Correct, and quite the opposite is still happening in the present at a dismayingly higher frequency, and will persist in happening in the future if lessons from history are never learned.
Switzerland achieved and has maintained one of the lowest rates of abortions in the developed world by addressing it....... in the opposite manner of Republicans in the United States; purely pragmatically with a focus on productive resolutions for the three main factors in unwanted pregnancy - education, access to affordable and reliable contraception, and socioeconomic level. It's no longer a matter of expensive political theater for the audience of voters for them. In 2002 abortion was legalized by popular referendum, after its criminal prohibition had ceased to be observed in practice for many decades. In 2014, Swiss voters rejected an initiative to remove the coverage of abortions by the public health insurance system because they realized to do so would be counterproductive; the abortion rate gradually fell over the dozen years since it had been made fully legal and covered for free as a medical procedure. Their abortion rate per capita is substantially lower than the official abortion rate for the United States, and we also have a surging
unofficial rate.
Abortifacients have been in existence since antiquity, and in the modern-era are more affordable and simpler to obtain safely via the internet, without going to a licensed clinic. The medication I take for treating my stomach ulcers is actually identical to what is given to induce miscarriage, just with a different label and price point. Which is why many order it on the black market, with as much ease as alcohol was obtained during Prohibition. The elaborate and expensive legal efforts to shutter Planned Parenthood are not only futile but antipodal to the actual objective of reducing unwanted pregnancy, and therefore abortion.
As I've already shared with you, I've worked with one of my professors in
studying how the U.S. foreign policy designed to discourage abortions actually increases them. A doctoral student published the paper for her dissertation, but I was one of the undergrad researchers who contributed. Now my research from South Africa is being used as part of the analysis for illegal, self-managed abortions in the United States. Online searches about self-induced abortion began to rise sharply in 2011 when there was an upswing in state restrictions on legal abortion. The internet searches are actually the most common in states with stringent restrictions and the most vehement public opposition to abortion.