Women jailed for getting abortions

Michelle Goldberg
TheDailyBeast.com

The back-alley abortion is coming back, said Michelle Goldberg. As state legislatures have imposed more and more restrictions on abortion, desperate women are taking matters into their own hands—and being charged with crimes. A 32-year-old Idaho mother of three was arrested last week for inducing an abortion with drugs obtained over the Internet. She said she couldn’t afford a legal procedure, and now faces a felony conviction and five years in jail. In South Carolina, a Mexican migrant with three children served three months in jail for inducing her own abortion with pills. And in Iowa, a pregnant 22-year-old was charged with “attempted feticide,” on the suspicion that she threw herself down a flight of stairs to end her pregnancy. “These cases are harbingers of what’s to come.’’

Just this year, states passed 64 new anti-abortion laws and introduced 900 new restrictions. The collateral cruelty of these laws demonstrates that, despite their denials, right-to-lifers have few qualms about turning “women who have abortions into criminals.” In liberal enclaves, the idea of women being jailed for such desperate acts may seem inconceivable, but “in fact, it’s a slowly encroaching reality.”