Repairing the Damage, Before Roe

[groovedaddy]

With the Supreme Court becoming more conservative, many people who support women’s right to choose an abortion fear that Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that gave them that right, is in danger of being swept aside.

When such fears arise, we often hear about the pre-Roe “bad old days.” Yet there are few physicians today who can relate to them from personal experience. I can.

I am a retired gynecologist, in my mid-80s. My early formal training in my specialty was spent in New York City, from 1948 to 1953, in two of the city’s large municipal hospitals.

There I saw and treated almost every complication of illegal abortion that one could conjure, done either by the patient herself or by an abortionist — often unknowing, unskilled and probably uncaring. Yet the patient never told us who did the work, or where and under what conditions it was performed. She was in dire need of our help to complete the process or, as frequently was the case, to correct what damage might have been done.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/03/health/views/03essa.html?th&emc=th

[Taverner]

1. This needs to be sent, high and nigh, to anyone who even thinks antiabortion

Make this a viral email - please

[colinmom71]

6. Please send this link too!

http://www.albany.edu/history/FromTheBackAlleys.html (requires RealPlayer to stream)

An excellent audio recording from an older documentary called "From the Back Alleys to the Supreme Court And Beyond". It consists of several interviews and the history of life for women before the Roe v. Wade decision was handed down. The content is heart-breaking but it needs to be remembered...

[Warpy]

2. I had a friend who died from a botched abortion in 1968

We never found out if she'd tried to do it herself or if she'd gone to one of the many butchers in town.

She died hard.

Choice of whether or not to carry a pregnancy to term is not negotiable.

Those of us who were around before Roe know that antiabortion laws kill women. They killed my friend.

[caseycoon]

3. K&R! This was a TERRIBLE problem!

Thanks for posting this.
I'm sure there are many folks out there who don't realize how many girls/women got horrible infections, died or were maimed by the 'back alley' illegal abortionists. Also the ones who tried to do it themselves.

[Georgia_Lass]

9. Thats so horrible!!

[sinkingfeeling]

4. Excellent essay! I've heard it quoted that there were just as many abortions, pre-Roe, per capita

as there are today. The major difference is in the number of women who either died or were no longer able to have a child or were left with severe medical problems as a result.

[MountainLaurel]

5. An incredible piece

Alternet.org did an article last year about how women's clinics in the states where access to abortion pretty much did not exist were seeing an influx of patients who had tried to abort themselves: women of all ages who had douched with bleach, drank home remedies or tried to throw themselves down stairs.

We are facing a return to these techniques, even if Roe v. Wade does stand.

[HockeyMom]

7. My Aunt was one very fortunate woman back in 1945

unlike so, so many other women back then. She had the support of her husband and grown daughters, enough money, and most importantly, a caring OB/GYN of 20+ years who was willing to LIE and say she needed a therapeutic abortion, as they called them back then, in order to save her life. My Aunt's abortion was performed in a clean, safe hospital in NYC. How many millions of other women didn't have those options?

When she was in her 80s, my Aunt told me her story. She also told me to be very, very careful and not let complacency bring us back to those old days before Roe.

The last thing she said to me was, "I did what I had to do and have have no regrets".

[Iris]

11. None of the women I know who've had abortions regret their decision.

Nor should any woman be made to feel she should.

I'm glad your aunt was so lucky and I'm glad she made sure her story was told.

[Georgia_Lass]

8. K & R

[CounterPropagandist]

10. McCain - Does he believe the Constitution is Constitutional?

McCain, in questioning the Roe v. Wade decision this morning, uses the line that he wants Supreme Court justices to interpret the Constitution "strictly". Voters have to understand what he is saying here. I will show why, on its face, this is nonsense. Roe v. Wade was based on the newly discovered "right of privacy", which was never explicitly mentioned in the Bill of Rights, which according to the Opinion of the Court, derived from the NINTH AMENDMENT. This is one of the least mentioned but most important Amendments in the Bill of Rights, which simply states,

"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."

In addition, if this was not enough to clarify the intent of the Framers, there is the TENTH AMENDMENT:

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people."

This is one of the very most important parts of the Constitution, and was the result of a significant debate at the time of the ratification. Some of the founders, rightly so, did not want to have a Bill of Rights that enumerated certain rights as protected, because they feared that if they forgot to mantion some rights, that would imply that they were not protected and thus were prohibited. It was agreed that this was not the intent. The list of rights, as lawyers would say, was intended to be construed as "exemplary, not exhaustive." Those rights, such as family rights, which the Republicans have repeatedly said they support, are never mentioned in the Constitution explicitly, but derive from long custom, tradition and human nature, and emanated from the Supreme Court's determination that these were natural and fundamental human rights "reserved to the people".

Roe v. Wade involved the right of privacy of a doctor to determine a course of treatment with his patient without interference from the government. It was supported by a prior decision of the Court in Griswold v. Connecticut (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griswold_v._Connecticut), which earlier invoked the Ninth Amendment to support the existence of a "right of privacy" as a "penumbra" or other rights. Griswold emanated from the Supreme Court's determination that the right of a patient to receove invormation about constraception from his or her doctor, was supported by a natural right of privacy, and that the bedroom was a part of marriage that was sacrosanct and could not be invaded by state authorities without sacrificing the most basic of human rights.

These Amendments merely assert fundamental "inalienable" human and natural rights, such as those expressed in the UN Charter, for example.

So the question I would like to ask McCain is, what would he have the Supreme Court do? What does he mean by "strict construction" of the constitution? Does interpreting fundamental natural "human rights" "reserved to the people" in the Ninth Amendment mean "legislating from the bench"? How can the Supreme Court strictly construe the Ninth and Tenth Amendments? Is he asking the Supreme Court to abrogate these Amendments, which were expressly designed to avoid straighjacketing the Bill of Rights to a limited set of enumerated rights, and nothing more? How can the Supreme Court justices do their jobs without taking notice of these parts of the original Constitution? And if he is going to nominate justice that adhere to "strict construction", whatever that is, are they also going to abrogate the entire line of cases starting with Pierce v. Society of Sisters, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierce_v._Society_of_Sisters) which has been upheld for almost a century, that established the rights of families to make decisions regarding the upbringing of their children? Strict construction of the constituion I would assert means recognizing these "safety valve" amendments that allow for the refinement and evolution of the Constitution as a living document, not one that is cast in stone.

I would really like someone to ask McCain these questions. He knows exactly what this issue is, if he is any Senator at all, and his answers are clearly disingenuous. This is something every first year lawstudent learns in Constitutional Law 101. Are these decisions a "librul conspiracy", or the Framers' intent?