7-20-99 Coat-Hanger Horror Tales Are Fiction

J.C. Willke, M.D. Letters to the Editor WSJ

     In her , Ellen Schneider speaks of "women so desperate they would allow coat hangers to be inserted into themselves by back alley doctors, which often resulted in loss of life for the mother." Such a wild statement requires a factual answer. As president of the National Right to Life Committee during the decade of the 1980s, as a world traveler and author of books in 28 languages, I've been lecturing in this field for three decades.

     During this time, in front of audiences too numerous to mention, I have frequently asked anyone in the audience who can document a coat-hanger abortion to please come to me with that information. In 30 years I have not had a single person bring me details of such a case. It is my firm conviction that the entire concept of using a coat hanger is a total fallacious construct of pro-abortion supporters. Illegal abortions certainly occurred. Contrary to popular opinion, however, only a very few of them were fatal. If any readers know of a confirmed coat-hanger incident, please write me. Letters intended for publication in the print edition of the Journal can be e-mailed to: letter.editor@edit.wsj.com.

All letters are subject to abridgment. For more reader responses, see Prior to legalization of abortion, pro-abortion supporters commonly claimed that there were one million illegal abortions, resulting in 5,000-10,000 women dying each year. This claim was made yet one year before the Supreme Court legalized abortion in 1973. However, official government statistics that have stood the test of time report only a total of 39 women dying in the entire United States from illegal abortions during the year 1972. In that same year, 25 more women died from legal abortions.

     It is obvious that the frequently told stories of millions of women dying, of hospital beds overflowing, etc. are completely without factual foundation. Let's look at the late 1950s. Those were the supposed bad old days. All abortions were illegal and illegal abortionists were alleged to be busy.

      But in the July 1960 edition of the American Journal of Public Health there was an article by Dr. Mary Calderone, founder of the Sex Information and Education of the U.S. (SIECUS) and medical director of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, in which she stated that "90% of illegal abortions are being done by physicians. Call them what you will, abortionists or anything else, they're still physicians, trained as such . . . they must do a pretty good job if the death rate is as low as it is. Abortion, whether therapeutic or illegal, is in the main no longer dangerous because it is being done well by physicians."

J.C. Willke, M.D. President Life Issues Institute New York