It’s election time and the airwaves are flooded with apocalyptic scenarios of what will happen after Roe is overturned. What will happen after Roe and can we live with it? Absolutely.
1. First, women are not going to jail. Abortion advocates are playing into the fear that women will go to jail. These advocates have posted a video on You Tube of pro-life protestors saying that women will go to jail, but those videographers cannot find a single credible pro-life leader who agrees.
The only people talking seriously about women going to jail are abortion advocates. They are the ones demanding that we put them in jail when Roe is overturned-and for good reason. Clark Forsythe says “in nearly all of the reported court cases explicitly addressing the issue of whether a woman was an accomplice to her abortion, it was the abortionist (not the prosecutor) who pushed the courts to treat the woman as an accomplice, for the obvious purpose of undermining the state’s criminal case against the abortionist.”
Many abortionists have performed over 30,000 abortions. Planned Parenthood’s chain of clinics has performed over 3 million. The goal is to stop abortion and the best way to accomplish that is to stop those who perform them. The tradition of pursuing the abortionist will continue after Roe.
2. Abortion will not become illegal everywhere. Some states have not changed their laws to accommodate Roe. A few have “trigger laws” that will take effect when Roe is overturned. When Roe is overturned, state legislatures will once again be able to work out laws on abortion, just as they did before Roe invalidated abortion laws in all 50 states.
3. Abortion will be available for certain exceptions. Before Roe nullified abortion laws in all 50 states, abortion was available for the life of the mother-so one would live and two not die. In many states, it was available for rape and incest (one percent of abortions). Polling shows most Americans favor limiting abortion to these exceptions (see www.nevadalife.org).
4. Abortion will continue for other reasons once abortion becomes illegal, but in far fewer numbers. Legalization led to a 1500 percent increase in abortion. Making abortion illegal in most instances will dramatically reduce abortion, just as other crimes are greatly reduced by being illegal. In Poland, limiting abortion to rape, incest and the life of the mother has reduced abortions more than 99 percent.
5. America's back alleys will not turn into rivers of blood. In 1960, several years before legalization, Planned Parenthood’s Dr. Mary Calderone noted that almost all illegal abortions were performed by licensed physicians in “good standing.” Thousands of women are not going to die without Roe. Dr. Bernard Nathanson, co-founder of NARAL Pro-choice America says he knew that the claim that 5,000-10,000 women died every year due to illegal abortion was “totally false.” Abortion deaths were going down before legalization due to advances in trauma care and anti-biotics. The number of deaths due to abortion the year before Roe was 39.
6. When abortion is illegal, not only will one million lives be saved every year, abortion related pathologies such as death, injury, infection, infertility, premature birth, increased alcohol and drug abuse, the increased risk of breast cancer, post abortion syndrome and many other pathologies will likewise be greatly reduced. Women facing these decisions can be confident that the network of 3000 pregnancy centers will continue to exist long after Roe.
Voters should not fear life after Roe.
