Possible Futures

Ever wonder what a country where abortion was completely outlawed would look like? Well, wonder no more: Jack Hitt profiles El Salvador in Sunday's New York Times Magazine. It's a pretty fucking scary picture:

In this new movement toward criminalization, El Salvador is in the vanguard. The array of exceptions that tend to exist even in countries where abortion is circumscribed — rape, incest, fetal malformation, life of the mother — don't apply in El Salvador. They were rejected in the late 1990's, in a period after the country's long civil war ended. The country's penal system was revamped and its constitution was amended. Abortion is now absolutely forbidden in every possible circumstance. No exceptions.

There are other countries in the world that, like El Salvador, completely ban abortion, including Malta, Chile and Colombia. El Salvador, however, has not only a total ban on abortion but also an active law-enforcement apparatus — the police, investigators, medical spies, forensic vagina inspectors and a special division of the prosecutor's office responsible for Crimes Against Minors and Women, a unit charged with capturing, trying and incarcerating an unusual kind of criminal.

Really, you have to go read the whole thing - stories of women sticking battery acid and pesticides into their vaginas as abortifacients, women serving sentences of 30 years for having an abortion, forced vaginal examinations for any miscarriage - it has to be read to be believed, and it has to be believed to appropriately assess the emerging situation around abortion in this country. Because two things are crystal clear from this piece: 1) outlawing abortions doesn't do a damn thing to stop them from happening, and 2) the poor and disenfranchised are the big, big losers when abortion is criminalized. It can't be said enough: this isn't about a culture of life. This is about hating women.