Cross-posted at StoriesinAmerica:
South Dakota’s governor is expected to sign a law banning all abortion, even in cases of rape or incest. Abortion is also illegal in Ghana, except for cases involving rape and incest, or if the woman can prove she is mentally ill. Ghanaian market trader, Esinam, 42, tells the BBC why she decided to have an illegal abortion at a back-street clinic in Accra, after she got pregnant for the fourth time despite using birth control. “My husband and I can barely look after our three children on the little income we have. How could we afford to feed another mouth?” She was four months pregnant when she had the back-street abortion.
I had thought the procedure would be done in an operating theatre but it wasn’t. It was just an ordinary room.
Even though I realised it wasn’t a proper clinic, I was still determined to go through with the termination. I had no choice.
The ‘doctor’ asked me to undress and lie down. After an examination, he inserted some metal instruments into my vagina. He didn’t give me any aesthetic – he just began removing things from my body.
I didn’t see anything, but felt a pulling sensation. The pain was unbearable, but I muffled my screams.
I did not allow myself to fully express my pain. I felt guilty about the whole thing, but the idea of bringing up another child in abject poverty convinced me I had made the right decision.
After fifteen minutes of ‘surgery’, he inserted a white tablet into my vagina. He told me that this would cause the remaining foetal parts to eventually discharge.
That night, she bled profusely and was taken to the hospital. When she regained consciousness, she was told her womb was rotten and had been removed. “I cannot have any more children and if I had lost any more blood, I would have died. I am very grateful to the doctor and his team at Accra’s Ridge Hospital who saved my life.”
“At Cook Country Hospital in Chicago, approximately 5,000 women a year came in with injuries and bleeding resulting from illegal abortions, mostly self-induced abortions,” Leslie Reagan, the author of When Abortion Was a Crime, said in an interview with DissidentVoice. “They had an entire ward dedicated to taking care of people in that situation. Those wards pretty much closed up around the country once abortion was legalized.”
Prior to Roe v. Wade, as many as 5,000 American women died annually as a direct result of unsafe abortions, according to NARAL.
The anti-women crowd is turning the Hand Maids Tale into non-fiction. In the book, doctors that provide abortions are hanged; in South Dakota, they will go to jail. Abortion is just the beginning.
