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Introduction by Peggy Loonan
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| Life
and Liberty for Women
agrees with historian and author Rickie Solinger
and believes it is time to dispel the myth about
the number of women who died from so-called back
alley butchers. In fact, most women who died pre-Roe,
died from self-induced abortion. |
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| While there were undoubtedly
some medically unskilled men and women who tried
to make a buck offering unsafe illegal abortions,
including outside of the United States, and who
probably killed some women, the truth is thousands
upon thousands of women who sought an abortion provider
rather than self-abort, found highly skilled providers
whose safety records were remarkable considering
the difficult circumstances secrecy and illegality
presented. |
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| The myth of so-called
back alley butchers, abortionists who were loathsome
predators placing women's health and life and risk,
was a creation of the authorities prosecuting good
caring and highly medically skilled abortion providers.
Along with degrading women, destroying their medical
confidentiality, sensationalizing and sexually charging
the trials of illegal abortion providers, of whom
most were female, it was a major component of the
prosecution's strategy. |
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| Since Roe vs. Wade, the
myth of the back alley butcher has been used by
the current abortions rights movement to serve the
sixty-second sound bite about why abortion should
remain legal and has provided the ammunition for
the marginalizing of abortion providers by current
day anti-abortion extremists, who harass, providers,
bomb their clinics, and assassinate them. |
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| Life
and Liberty for Women wants everyone to know
too, that making abortion illegal won't stop women
from having abortions. Since the beginning of time
women have risked their lives not to have a baby
they can't give up for adoption or aren't prepared
to raise. |
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| Women will self-abort,
have abortions in secret, without, medical care,
and in dangerous circumstances. R. Schwarz, in |
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| Septic Abortion, 1968,
"Most studies indicate that up to 1,200,000 illegal
abortions are performed annually; one pregnancy
in five is illegally terminated." The American Journal
of Obstetrics and Gynecology, July 1, 1967, cites
studies by Dr. L. Fox who estimated, for example,
that 100,000 criminal abortions occurred per year
in California alone. |
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| Schwarz also said in 1968,
"that as many as 5,000 American women die each year
as a result of criminal abortion. That figure may
be a minimum estimate, inasmuch as many such deaths
are mislabeled or unreported. In Philadelphia, over
50 percent of the maternal deaths result from complications
of abortion, 57 percent in Michigan, 33 percent
at Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn." |
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| Dr. Fox said in 1967, "Induced abortion
is the most common single cause of maternal deaths
in California." |
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| For too many years, anti-abortion
extremists and their baby killing rhetoric and pictures
of alleged aborted fetuses, have gone virtually
unchallenged by the current abortion rights movement.
This consistent unchallenged barrage has made women
feel ashamed of their right to life and liberty
that was correctly and morally balanced with that
of the fetus in Roe vs. Wade. |
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| We at Life
and Liberty for Women, have chosen to challenge
those images and the language with the horrific
sights and sounds of illegal abortion. Our characters,
Dr. Smith and Mrs. Jones, are a composite of many
individuals who lived, struggled, and died before
Roe vs. Wade. |
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| The detailed and emotional
stories they reveal to you, were taken from: |
• When Abortion Was
A Crime
- by Leslie J. Reagan, 1997 |
• Doctors of Conscience
- by Carol Joffee, 1995 |
• The Abortionist
- A Woman Against The Law
- by Rickie Solinger, 1994 |
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| The stories are vivid
- true - and heart wrenching. The images we share
with you are graphic. |
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| It has been said that
without a knowledge and understanding of the mistakes
of the past, we are doomed to repeat those mistakes.
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| Unless post-Roe generations
come to intimately know the history of illegal abortion,
the havoc on women's lives it reeked - the number
of women's lives it took without saving any "baby"
- a history silenced by fear and intimidation, they
will unwittingly allow abortion to be criminalized
again and again thousands upon thousands of women
will die. |
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| That's inevitable. |
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So it is with a clear intent to prevent
such inevitability,
that we present to you "Abortion's Silenced Legacy."
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