Because abortions are illegal, they are exorbitantly expensive. Equal opportunity under our law means that well-connected middle class women can usually get hush-hush D&Cs in hospitals or can afford to fly to England, or to buy a safe abortions on the black market. Even therapeutic abortions can be bought, if the woman can stand the humiliation of pleading her own mental unfitness before a self-righteous board of doctors and psychiatrists. More than five times as many whites as non-whites are granted therapeutic abortions in New York City, a statistic which is inverse in relationship to the need.
Poor and black women, on the other hand, bear unwanted children or face unsafe backalley or self—induced abortions. In New York City, 80% of the women who die from illegal abortions are black or brown. There were almost 10,000 deaths from abortion, more than 4,000 of these from self-induced abortion. Those acts of desperation account for one—half of the deaths associated with pregnancy. In countries where abortion is legal the death rate is one in 80,000, or one-fourth the death rate from full-term pregnancy. Gynecologists who shake their heads when a desperate pregnant woman asks for help will shake their fists in righteous indignation at the “back alley butcher.”
A hospital D&C, even under the current profit-oriented health system, seldom costs more than $150. A black market D&C costs from $300 to $1,000, and the money often ends up in the hands of the syndicate or of corrupt politicians and law enforcement officials who get a kickback from the illegal trade.