Too many men

In preparing letters to send out Coat Hangers and Knitting Needles to pro-life groups, I study their websites. What I discovered is about 80% of the pro-lifers as executive officers and board members are men, men who will never have an abortion.

I think abortion is a terrible thing for a woman to have to go through. I also know from my research that making it illegal will not stop abortion any more than prohibition stopped people drinking.

• Groups like the Clergy Counseling Service (nationwide) and Jane (Chicago-based) will be started to find safe places for women to go. They helped some 500,000 women in the four years before Roe v. Wade find safe abortions.
• Women who can afford it, will go where it is safe.
• Women who can't will stick anything that might work up their vaginas or find back-alley people.
• Major hospitals once again will be forced to have 20-30+ beds for dying women after their abortions.
• Back alley abortionists will use women's plight as a cash cow.

 Below is a quote from Motherless, by one Philadelphia doctor

According to Dr. Louis Gerstley, Chief at Philadelphia General Hospital 1956-1976, “The legalization of abortion had almost no effect on the level of abortions. The way you can determine it is to go to any World Almanac in your library and graph the number of deliveries in the U.S. between the 50s and 80s and you will find a fairly steady line. In the early 70s after Roe v. Wade, we were doing between one and 1.24 million abortions a year. It (Roe v. Wade) didn’t affect the number of deliveries. No woman goes out to get pregnant for kicks of having an abortion which is far too expensive physically, financially and emotionally. There was a marked drop in maternal mortality (after abortion was legal).”

When he talked in the film Motherless, his speech was measured, calm for the horrors he described. He could not save hundreds of women who died from illegal abortions.

The hospital kept 32 beds on the fourth floor for patients who had botched abortions. Knitting needles, bicycle spokes anything metal might have been used, he said.

Ages of the patients varied from teenagers to women in their forties.

Woman tried potassium permanganate tablets, he said. “It was a strong oxidizing agent and it burns the tissue. We would see these women with a black hole in the front and the back of the vagina... If the woman was lucky, it didn’t burn thru into the rectum or bladder.”

Tissue would be so damaged it couldn’t be sutured. “It was like trying to suture butter. Awful,” he added.

Dr. Gerstley played only a small part in the 27-minute-34-second film Motherless.  www.attiegoldwater.com/motherless.php

I encourage everyone reading this to watch the film.

We can't go back.