meeks wrote:making it illegal won't stop the fact that they happen - it just means it'll be an underground activity with higher risk of injury and death. Providing safe access is about making sure if they're going to make the difficult choice to end the pregnancy, that they don't end up dying because of it.
So what's your goal, to prevent harm to women? The risk involved for a single non-clinical or illegal abortion is greater than, let's say the current Planned Parenthood procedure, but in order to understand the overall social harm and cost you would try to compare the total risk and injury of all the abortions when they're prohibited to all the abortions when they are allowed. What is the individual harm to the women in each case, per capita for the individuals, and the total harm to society? It's difficult to estimate for a lot of reasons, but don't you think the frequency of abortions has risen substantially since they were legalized, which came soon after the pill and the sexual revolution, events which necessitated abortion as a way to deal with the consequences of new standards of sexual permissibility?
Also, the risk to a woman is related to her choices, meaning there are risks involved with her choice to have sex. Therefore, the risk results primarily from the individual's choice and secondarily from the laws or social conditions that affect the safety of an abortion. In other words, you can't just look at the health risks of the abortion procedure related to its legality, you have to also look at risk being included in the choice to have sex.
Third and finally, prioritizing legal abortions in order to reduce their health risks ignores the consequences for the baby, as well as social morality. This means if an abortion is considered harmful to the baby and elective abortion is allowed, then it is expected that overall more harm will come to more babies. Social welfare is part of the basis for the laws against abortion and are more of a motivation than controlling the woman's behavior.
I think you have to discuss these two things along with the woman's health and rights, and not exclude them as if she is getting an abortion in a situation where the consequences only affect her. They also affect the baby and society in general, not to mention the father of the baby.