Some Thoughts on Abortion

by Sheryll Bonilla, Esq.

One in four pregnancies ends in a miscarriage, according to the National Library of Medicine.

The March of Dimes says as many as 50% of all pregnancies may end in miscarriage.  About half of miscarriages are linked to extra or missing chromosomes, according to the Mayo Clinic.

Other possible contributing factors include exposure to environmental toxins, uncontrolled diabetes, smoking, drugs, alcohol, and age.

One in four – think of how common that number is.  If that one in four mothers-to-be happened to be your daughter, your daughter-in-law, your wife, your friend, your relative – wouldn’t you want the doctors to be able to remove the dead fetus before it caused sepsis in the mother that could end her life?

It is heartbreaking enough to lose an unborn child, but to also lose the pregnant person you love along with that miscarried child, would be grief that leaves a gap of grief in your soul.

The abortion issue is not a simple matter of killing unborn babies as religious people want to present it.  It is often a matter of the mother’s life being at stake because a miscarried child, if not removed, becomes a source of sepsis that can kill her.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, 12.5% of pregnancy-related deaths between 2011 and 2016 were due to infection (sepsis).

That’s 1 in 8. One in eight – if your loved one or your friend or relative was pregnant but miscarried and the law in your state prevented the doctor from removing the fetus (abortion), that person could be a death statistic.

Delaware has reduced its abortion rate down to 1% – repeat, 1% – by making contraceptives universally available, accessible, and affordable.

If groups opposed to abortion would support the universal accessibility and affordability of contraceptives, we could reduce the incidence of abortion, without resorting to more drastic measures.

Delaware has proven that it is possible to nearly eliminate abortion by this simple approach. Let’s stop allowing political power seekers to manipulate voters to stay in power by using the issue of abortion to keep voters voting for them.

Let’s actually resolve the issue the way Delaware did. We can prevent abortion by the commonsense route of universal accessibility and affordability of contraception.

Twenty-two states totally restrict abortion. In Texas alone, in the one year since the Supreme Court revoked Roe v. Wade, roughly 24,000 women now suffer the mental anguish of being pregnant with babies conceived by rape or incest.

Imagine the trauma of being daily reminded of the horrible crime that resulted in you being pregnant, then think of those 24,000 women in Texas. That’s just Texas.

One in three women of childbearing age live in those 22 states where they cannot abort pregnancies that resulted from incest or rape.

It is difficult enough for victims of sexual assault to deal with the memory of the experience, but to be reminded on a daily basis of it and then give birth to the rapist’s baby must be a horror that affected the victim’s ability to cope with life on a daily basis.

In those 22 Republican-governed states, if their doctors could not save the lives of their pregnant patients, that’s a tremendous amount of heartbreak their families will bear losing those women who miscarried and are now on the brink of losing their lives through sepsis.

Many women want those babies, but chromosomal abnormalities or other causes lead nature to end the pregnancy on its own.

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