Radio Transcript

LIFE ISSUES NO. 2275

QUESTIONS & ANSWERS
(Coat Hanger Abortions)

First question today: Dr. Willke, do you have any idea how many coat hanger abortions there were before the procedure was legalized? Good question – glad you asked. Mrs. Willke and I have lectured nationwide on an average of one city a week for more than 30 years. One of the main things we talk about is abortion and euthanasia.

We're medical people. We frequently ask the audience to provide documented proof of a self-induced, coat-hanger abortion. Guess how many we have turned up in all of these years – before the hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people we've spoken to - people who are interested in the abortion issue? In all these years, we've never been told of a single case of a coat hanger abortion. A search through Lexis Nexis does turn up six documented court cases of such use in the last 43 years.

Question: Well, if not coat hangers, then what was used? One of the favorite instruments by mid-wife abortionists in times past was a knitting needle. This is a long spike that tapers to a fine point and has a little, almost like a fish-hook barb on the end. That's used to grab the yarn and pull it back through in the process of knitting. A knitting needle can act like a harpoon and puncture the bag of waters, which would then cause a miscarriage.

However, these were quite dangerous because they have a very sharp point and can very easily penetrate other tissue, perforate the wall of the womb and injure blood vessels. So using them was not a very smart thing to do.

Question: How were abortions done before it was legal then? According to the head of the U.S. Public Health Service, according to the head of Planned Parenthood, writing in a journal article in the 1950's, over 95% were done by physicians, and these illegal abortions were done in the same manner that they're done now and with similar types of instruments. And they were done in a relatively sterile environment. Those few extras were done by skilled midwives.

Question: Women still died from these illegal abortions, though, didn't they? Yes, but women dying from illegal abortions were really quite rare. You have to go back before the penicillin era to find more than a thousand women a year dying in the U.S. from illegal abortions – and good records have been kept.

If you go to the year before the Supreme Court decision (that was 1972), we find pro-abortion people claiming that from 5,000 to 10,000 women died every year from illegal abortions. As a matter of fact, however, the official government statistics are quite clear. The total number of women who died the year before abortion was legal nationally was 39. There were an additional 25 who died that same year from legal abortions. Not 5,000, not 10,000 – 39.

So the hype you have heard continually about blood running from the back alleys, rusty instruments, women dying – that's a lot of nonsense. Very few women died, and illegal abortions, perhaps surprisingly, were generally quite safe.

[03/24/00]