost no one took adequate
precautions against hemorrhage or infection.

Typically, the abortionist would forbid the woman to contact him or her again. Often she
wouldn't know his or her real name. If a complication occurred, harassment by the law was a
frightening possibility. The need for secrecy isolated women having abortions and those
providing them.

In the 1950s, about a million illegal abortions a year were performed in the U.S., and over a
thousand women died each year as a result. Women who were victims of botched or unsanitary
abortions came in desperation to hospital emergency wards, where some died of widespread
abdominal infections. Many women who recovered from such infections found themselves
sterile or chronically and painfully ill. The enormous emotional stress often lasted a long time.

Poor women and women of color ran the greatest risks with illegal abortions. In 1969, 75% of
the women who died from abortions (most of them illegal) were women of color. Of all legal
abortions in that year, 90% were performed on white private patients.

The Push for Legal Abortion

In the 1960s, inspired by the civil rights and antiwar movements, women began to fight more
actively for their rights. The fast-growing women's movement took the taboo subject of abortion
to the public. Rage, pain, and fear burst out in demonstrations and speakouts as women burdened
by years of secrecy got up in front of strangers to talk about their illegal abortions. Women
marched and rallied and lobbied for abortion on demand. Civil liberties groups and liberal clergy
joined in these efforts to support women.

Reform came gradually. A few states liberalized abortion laws, allowing women abortions in
certain circumstances (e.g., pregnancy resulting from rape or incest, being under 15 years of age)
but leaving the decision up to doctors and hospitals. Costs were still high and few women
actually benefited.

In 1970, New York State went further, with a law that allowed abortion on demand through the
24th week from the LMP if it was done in a medical facility by a doctor. A few other states
passed similar laws. Women who could afford it flocked to the few places where abortions were
legal. Feminist networks offered support, loans, and referrals and fought to keep prices down.
But for every woman who managed to get to New York, many others with limited financial
resources or mobility did not. Illegal abortion was still common. The fight continued; several
cases before the Supreme Court urged the repeal of all restrictive state laws.

On January 22, 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court, in the famous Roe v. Wade decision, stated that
the ``right of privacy...founded in the Fourteenth Amendment's concept of personal liberty...is
broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.'' The
Court held that through the end of the first trimester of pregnancy, only a pregnant woman and
her doctor have the legal right to make the decision about an abortion. States can restrict second-
trimester abortions only in the interest of the woman's safety. Protection of a ``viable fetus'' (able
to survive outside the womb) is allowed only during the third trimester. If a pregnant woman's
life or health is endangered, she cannot be forced to continue the pregnancy.

Abortion After Legalization

Though Roe v. Wade left a lot of power to doctors and to government, it was an important
victory for women. Although the decision did not guarantee that women would be able to get
abortions when they wanted to, legalization and the growing consciousness of women's needs
brought better, safer abortion services. For the women who had access to legal abortions, severe
infections, fever, and hemorrhaging from illegal or self- induced abortions became a thing of the
past. Women health care workers improved their abortion techniques. Some commercial clinics
hired feminist abortion activists to do counseling. Local women's groups set up public referral
services, and women in some areas organized women-controlled nonprofit abortion facilities.
These efforts turned out to be just the beginning of a longer struggle to preserve legal abortion
and to make it accessible to all women.

Although legalization greatly lowered the cost of abortion, it still left millions of women in the
U.S., especially women of color and young, rural women, and/or women with low incomes,
without access to safe, affordable abortions. State regulations and funding have varied widely,
and second-trimester abortions are costly. Even when federal Medicaid funds paid for abortions,
fewer than 20% of all public county and city hospitals actually provided them. This meant that
about 40% of U.S. women never benefited from liberalized abortion laws.
During the late 1970s and early 1980s, feminist health centers around the country provided low-
cost abortions that emphasized quality of care, and they maintained political involvement in the
reproductive rights movement. Competition from other abortion providers, harassment by the
IRS, and a profit- oriented economy made their survival difficult. By the early 1990s, only 20 to
30 of these centers remained.

Eroding Abortion Rights:

After Roe v. Wade

When the Supreme Court legalized abortion in 1973, the antiabortion forces, led initially by the
Catholic Church hierarchy, began a serious mobilization using a variety of political tactics
including pastoral plans, political lobbying, campaigning, public relations, papal encyclicals, and
picketing abortion clinics. The Church hierarchy does not truly represent the views of U.S.
Catholics on this issue or the practice of Catholic women, who have abortions at a rate slightly
higher than the national average for all women.

Other religious groups, like the Mormons and some representatives of Jewish orthodoxy, have
traditionally opposed abortion. In the 1980s, rapidly growing fundamentalist Christian groups,
which overlap with the New Right and ``right- to-life'' organizations, were among the most
visible boosters of the antiabortion movement. These antiabortion groups talk as if all truly
religious and moral people disapprove of abortion. This is not true now and never has been.

The long-range goal of the antiabortion movement is to outlaw abortion. Their short-range
strategy has been to attack access to abortion, and they have had successes. The most vulnerable
women--young women; women with low incomes, of whom a disproportionate number are
women of color; all women who depend on the government for their health care--have borne the
brunt of these attacks on abortion rights.

The antiabortion movement's first victory, a major setback to abortion rights, came in July 1976,
when Congress passed the Hyde Amendment banning Medicaid funding for abortion unless a
woman's life was in danger. Following the federal government, many states stopped funding
``medically unnecessary'' abortions. The result was immediate in terms of harm and
discrimination against women living in poverty. In October 1977, Rosie Jimeaanez, a Texas
woman, died from an illegal abortion in Mexico, after Texas stopped funding Medicaid
abortions.

It is impossible to count the number of women who have been harmed by the Hyde Amendment,
but before Hyde, one-third of all abortions were Medicaid funded: 294,000 women per year.
(Another 133,000 Medicaid-eligible women who needed abortions were unable to gain access to
public funding for the procedure.) Without state funding, many women with unwanted
pregnancies are forced to have babies, be sterilized, or have abortions using money needed for
food, rent, clothing, and other necessities.

Although a broad spectrum of groups fought against the Hyde Amendment, countering this
attack on women who lack financial resources was not a priority of the pro-choice movement.
There was no mass mobilization or public outcry. In the long run, this hurt the pro-choice
movement, as the attack on Medicaid funding was the first victory in the antiabortion
movement's campaign to deny access to abortion for all women.

Young women's rights have been a particular target of the antiabortion movement. About 40% of
the one million teens who become pregnant annually choose abortion. Parental involvement
laws, requiring that minors seeking abortions either notify their parents or receive parental
consent, affect millions of young women. As of early 1997, 35 states have these laws; 23 states
enforce them. In some states, a physician is required to notify at least one parent either in person,
by phone, or in writing. Health care providers face loss of license and sometimes criminal
penalties for failure to comply.

Antiabortion forces have also used illegal and increasingly violent tactics, including harassment,
terrorism, violence, and murder. Since the early 1980s, clinics and providers have been targets of
violence. Over 80% of all abortion providers have been picketed or seriously harassed. Doctors
and other workers have been the object of death threats, and clinics have been subject to
chemical attacks (for example, butyric acid), arson, bomb threats, invasions, and blockades. In
the late 1980s, a group called Operation Rescue initiated a strategy of civil disobedience by
blockading clinic entrances and getting arrested. There were thousands of arrests nationwide as
clinics increasingly became political battlefields.

In the 1990s, antiabortionists increasingly turned to harassment of individual doctors and their
families, picketing their homes, following them, and circulating ``Wanted'' posters. Over 200
clinics have been bombed. After 1992, the violence became deadly. The murder of two doctors
and an escort at a clinic in Pensacola, Florida, was followed by the murder of two women
receptionists at clinics in Brookline, Massachusetts. A health care provider spoke about the
impact of the violence:

The fear of violence has become part of the lives of every abortion provider in the country. As
doctors, we are being warned not to open big envelopes with no return addresses in case a mail
bomb is enclosed. I know colleagues who have had their homes picketed and their children
threatened. Some wear bullet-proof vests and have remote starters for their cars. Even going to
work and facing the disapproving looks from co-workers--isolation and marginalization from
colleagues is part of it.

The antiabortion movement continues to mount new campaigns on many fronts. Most recently, it
has aggressively put out the idea that abortion increases the risk of breast cancer. In January
1997, the results of a Danish study, the largest to date (involving one and a half million women),
showed that there is no connection.s3 Unlike previous studies, this one did not rely on interviews
and women's reports but instead used data obtained from population registries about both
abortion and breast cancer. Despite the lack of medical evidence and the fact that the scientific
community does not recognize any link, the antiabortion movement continues to stir up fears
about abortion and breast cancer.

Legal but Out of Reach for Many Women

We have learned that legalization is not enough to ensure that abortions will be available to all
women who want and need them. In addition to a lack of facilities and trained providers,
burdensome legal restrictions, including parental consent or notification laws for minors and
mandatory waiting periods, create significant obstacles. A minor who has been refused consent
by a parent may have to go through an intimidating and time-consuming judicial hearing.
Mandatory waiting periods may require a woman to miss extra days of work because she must
go to the clinic not once, but twice, to obtain an abortion. If travel is required, this can make the
whole procedure unaffordable. In other words, for millions of women, youth, race, and economic
circumstances together with the lack of accessible services--especially for later abortions--
translate into daunting barriers, forcing some women to resort to unsafe and illegal abortions and
self-abortions.