Women Must Have Access to Safe Abortions and Contraception

My father-in-law graduated from Rush Medical School (now the U. of Illinois) in 1935.

Interning at Chicago’s Cook County Hospital he had patients who’d almost bled to death following illegal abortions.  Some women who needed emergency care never made it to a hospital.

There were generations of doctors, nurses, and technicians who saw the carnage and welcomed Roe v Wade for people throughout the country.  Medical professionals who trained after 1973 rarely saw the carnage of illegal abortions.  The urgency of legislation waned due to the Supreme Court decision. Four decades later, the carnage of illegal abortions is unknown to current practitioners.

My father-in-law died in 2006.  Most doctors who practiced medicine before 1973 have retired.

Must there now be years of banning abortions de facto, even if  Roe v. Wade remains the law of the land? Now women have lost accessability in several states and there are powerful forces working to establish more obstacles and even reverse Roe v. Wade.  How many women will be butchered and even killed before today’s practitioners fight back?  Even if abortion is allowed to save the life of a woman, the reluctance of staff appeared in Ireland and a woman died from dangerous sepsis while doctors were waiting until there was absolutely no more weak heartbeat from a dying fetus.

It’s ironic that the medical facilities that oppose abortion most are also the places that oppose the most effective means of contraception. There are urgent care centers that refuse to dispense the “morning after” pill.

The opposition to many forms of contraception as well as abortion exists locally.  St. Joseph Mercy Hospital’s public statement includes the comment that they neither dispense nor prescribe contraception.

It’s quite a slippery slope from being anti-abortion to being anti-contraception regarding successful forms of contraception that have prevented some women from needing abortions.

Now that the majority of people working in medical fields didn’t experience the practice of health care prior to 1973, there’s not enough concern for women in their childbearing years.  We need to change that.

Marlene Salberg

Ann Arbor, MI