Have our pro-choice laws really had a devastating psychological effect on our nation as President Reagan once warned? Hardly! Most Americans and most Western Europeans have healthy families growing up in safe surroundings. In stark contrast, in almost all countries where abortions are still illegal, there are high infant mortality rates and little commitment to either women’s rights, or to the health of children.
When certain religious beliefs and dogmas discourage scientific and rational critical thought in favor of a primitive system of magical belief, which, as a consequence, results in widespread pain and suffering, these religious beliefs deserve to be critically examined, if rationality and compassion have any value.
Since 1980 the National Abortion Federation has identified more than 10,000 reported acts of terrorism against lawful reproductive rights supporters in the United States. There have been thousands of abortion clinic blockades. Clinic workers have been regularly stalked. There have been hundreds of clinic arson attacks, bombings and even anthrax scares. There have been kidnappings and shootings. Nine abortion providers have been murdered.
In the United States, anti-abortion laws before Roe v. Wade (1973) were also a medical and social disaster. Hundreds of thousands of women with botched abortions filled our hospitals each year. (I had a student die from one such an abortion in Tijuana.) Medical costs skyrocketed, families were torn apart and disrespect for the law was intensified