This story from the Tuesday NYT is worth a close read. The story concerns Dr. Susan Wickland, who provides abortion services in a number of states. She is a rather interesting person, whose choice of practice was influenced by her history, the horrible services she received as a young woman. Intermixed are some startling facts, at least startling to me. Consider this paragraph:
Dr. Wicklund, 53, said that at current rates almost 40 percent of American women have an abortion during their child-bearing years, a figure supported by the Guttmacher Institute, which researches reproductive health policy. Abortion is one of the most common operations in the United States, she said, more common than tonsillectomy or removal of wisdom teeth. “Because it is such a secret,” she said, “we lose sight of how common it is.”
I had thought abortion common, but not that common. It raises some questions for the electoral politics. Is it that many users take a Limbaugh attitude (condemn those drug users until one become one, and then it is just an unfortunate illness)? Is it that many users retrospectively condemn themselves? I don't know, and those two options seem to quick to be a very great part of the story.
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