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What if abortion were made illegal?

15 February 2006

One of the arguments for keeping abortion legal is that a medical catastrophe would occur if it were made illegal. In various ways the advocates for abortion promote a spectre of women dying in their tens of thousands form illegal unsafe abortion performed with rusty coat hangers on kitchen tables by fishwives.

In November last year the UN Human Rights committee in Geneva, criticised Poland's restrictive abortion laws, saying that it " puts women's lives at risk by encouraging them to seek illegal abortions, sometimes from untrained practitioners. " One news story covering this event stated that there were "as many as 200,000 abortions annually in Poland ".

To see if this augment has any credence, it is useful to look at the situation on Poland, one of the larger Eastern European nations to recently join the E.U. This country was under Soviet domination for 44 years, and during this time there was legalised state funded abortion in the first three months of pregnancy. The abortion figures for these years in shown below.

Year	1965	1970	1975	1980	1985
Total abortions	168,600	148,200	138,600	138,000	135,500

By 1990, with the advent of the Solidarity movement and the influence of a Polish Pope, abortions had declined to only a third of their former annual number. On 7^th January 1993 an Act was passed in the Polish parliament concerning family planning, protection of the unborn and abortion. The only grounds for abortion were to be foetal handicap or when a woman was pregnant through rape or incest. See recent abortion figures below.

Year	1990	1991	1992	1993	1994	1995	1996	1997	1998	1999
Abortions	59,417	30,878	11,640	777	782	559	495	3,047	253	151

In 1990 there were almost 60,000 legal abortions in Poland under the law that permitted abortion on demand. In 1999 there were only 151 abortions, around the same number occurred in the last few years. In 1997 there were 2,524 abortions for social reasons. After this year there were no legal abortions for social reasons. From 1993 until today there has only been one year (1997) when social abortion has been lawful in Poland.

It has been alleged that many women from Poland travel abroad each year to obtain abortions, since the law was restricted. However there is scant evidence for this. In contrast there is much evidence from governmental and medical sources which indicates both a precipitous drop in the number of abortions and a very real improvement in maternal and infant health.

The pro-abortionists argue that women have always had abortions and will continue to procure abortions (or do their own), irrespective of what the law of the land says. It is helpful to look at what happened in Poland before and after the tightening of their abortion law. From this evidence it is difficult to claim that forbidding abortion causes the death of women. Even though there are no statistics produced for cases of illegal abortion, the Prosecutor's Office claims that the number of illegal abortions did not increase after 1993. Of the 33 women who died in 1996 from pregnancy related causes, none are listed as dying from an illegal abortion. See figures for deaths relating to child bearing, below :

Year	1991	1993	1995	1997	1998	1999	2000
Maternal deaths	80	60	55	45	30	28	25

The figure for infanticide show a strong downward trend, as seen below :

Year	1992	1993	1995	1997	1999	2001
Infanticides	59	56	42	43	31	27

When women who have had abortions are asked what they would do if the procedure had been illegal, few say that they would still have had their child aborted. A significant study carried out in the USA gives a similar picture to the situation in Poland. The survey was with 252 women from 42 states who had had abortions. 75% answered not at all when asked " if abortion had not been legally available would you have sought an illegal abortion? " Only 4% said " very much ". 87% said " not at all " when asked " Would you have attempted a self - induced abortion?" ; just 3% said " very much".

There were predictions that, if abortion were restricted, the number of miscarriages would rise. This would happen it was said, because of illegal abortionists' practice of beginning an abortion, waiting until the woman starts to bleed, and then sending her to hospital to be treated for an apparent miscarriage. If this were true, one would expect the number of miscarriages in Poland to rise sharply from 1990 onwards. See below :

Year	1990	1993	1995	1997	2001
Miscarriages	59,454	53,057	45,308	44,185	40,500

From almost 60,00 miscarriages in 1990 there were only around 40,000 miscarriages in 2001. There has been a marked decrease in miscarriages (one third drop) not the supposed increase.

Another indicator of women's health is the infant mortality rate for live births. If this is decreasing, the health of mothers and their children must be improving. The data below was collected from the polish statistical Year Book and shows the infant mortality per 1,000 live births for each year. If women had been trying to do their own abortions, there would have been more premature births and more infants dying. In fact there was a 54% decline in infant mortality between 1990 and 1998. See table below.

Year	1990	1992	1994	1996	1998
Infant Mortality	19.3	17.5	15.1	10.2	8.9

One would think that forbidding abortion, in most cases, would lead to an increase in births. This has not been the case in Poland. Poland shows the same trend as the rest of Europe, with a continuing decline in fertility well below the replacement rate.

Year	1990	1993	1995	1998
Live births per 1000	546	494	433	397

Year	1980	1990	1995	1998
Fertility rate	2.28	2.04	1.61	1.40

Those who opposed an end to legal abortion, also predicted an large increase in illegitimacy. The figure below give the percentage of children born to married couples. This shows some increase in illegitimacy, but no startling change.

Year	1990	1992	1994	1996	1997
% births to marrieds	93.8	92.8	91.0	89.6	89.0

By comparison Wales now has just over one half of birth (51%) that are illegitimate.

Poland is a developed nation of around 40 million souls. Pro-abortionists have claimed that forbidding abortion would drive it underground and women would die. These disastrous consequences have not occurred. Poland, her women and babies are healthier than they were when abortion were legal. We can confidently predict that there will be a similar result in other developed countries - even in Britain - when abortions are forbidden by law.

It is my earnest prayer that God's people will be equipped to answer the lies and half truths that surround the issue of abortion.

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