What does a year without abortion look like?
Like Hydra, the many-headed snake you may remember from Greek mythology, a creature who regrew heads as soon as they were cut off.
This is the opposite, of course, of what many claimed would happen when the U.S. Supreme Court issued their decision on June 24, 2022, overturning Roe vs. Wade.
Remember when abortion proponents swore that a woman’s right to choose had been aborted? They claimed women’s rights were trampled on—gone forever. Anyone who was against a woman’s right to choose was a misogynist, they said.
Protesters even appeared on a Supreme Court Justice’s lawn, their outrage ferocious.
Were they right? Was abortion, even in Alabama, a state with strict laws against the practice, dead?
It depends.
If one defines abortion as a procedure done in an abortion clinic, then you’re correct.
After the June 24 ruling, Alabama closed the three remaining clinics in the state through cease-and-desist orders. Considering that there were as many as 45 abortion clinics in the state back in 1982, this was a remarkable turn of events.
The first birthday parties of those who are alive due to the now-shuttered clinics are worth celebrating. And the people who helped make those birthdays possible are worth celebrating, too.
But, because abortion is Hydra, many facets of that industry shifted focus, regrowing far too many hellish heads. According to an October 2022 article written by Ashley Sadler at “Life Site News,” analysis following the Court’s decision showed “that abortion rates dipped or even zeroed out in states with pro-life laws, while increasing in neighboring states without abortion bans.”
The report explains that states whose abortion rates fell following the overturn of Roe v. Wade “accounted for roughly 22,000 fewer abortions, and pro-abortion states saw their abortions tick up ‘by an aggregate of about 12,000’ as women traveled outside their pro-life states to kill their preborn babies.”
The report went on to say that “the offset increase in abortions in some states ‘wasn’t enough to make up the shortfall’ in abortions nationwide. Instead, pro-life laws appear to have prevented more than 10,000 abortions across the country.”
That’s 10,000 first birthdays that never would have happened otherwise. That is priceless.
But abortion never went away. According to one of my sources, it slithered underground.
But that’s not surprising. Because people still have sex. And sex still makes babies. And babies are still inconvenient. And mothers, who are in a variety of situations, are still understandably scared. And they still want to do something about it.
So, driving miles to Atlanta to abort in one of their 14 clinics is a viable option. As is using over-the-counter abortifacients, like Plan B, or, getting a prescription for mifepristone, the abortion pill, now accessible by mail. Medication abortions like these “accounted for 53% of U.S. abortions” in 2020, the Guttmacher Institute found.
“On April 21, the U.S. Supreme Court blocked a lower court order that would have stopped the distribution and availability of the medication abortion drug, mifepristone, across the country," the health policy research organization KFF reports. “The high court’s ruling allows the current FDA rules to remain in effect, keeping mifepristone available for medication abortion where and when abortion is legal as the case proceeds through the courts. Telehealth abortions can also continue, where state law permits.”
To which Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville says, “The reckless distribution of abortion drugs by mail or other carriers to pregnant mothers who have not been examined in person by a physician is not only dangerous and unsafe, it is criminal.”
He’s right. It’s unsafe. My source also told me that two women were in the E.R. in one Alabama community because of hemorrhaging associated with the abortion pill.
Every bit of this—from women driving to abortion clinics in neighboring states, to telehealth abortion consults, to in-home abortions—is anything but what the pro-abort crowd said would happen.
So even though June 24, 2023, may mean 365 days without any open abortion clinics in Alabama, it does not mean 365 days without abortion.
An actual year without abortion would take a Herculean effort to overcome. But it’s a battle, one that hundreds of thousands of people are already fighting. And because pre-born human lives are at stake—along with their mothers and fathers, too—and it’s a battle they plan to win.
Amie Beth Shaver is a speaker, writer and media commentator. Her column appears every Wednesday in 1819 News. Shaver served on the Alabama GOP State Executive Committee, was a candidate for State House District 43 and spokeswoman for Allied Women.
The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the policy or position of 1819 News. To comment, please send an email with your name and contact information to Commentary@1819News.com.
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