Pro-life forces add to women’s problems

Many articles in the Fence Post start off with a few lines seeming to be on another topic, then shift to the same arguments “pro-life” or anti-abortion groups perpetuate.

Here are some “reality check” things to consider regarding abortion.

1. Overturning Roe v. Wade will not stop U.S. women from getting abortions. In Uganda abortion is illegal and their abortion rate is twice as high as it is in the U.S.

If outlawed in the U.S., poor women (who are five times more likely to have an unplanned pregnancy than higher-income women) will return to the back alley, unsafe, abortion mills of pre-1973.

And the wealthier women will get on a plane and fly to a country where it is legal.

2. About one-third of U.S. women will have an abortion in their lifetime. The demand has always been there and always will be.

In fact pro-life folks with their illogical, failed, sex education ideas and fierce aversion to many contraception policies only add to the number of unplanned pregnancies and abortions.

The federal government estimates it costs, on average, $286,000 to raise a U.S. newborn to age 18, not counting any college. Pro-life folks can’t pay these costs.

Abortion should remain the woman/doctor decision it is now. A decision like this, where women evaluate their personal economic, emotional and physical abilities to raise a child, should not be impinged upon by others.

Jim Peterson

Hoffman Estates