Had abortions during the period in which it was illegal, ones medically performed. The ones who suffered most during that period
were the poor and minorities, but that was because they were unable to afford the expensive procedure of therapeutic abortion and went with dangerous alternatives:
Of approximately one million abortions performed in 1967, fewer than 10,000 were reported in the Federal Government’s Vital Statistics as done legally in hospitals as “therapeutic abortion” – that is, done to preserve the life, or health, of the mother. The other 990,000 abortions were done illegally by persons ranging in competence from skilled physicians to unskilled and unscrupulous quacks. Some of the women attempted to perform abortion on themselves, using such instruments as coat hangers and knitting needles, often with fatal results. Women who have experienced unsafe abortion attempts frequently develop massive infection, or “sepsis,” and arrive at the emergency room in critical condition with fever, hemorrhage, and multiple complications. The hospital stays of those who survive are long, expensive, and disruptive of their family lives.
Septic abortion has been one of the leading causes of death among child-bearing women for many years, with a disproportionate share of the deaths falling among the poor and minority groups who cannot afford safe abortions. In 1967, for example, the death rate attributed to septic abortion, as reported in the Government’s Vital Statistics, was nearly seven times as high among non-whites as among whites. For a five-year period from 1957 to 1962, Drs. Edwin Gold and Carl Erhardt found that more than half of all maternal deaths (deaths related to pregnancy and childbirth) among Puerto Ricans and blacks living in New York City were caused by septic abortion.More from the November 1972 issue of
The Progressive:
http://www.drhern.com/abpolitics.htm
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