Guest column: “Are you alive because of the laws against abortion?”
Frederick N. Dyer, Ph.D., is the author of the 2005 book, The Physicians’ Crusade Against Abortion.
In his thought-provoking commentary today, published exclusively at www.jillstanek.com, Dr. Frederick writes, “It is almost a certainty if your roots go back to the 19th century that you would not exist if it had not been for the laws that protected children from death in the womb.”
Are you alive because of the laws against abortion?
by Frederick N. Dyer, Ph.D.
Almost everyone believes that abortions increased after Roe v. Wade ended the state laws against abortion. What is more, there are data that support this view. The Guttmacher Institute reported that abortions gradually rose from 898,600 in 1974, the first full year following legalization, to 1,497,700 in 1979. After 1979, the number stabilized for several years at around 1,570,000.
The gradual increase from 1974 through 1979 suggests that the laws continued to have an effect for 6 years after their nullification. This could have occurred because women still felt that abortions were illegal or because physicians continued their prior habit of persuading women to continue unwanted pregnancies.
It was largely such physician persuasion that reduced the rate of abortion from 1860 when the first of the stringent antiabortion laws was passed until (at least) 1973 when all of the state laws were overturned.
What is more, physicians, particularly Horatio Robinson Storer (1830-1922), were instrumental in passage of the stringent state laws against abortion. A mid-19th Century epidemic of induced abortion, particularly among married Protestant women, was the stimulus for these laws. Dr. Storer persuaded the American Medical Association to tackle the issue and his 1859 AMA Report on Criminal Abortion and the appeals he drafted to state and territorial legislatures led to stringent laws being passed in almost all states by 1880.
The implication of the fact that abortions increased after the laws were rescinded is that the laws against abortion saved lives while they were in effect. There are at least four generations between 1860 and the present, and if only five percent of babies born were saved from an abortion death as a result of the laws against abortion and the physician persuasion that the laws bolstered, there is an excellent chance that one or more of your ancestors survived pregnancy because of these laws.
This is best illustrated by discussing the other 95 percent of children from that first generation. By chance, those children who were not such unwanted pregnancy survivors would marry each other at the rate of .95 times .95 that equals .9025. This means 90.25 percent of the next generation would not have had unwanted pregnancy survivors as parents. But it also means that 9.75 percent of that generation would have had one or both parents who were “physicians’ crusade survivors.”
Similarly, the .9025 proportion without “crusade survivor” parents would marry each other by chance at the rate of .9025 times .9025, which, when rounded, equals .8145. This means that 81.45 percent of the next generation would not have had one or more “crusade survivors” for a grandparent, but 18.55 percent would.
Similar calculations show that in the next generation, 33.67 percent of children would have had one or more “crusade survivors” as a great-grandparent, and 44 percent of the next generation (approximately our current generation) would have one or more “crusade survivors” as a great-great-grandparent.
However, the laws had their baby-saving effect not only on that initial generation but on each succeeding generation as well. It is almost a certainty if your roots go back to the 19th century that you would not exist if it had not been for the laws that protected children from death in the womb.
I am not claiming that your own mother might have made a different decision about your birth if you had been born before January 1973, although that is certainly possible. However, at least one of your maternal ancestors probably decided to continue an unwanted pregnancy because of her own concerns about abortion’s illegality, or, has been well documented, because her physician persuaded her to do so.
Dr. Horatio Robinsin Storer deserves massive credit for the efforts that saved millions of babies from abortion. Most grew up, married, and became the ancestors of almost everyone alive in the U.S. today.
_______________
Frederick N. Dyer is the author of the 2005 book, The Physicians’ Crusade Against Abortion, and the 1999 biography, Champion of Women and the Unborn: Horatio Robinson Storer, M.D. Both books are available from Amazon.
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
“However, the laws had their baby-saving effect not only on that initial generation but on each succeeding generation as well. It is almost a certainty if your roots go back to the 19th century that you would not exist if it had not been for the laws that protected children from death in the womb.”
Everyone’s roots go back to the 19th century. There are no people who are not decendants of people alive then.
Interesting, isnt it, how there are no statistics to compare to the year of, say, 1972? Oh, wait–that’s because abortions were illegal then! So how can you possibly say that legalizing them made them more frequent when they were not reported? This is absolutely outlandish. And Roe v. Wade did not make abortions legal; it merely said that the government cannot interfere.
Hal,
I should have said if your roots go back to the 19th century in the U.S. I was excluding recent immigrants.
I was born in 1959, before Roe v. Wade. I was born to a scared teenage birth mother who, if abortion were legal, I would probably not be here talking to you.
I wrote about it in “I Was Once A Fetus“.
Wouldn’t the rise in abortions be related to the significant rise in population?
That, and it might do well for us all to remember the comparative status of women in society in the 19th century. No vote, no higher education, consigned to a life of either childrearing or low-paying work (possibly combined)? You can be absolutely sure that as the cost of living increased, abortion (though illegal) did occur among the working classes, as contraceptive methods were not as reliable then. It stopped being viable to have lots of children.
I think certainly in comparison that the 20th century was a much more accomodating place for women. Although the patriarchy is still around. You can see it every day.
And if you didn’t exist, you wouldn’t exist. Why would it matter? There would be no “you” to be upset at not being there if your great-grandparent was aborted. So there’s nothing to worry about there.
Dear Meep
You concluded:
“And if you didn’t exist, you wouldn’t exist. Why would it matter? There would be no “you” to be upset at not being there if your great-grandparent was aborted. So there’s nothing to worry about there.”
My point was that I do exist, so do you, so do your friends. Most of us can be thankful for Dr. Horatio Storer and the other physicians who made this possible by preventing many women from ending unwanted pregnancies.
Responding to the second post by Sandra T- Seems if it is impossible to know how many abortions occured, then how come we have been forced to swallow pro-abortion industry propoganda that Millions died from illegal abortions. You cannot have it both ways? In fact the CDC did have statistics about abortions prior to Roe. Especially in the states where IT WAS LEGAL !
Carole N,
If you read, my name is Samantha, not Sandra. So the CDC did have statistics about abortions prior to Roe v. Wade…I would be interested in seeing these, as I had difficulty locating them on the website. Were they actual statistics, or were they the ones that the pro-life side claims were fabricated? And how exactly did the CDC obtain these numbers? Getting a number on how many died from a botched abortion is pretty simple; see, when the coroner writes it up in his report, the information is turned in, and the statistics are processed.
samantha,
Were they actual statistics, or were they the ones that the pro-life side claims were fabricated?
The pro life side didn’t claim that they were fabricated. The man who made them up did.
Go to the “Homosexual embryo” post and you can read it in his own words.
Granted, Bernard Nathanson, is pro life now, but he was prochoice when he fabricated these statistics. Can you show me where his former cohorts refute this?
And what about the prochoice doctor who admits that he fabricated the fact that a woman would EVER need a late term abortion to save her life…He is still prochoice…
You make a lot of claims, and demand that we cite our sources, but you seem to exempt yourself from the same criteria.
Hypocrisy, methinks your name might be samantha.
mk
MK, I have yet to demand that anyone cite sources, altho it does lend credibility to the claim. However, if you can show me where in the previous post I have neglected to cite information that I have provided, I will correct this immediately.
Samantha,
And how exactly did the CDC obtain these numbers? Getting a number on how many died from a botched abortion is pretty simple; see, when the coroner writes it up in his report, the information is turned in, and the statistics are processed.
I wish that this were true. But often the word abortion is never mentioned in the autopsy. Perforated Uterus, loss of blood, septic poisoning…but not the actual word abortion. So the statistics can’t be trusted.
MK
“There would be no “you” to be upset at not being there if your great-grandparent was aborted.”
And how do you know that the “no ‘you'” would not be upset? Since you are you and not a “no you,” you have know way of knowing whether the “no you” would be upset or not. Perhaps there really is an afterlife and a knowledge of what was meant to be, but wasn’t.
Forget my last post. I should have reread the post I was responding to before I posted mine. I was thinking it was the aborted baby the post was writing about, not a descendent of the one being aborted….sorry.
Still, I am so grateful for those anscestors who might have had an abortion, but didn’t.