By Ashley Baldwin, Communications Coordinator

Countless times a year on college campuses we hear the argument, “Abortion cannot be made illegal because women will die from back alley abortion procedures”.  What’s ironic is that, before 1973, what people called back alley abortions, were just an average day at your local licensed abortion clinic today.

In my previous article “Meet Curtis Boyd”, I introduced you to one of the infamous late-term abortionists in our country, Curtis Boyd, who was running a back alley abortion clinic in Athens, TX, before Roe v. Wade in 1973.  Boyd admitted, “In those days, the big fear was someone would either file charges against me or I would have some major complication or patient death. I knew that every patient I saw had the potential to not only take my medical license, but to put me in prison.”

"Back Alley" abortions aren't dangerous because they were done with coat-hangers, or by non-medical professionals.  "Back Alley" abortions are dangerous because they are procedures meant to kill, performed by killers.

Abortion advocates posited that when abortion was decriminalized, women would finally receive safe, sterile, and reliable care from licensed physicians. But legalization did not eliminate unsafe abortions.  Abortion is unsafe, period. Not just for the poor child who is brutally butchered and tortured in the womb, but also for the woman.

On January 13, 2005, a healthy 19-year-old disabled girl, named Christin Gilbert, died at a hospital in Wichita, Kansas, from complications due to a third trimester abortion performed at Women’s Health Care Services, an abortion mill owned by the late George R. Tiller.  An employee of Tiller's, Nebraska late-term abortionist LeRoy Carhart was responsible for Christin's abortion.

In 2011, Kermit Gosnell, a licensed doctor who provided abortion services in the state of Pennsylvania, was indicted by a grand jury on murder charges after a woman died at his clinic.  The grand jury found that the conditions in Dr. Gosnell's clinic were unsanitary and staffed by unlicensed individuals, but that Dr. Gosnell also regularly disposed of abortion victims, newly born-alive infants, by severing their spinal cords, decapitating them.

Tonya Reaves, 24, died after having a second-trimester abortion at a Chicago-area Planned Parenthood clinic in July of 2012.  An autopsy conducted determined that she died from a hemorrhage following a Dilation and Evacuation abortion.

Jennifer Morbelli, a 29-year-old woman from New York died from a botched 33 week abortion on February 7, 2013.

They are not alone.  The list goes on and on: women’s lives claimed by “safe and legal” abortions.  Countless investigations have proven abortion clinics to be using expired drugs, dirty needles, blood stained equipment, and full of bloody drainage left on operating tables for hours at a time. The buildings themselves are unsafe and unsanitary, with leaky roofs and pipes, outdated surgical equipment, and untrained staff.

The reality is, there are back alley abortion clinics located on every block in America, operating with permission from the government, and from the church. They continue to butcher children and mutilate women.  Decriminalizing abortion didn’t make abortion safe -- In fact, it was the catalyst to allowing more untrained murderers to try their hand at child-killing under unsanitary conditions.