Coathangers Be Damned! 90% Of World's Women Hellbent On Having Abortions, No Matter What The Law!

A new World Health Organization study on abortion is out, and all the news outlets are interpreting it differently! Over at FOX, the big news is the study’s estimate that one in five pregnancies ends in abortion and 90% of women will have an abortion before the age of 45. Meanwhile at the New York Times, the take is that outlawing abortion will not reduce the number of abortions. “”What we see is that the law does not influence a woman’s decision to have an abortion,” says Dr. Paul Va Look of WHO. “If there’s an unplanned pregnancy, it does not matter if the law is restrictive or liberal.” Now, I am all for keeping abortion VERY VERY LEGAL, but all this shit strikes me as a little crazytown, because I know for a fact that there is a big fucking difference between taking two pills and sticking a rusty hanger up my cervix, and one of those differences is that I live in a society wherein I would not only not be exiled by my peers for having an unplanned baby out of wedlock but I could probably figure out a way to feed it. (Memo to Fate: do NOT read into that!) And about that 90% thing…

Are we still manipulating statistics like this? Didn’t we learn our lesson with the $37,000 wedding? Isn’t the number of women who reach 45 without ever managing to get pregnant in the first place close to 10% of the population? Anyway, the real point of the story, over at the website of the journal The Lancet, is that almost half of all the abortions that happen every year are considered to be “unsafe” and potentially deadly, and almost all of those occur in countries too poor not to cling to monotheistic religions for comfort and consolation, but as usual with religion, the result of all that is a lot of discomfort (and also death) disproportionately suffered by women. Think that if the media focused on such case studies, as opposed to blue and red-color colded talking points, it could convince the nation’s religious zealots to direct their anti-abortion righteousness toward, you know, helping people or something? Ha ha ha, me either.

Legal or Not, Abortion Rates Similar [International Herald Tribune]
Related: Would “Seeing” An Actual Abortion Change Your Mind About It?