Abortion - When Abortion Was Illegal

Major complications from induced abortion are very rare in the United States, occurring in fewer than 1 percent of abortions. The risk of death from childbirth, an uncommon event in industrialized countries, is ten times greater than the mortality risk of abortion. The safety of legal abortion is in stark contrast to the danger women faced before abortion was decriminalized in the United States in 1973. In the 1950s, for example, there were about 1 million illegal abortions every year, with at least 1,000 deaths per year resulting.

Before legalization some courageous and qualified providers took considerable personal risks to offer safe procedures to women in need. Women with adequate financial and social resources were sometimes able to seek safe abortions in legal settings outside the United States. Desperation often drove other women to unskilled abortionists working in unsanitary conditions. Women who survived so-called back-alley abortions of this sort or attempts to self-abort sometimes suffered painful chronic illnesses, lost the ability to have children, or experienced trauma that affected their psychological health and well-being.