"Pro-choice" activists present a wide array of arguments when advocating for abortion.

Leaders of the pro-abortion movement have made a living off of the presentation of these arguments. They wrap abortion up, tie a pretty bow around it, and sell it as something desirable and even necessary. They bank on their target audience being ignorant to facts and hope their listeners just take their word as truth. The foundation of their movement, and their leading argument, is perhaps one of their biggest lies.

The abortion industry runs on supply and demand, much like any other business. What makes the abortion business unique, however, is they have to trigger the demand for their product as well as supply it.

Even in a pretty package, abortion positivity can only be pushed so far. Unlike most businesses, which sell naturally-desired goods, abortion mills cannot simply generate interest in what they are selling. They need their customers to feel abortion access is of the utmost necessity.

So, how does a business induce this result? Through panic and fear, and the abortion lobby has been selling that fear for decades.

We have all read the headlines, heard the chants, and seen the handmade signs, stickers, and buttons. Coat hangers have become a symbol of the pro-choice resistance, accompanied by the lie that women will be forced to do physical harm to themselves if abortion is ever made illegal. The abortion lobby has pushed this deceit since the groundbreaking case of Roe v. Wade.

However, the truth is that most illegal abortions were performed by a physician in a clinic or office. Very few women were performing self induced abortions, much less with sharp coat hangers.

After all, that was the reality for women before 1973 and Roe v. Wade, right? Wrong.

Before the 1940s women often died from abortion complications. After 1940, that number significantly decreased. In the 1950s, illegal abortion claimed the lives of just over 300 women. By 1965 that number had dropped to 200 and by the 1970s, just before Roe v. Wade, the number had gone down to 39 women dying from illegal abortion. Sadly, these facts do not stop abortion promoters from spouting their lies.

On September 5th, during a hearing to confirm Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, Senator Dianne Feinstein stated that roughly 200,000 to 1.2 million women had died from illegal abortion in the 1950s and 1960s before Roe v. Wade. While she later recanted, she made no effort to give real statistics and facts a moment on her platform. Feinstein is not the only one in leadership using her influence to sell lies, but it invites the question: is legal abortion truly safer for women?

Although abortion promoters would claim the 39 women who died in 1972 to be 39 too many, they would also avoid mentioning that 24 women died from legal abortion that same year. The decrease in abortion-related deaths in the 1940s can be attributed to an increased use of antibiotics in the medical field. As medicine progressed, women dying from abortion complications steadily dropped, all before abortion became legal across the United States. In January of 1973, abortion became legal in all 50 states. Yet there was no significant drop in the remaining abortion-related deaths until 1976, when there was groundbreaking advancements in biotechnology.

The thought that legalizing abortion has saved so many lives sounds nice, in theory. This theory, however, could not be further from the truth.

In reality, the only thing abortion promoters have succeeded in doing has been to create a better market for abortion. Abortion activists turned these back-alley clinics toward the street, gave them a brightly colored sign and a catchy slogan, and then claimed to have fixed the problem.

Women continue to die from legal abortions and pro-choice activists continue to brush it under the rug. They assure their supporters it is okay because more women died from illegal ones, even though the margin is paper thin.

It is high time these front-alley abortions were exposed for what they really are. It is time for the lies to stop.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Human Defense Initiative.