In the wake of the SCOTUS’s leaked draft on Roe v. Wade, it’s time to post this. Again.
“When can we talk about abortion and a woman’s personal responsibility?”
I’m glad you asked.
We can maybe (and that’s only MAYBE) talk about ‘personal responsibility with regard to the need for safe, legal, accessible abortion when (and ONLY when):
1. When ALL birth control is fully effective and without harmful side effects.
The pill, for example, is supposedly 99% effective. That’s assuming ideal conditions; real-life numbers are more like 85-90%. Efficacy rates for condoms are about the same. More expensive options, which require insurance and access to medical care (both of which anti-choice folks have ALSO tried to decrease!), can be more effective (none are 100%) but often have serious side effects, even if a woman has access to them (see #2). But even assuming ideal conditions, that’s still 1 failure for every 100 women (technically it’s 1 for every 100 times PIV sex occurs, but again, I’m erring on the conservative side). In a country with about 174 million females, let’s say (conservatively) half of whom are sexually active, even assuming ideal conditions and optimal possible efficacy, that’s almost 870,000 potential unwanted pregnancies among women being ‘responsible.’
