precedents where abortion was made illegal

awful of you to mention abortions being illegal.

Hey.

i read a lot about this (law school + curiosity + love of abortions) but i'm also drunk so i can't dump any knowledge now. there was an article in NYT magazine a while back about el salvador, i believe. i don't consider that a totally awesome source but try googling and reading it and see if that's what you're looking for. bad things did happen, predictably. maybe other catholic countries too, but some of them are good about it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/09/magazine/09abortion.html

What is that old joke about 'people who should be allowed to have abortions'?

1. Victims of rape or incest
2. Women whose pregnancy would cause medical complications
3. Me

Seriously true! I worked in abortion clinics for years and every day would hear from a patient, "well I don't believe in abortion..." Yeah? Then get the fuck outta here!

Someone on the internet said this: "Abortion has not been legal or illegal."

Waht.

http://i35.tinypic.com/35lfg42.jpg

^future new yorker cover

So that cartoonist is in favor of still-living aborted fetuses in dumpsters being kept alive at all costs?

Is the depth of that cartoon pretty much CRAZY GUY HITTING BABIES WITH A BAT LOLOLOL or is there some commentary I'm missing?

(Btw that NYT article was very interesting, thanks very much.)

i think it's supposed to be some presidential candidate guy or something

dunno which one though

Ireland
Brazil

Really, Ireland?

Really, a Catholic nation?

Ditto for Brazil -- hel-lo religious men being all up in our business. Literally.

Well yes, but I guess I didn't realize they were quite that Catholic... xp

email response from the gf who knows lots about it:

Well, our country for one. abortion was legal until 1867 in the U.S., and was then criminalized state by state.
But i imagine you are looking for more recent history?

a number of south american countries (catholics) illegalized it formerly in the last 20-30 years, mostly to continue getting U.S. funding for health projects (ever heard of the global gag rule?) but I couldn't tell you which ones exactly off hand.

Lenin legalized it in Soviet Russia in like 1920, and then that was repealed by Stalin in like, I don't know, the mid-thirties. but you know Stalin, he wasn't the most stand up guy. i think he did it to get people to have more babies, so they could take over the world. not so much a "moral" thing. and i am not sure the legalities of communist abortion is what you're looking for either.

So are we talking outright illegal in Ireland and Brazil, or is it something like the U.S. in which it's just circumscribed somewhat?

Brazil: Illegal except in cases of danger to the mother, and rape.
Ireland: Illegal except except in case of danger to the mother.

Please. Irish girls have been going to England for basement abortions for like 100 years.

Okay more like 50 years, since it was only made legal in the UK in 1967 (thanks, wikipedia!). Still, wiki says est numbers are 45,000 women have crossed the border to abort since 1967.

Keep in mind contraception also officially "not cool" in Ireland either. No contraceptives were allowed to be sold or even cross the border in your luggage until like 1980.

A pedant notes: abortion isn't legal in the UK. It has been legalised in England, Wales and Scotland, but not across the whole UK.

(further pedantry: it is legal in extremely restricted circumstances in Northern Ireland; the the law that applies there is the same as the law that applied in the rest of the UK before the 1967 legalisation, and is effectively the same as in the Republic as Ireland)

http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=a_pro_life_death_sentence

In the Nicaraguan city of Leon, a 27-year-old, known only as Amalia, is being denied treatment for cancer because she's 10 weeks pregnant and chemotherapy would harm her fetus. Since 2006, abortion has been illegal in Nicaragua under all circumstances, even when a woman's life is at stake, so while Amalia is in the hospital, nothing is being done for her. Amalia's sister has gone public, desperately seeking to pressure the government to help keep Amalia, who has a 10-year-old daughter, alive. La Prensa, Nicaragua's main newspaper, quoted her sister making a public statement interrupted by sobs. "We are asking that my sister be given treatment, we are asking that you don't forget that my sister is a human being, we are asking that this treatment be immediate," she said, before being unable to continue. But so far, the Nicaraguan Medical Association, a government group, insists that doctors must "luchar por las dos vidas por igual," or fight for both lives equally.

Would she get in trouble if she went to, say, a Mexican hospital for treatment?

I wouldn't think so? In the vast majority of (maybe all?) Mexican states there's an exception to the abortion ban allowing for abortion in cases of threat to maternal life (and even a threat to maternal health in Mexico City and surrounding states).

But I'm sure traveling to Mexico is out of the question anyway for this particular mother.

"fight for both lives equally" is sub-utilitarian retardo-logic par excellence, even ignoring that in this case it's more like "condemn both to death equally".