How the Pro-Choice Movement Saved America: Entry #5

In the closing chapter of the book, entitled "A World Without Roe" Page gives the reader a glimpse into some of the ramifications of a world without the right to abortion. She writes, "The day after Roe is overturned, the right to abortion will be threatened, if not quickly made illegal, in no fewer than twenty-one states" (145). To underscore the massive effect outlawing abortion would have on the nation's women, Page says, "In 2000, approximately 400,000 women from these states has abortions" (146). This particular statistic really resonated with me. When Page had previously brought up abortion as a legitimate means of population control, I was not sure how large of an effect abortion really had on the overall population of a country. However, this statistic showed me how profound the change could be if abortion becomes banned. Several pages later, Page brings up the issue of women who choose to abort the fetus because of risks to the fetus's health. An example that Page gives is the condition anencephaly, in which the fetus develops without a forebrain or cerebellum. Because this horrible birth defect would obviously lead to a severely sub-par and stressful quality of life for both the mother and child, most mother who are told that their fetus has anencephaly choose to terminate the pregnancy. Without Roe, that would be an impossibility.

Furthermore, Page elaborates more on the argument that in the absence of legal abortion, women do not completely abandon the idea but instead choose other, more dangerous methods of aborting the fetus. To illustrate this point, Page tells the the story of a pre-Roe woman who found herself in an unwanted pregnancy. Certain that she could not have the child, she attempted methods of aborting the fetus that included drinking large amounts of Everclear alcohol, squatting in scalding water, and when those methods failed-- beating her abdomen with a meat pulverizer. In this last chapter, Page paints a bleak picture of what the world may look like in the absence of legal abortion: dangerous, unethical, and irresponsible.