The Right is Completely Wrong: Abortion is Part of Our Cultural Tradition — and the Choice Should be Safe and Legal.

Was there ever a human history free of abortion? Probably not, as abortion has been practiced by many women over different cultures, recorded in texts and chronicled, from passages in the Bible to practical, how-to manuals of more contemporary times.

Why, because most women are fertile for around 30 to 40 years of their lives and sometimes unwanted pregnancies happen when they want them least.

Some, especially those on the political right, and often those with strong, religious affiliations, believe they can rid the country of abortion by making it illegal. They claim that outlawing the practices will ‘save babies,’ but this doesn’t ring true because, since the times of antiquity, women have developed methods to induce abortions and have continued the practices since, as traced through various writings, from a saint and philosophers — to medicine women and midwives. Legal, illegal, it makes little difference. Across the planet, when women face unwanted pregnancies, they make choices to either carry the pregnancies to term or find a way to abort them, depending on their personal views and circumstances.

The lengths that women will undertake to exercise their rights to abortion cannot be overestimated. At times, women have risked their lives and freedoms to procure abortions, and in other eras, abortions were considered a routine kind of health care afforded compassionately towards women, even if they were euphemistically discussed as ‘Therapeutic D & Cs’, and with the goal of ‘menses restoration.’

Let’s take a look at some of women’s abortion history:

In the ancient world:

Apparently, both Plato and Aristotle advocated for women’s abortions under certain circumstances, such as a poor time for a woman to carry a fetus to term. Both philosophers seemed to understand how important timing in is planning a pregnancy. They certainly seemed to prefer the idea of abortion to that of exposing an unwanted newborn by leaving it in the woods somewhere. Remember the story…