Opinion: Why a Bay Area Catholic doctor supports abortion choice

I was raised a Catholic, attended a Catholic college, and I am a practicing Catholic today. I know that the church opposes the right to an abortion. However, it was precisely my Catholic education that taught me to value human life and social justice above all and to develop my individual moral conscience. I saw with my own eyes that access to safe, legal abortions saves women’s lives.

In 1969, during my third year of medical training at Bellevue, the historic public general hospital in New York City, abortion was illegal. Those who provided abortion were criminals. Young women — all with complications from illegal, unsafe attempts to induce abortion — filled two gynecology wards, each with more than 40 beds. These women could not afford care elsewhere. Many had severe pelvic infections and fevers up to 106 degrees. Most required surgery for removal of pelvic abscesses and extensively infected reproductive organs.

The special emergency room for women with complications from unsafe and illegal abortions was always full. Women had pus and sometimes foreign bodies in their vaginas and severe bleeding from punctured organs after inserting hangars, sticks or other foreign objects to try to induce an abortion. Women induced their own abortions or went to inexperienced family and friends or to abortionists willing to risk felony charges

Death rates were high, especially for those who came with extensive complications. Most of those who survived the bleeding and infections were left infertile, with chronic pain from scarring in the uterus, fallopian tubes, ovaries and pelvis. Women were so desperate to end their pregnancies that they were willing to take these risks of death or life-long disability. After seeing these unnecessary deaths primarily among poor women, I became a supporter of women’s right to safe abortion.

A huge change came in 1970 when New York state passed its landmark law decriminalizing abortion before 24 weeks of pregnancy. No longer could providers be jailed because they provided abortions. Within weeks, the effects were obvious. One of the two wards for abortion complications was closed for lack of patients. The other ward was practically empty, holding only a few women with mild problems. The special emergency room was nearly empty for lack of patients.

More women were alive and healthy after safe and legal abortions. Medical costs were greatly reduced because so few women needed crisis care. The Roe v. Wade decision of 1973 spread these benefits across the United States.

During my public health career, I worked abroad and visited clinics and hospitals in many poor and middle-income countries, where abortion was frequently illegal. Again and again, I saw the same thing that happened in Bellevue Hospital before abortion became legal: Women desperate to end a pregnancy resorted to unsafe abortions, ending up in the hospital either with life-altering complications or facing death.

Now that the Supreme Court has allowed state legislatures to make abortion illegal, will hospitals again have to provide emergency care for botched abortions? Women who are knowledgeable and wealthy enough surely will access abortions using pills or travelling to locales where they are legal. Currently half of all abortions take place with pills at home with medical advice. But poor, desperate women with unwanted pregnancies, living where abortion is illegal will risk unsafe, illegal abortions. Death and disability rates from dangerous, unsafe abortions will again rise

Access to safe, legal abortion ensures that all women, even poor and marginalized, have equal rights to quality reproductive health care. The Catholic Church prioritizes saving lives and social justice. Access to safe and legal abortions ensures that all women will have quality care that saves lives and prevents disability.

Dr. Julia Walsh worked as a health professor and is currently a senior research scientist at UC Berkeley School of Public Health.