To the editor:
The Rev. Vince Krische is quoted in the Jan. 22 issue of this paper as saying, "If abortion were made illegal, the number of women seeking abortions would be small." Not true.
In the years prior to the legalization of abortion in 1973, the estimates of illegal abortions ranged as high as 1.2 million a year about the same as the number of legal procedures now. The difference is that many women died from illegal or self-induced abortion.
In the 1960s, abortion-related deaths accounted for 42.1 percent of the total maternal mortality in New York City. When skilled practitioners performed this procedure, the mortality rate was lower than that for childbirth. Abortion deaths were almost completely preventable.
Many doctors and nurses were motivated to legalize abortion because they were painfully aware of the unfairness of the law. Poor women were dying from illegal abortions in hospital wards while women of means received legal therapeutic abortions and recovered in private rooms.
Women will take extreme measures and risk their lives to give birth. They will do the same to terminate an unhealthful pregnancy. Keeping abortion safe and legal is essential to the health and well-being of American women.
Barbara Duke,
Lawrence,
Kansas Choice Alliance
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