Thursday, June 23, 2011

Be careful what you wish for

The Chicago Tribune has recently been reporting a number of incidents where abortion records were not being kept properly, including records of their complications.  Unfortunately this falls under the category of “Be careful what you wish for…”

Years ago Jack Willke and his wife wrote a book “Handbook on Abortion” that covered a number of issues relating to abortion.  In response to claims that we needed to legalize abortion to reduce illegal abortions, the Willkes argued that it would not reduce this, because of the privacy factor.  Even if abortion were legal, they argued that a wife pregnant by another man would still have it done illegally because of the possibility that the husband could find out from medical records that his wife had a legal abortion.  In the same way, a minor would go to an illegal abortionist for fear her parents might find out if she had it done legally.   By being so lax on record-keeping, they may have gotten rid of reasons for seeking illegal abortions, but the legal ones aren’t much safer, and there are more of them.

No comments:

Post a Comment