Pro-choice author Karen Blumenthal says:
“During the 1960s and up to the present day, some abortion rights advocates said that as many as 5000 or 10,000 women died a year from illegal abortions when the procedure was a crime.
It’s a dramatic figure – but it isn’t accurate.
Antiabortion advocates have charged that the number was wildly exaggerated for political reasons. But mostly, it was just outdated.
The big number comes from a study of abortion deaths in the 1930s, before antibiotics were widely available. And the researcher may have stretched that number a bit.”
Karen Blumenthal Jane Against the World: Roe v. Wade and the Fight for Reproductive Rights (New York: Roaring Brook Press, 2020) 76
In reality, the claim that 10,000 women were dying from illegal abortions is not just “outdated” but blatantly false.
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