Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site brl-tgr.ARPA Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxj!houxm!vax135!cornell!uw-beaver!tektronix!hplabs!hao!seismo!brl-tgr!wmartin From: wmartin@brl-tgr.ARPA (Will Martin ) Newsgroups: net.abortion Subject: Re: Back-alley abortions don't decrease Message-ID: <4707@brl-tgr.ARPA> Date: Tue, 18-Sep-84 15:34:16 EDT Article-I.D.: brl-tgr.4707 Posted: Tue Sep 18 15:34:16 1984 Date-Received: Tue, 25-Sep-84 20:02:50 EDT References: <252@uwmacc.UUCP> Organization: Ballistics Research Lab Lines: 50 The quotes certainly seem to justify the subject statement. However, does anyone have any idea WHY the illegal abortions continue or even rise when legal abortions are available? I can think of several possible reasons, listed below. Are these true, and encompass the whole range of reasons, or are there other causes? 1. Inertia -- "I've always gotten my abortions from Fred, and I'm not going to change now." (This seems unlikely to me, but maybe...) 2. Bureaucratic red tape and hassle surrounding legal abortions; though they may be "available" technically, you can really only get one through persistence and fighting the system -- "Certainly you can have an abortion; the approval cycle takes one year from date of application..." 3. Cost -- Legal abortion is not covered by health insurance (this is so for federal employee health plans, by the way), and the well-known insane cost of hospital facilities, doctor fees, etc., makes a legal abortion too expensive to pay for out of your own pocket. The illegal has less overhead and charges a flat fee which is less. (This also seems unlikely; I though illegal activities always cost more than legal sources, and I also thought that most private health insurance covered abortions. Whether public-funded legal abortion is available to charity or welfare patients depends on current political climate and where you live, right?) 4. Secrecy -- Getting a legal abortion puts you on many public records, but an illegal one is of course off-the-record. (But just how public are those records -- we did have a Privacy Act, plus all the usual medical-confidentiality traditions, after all? And from whom are you keeping it secret? An illegal makes you subject to blackmail, for that matter.) 5. Convenience -- To get a legal abortion, you have to go to {the county seat, the provincial hospital, Europe, America, the next town, whatever}, but you can get an illegal one at home, or at the laundromat, or somewhere close by. (This might be more applicable in the foreign examples given in the base posting.) 6. Contrariness -- If something is available both legally and illegally, some people will chose the illegal one just because it is. (?) I don't know; none of these seem to be good enough reasons, either alone or in combination, to account for a rise in illegal abortions when legal ones are available. They might justify illegal abortions *not disappearing* when legal ones are instituted, but no more. So what else is there? Will Martin (Please post, don't mail, discussions on this topic. Thanks!)