What are the facts about abortion in the United States today? How widely is it resorted to and by whom? What percentage is legal (therapeutic) and what illegal? Are its illegal practitioners sinister moneygrubbers without skill, knowledge, or proper instruments, or are they licensed physicians? Is the operation as potentially dangerous as generations of women have been led to believe?
Reliable statistics are, naturally enough, hard to get in the United States, though they are readily available from such countries as Sweden, Denmark, Russia, and Japan, where abortion is, in varying cases, legal. Nobody who places a bet with a bookmaker has any particular hesitation about admitting it, but few women, gossips or not, discuss their abortions at the bridge table. Lack of discussion probably has nothing to do with shame or reticence but is simply a loyal conspiracy of silence on the part of women to protect abortionists. Any woman of childbearing age who knows a reliable man in this field has a stake in keeping him in business. She may need him herself, or have a close friend who will.
I set out recently to find an abortionist in the large Eastern city where I live. My husband and I are in our mid-forties and have three children. When I discovered that I was pregnant for the fourth time, my husband and I considered the situation as honestly as we could. We both admitted that we lacked the physical resources to face 2 A.M. feedings, diapers, and the seemingly endless cycle of measles, mumps, and concussions of another child. Years of keeping a wary eye on expenditures (a new suit for my husband every two years and one for me every five) had allowed us to set up a fund which we felt would enable the children to attend reasonably good colleges away from home if some financial assistance in the form of grants or scholarships could be obtained. Since my husband’s income has reached its zenith, it was plain that one of the four would have to forgo all or part of a chance at higher education. The part-time secretarial work which I had been doing for some years to augment our income would have to stop since the revenue it produces would not cover baby-sitting fees. We have no rich uncles likely to make our children their beneficiaries. We have also had sufficient experience living to acknowledge that while the Lord will sometimes provide, He may be busy looking after somebody else when you need Him most.