26 Jan 2013 1:02 pm
John Boehner: Ending Abortion Is 'One Of Our Most Fundamental Goals This Year'As hundreds of thousands of people braved sub-freezing temperatures in Washington, D.C., on Friday to join the anti-abortion protest March for Life, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) took the opportunity to reiterate his commitment to banning abortion in America for good.Addressing the crowd at the National Mall via video broadcast, Boehner said it's time for anti-abortion activisits to "commit ourselves to doing everything we can to protect the sanctity of life." Step one, he said, is making permanent the Hyde Amendment, which prevents federal dollars from being used to pay for abortions except in cases of rape or incest."For the new Congress, that means bringing together a bipartisan pro-life majority and getting to work," Boehner said. "In accordance with the will of the people, we will again work to pass the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act, formally codifying the Hyde Amendment."Boehner said he will make it a national priority to "help make abortion a relic of the past.""Let that be one of our most fundamental goals this year," he said.Read MoreJohn Boehner is delusional if he thinks he can 'make abortion a relic of the past'.Women will always get abortions, legal or not.History of AbortionThe prohibition of legal abortion from the 1880s until 1973 came under the same anti-obscenity or Comstock laws that prohibited the dissemination of birth control information and services.Criminalization of abortion did not reduce the numbers of women who sought abortions. In the years before Roe v. Wade, the estimates of illegal abortions ranged as high as 1.2 million per year. Although accurate records could not be kept, it is known that between the 1880s and 1973, many thousands of women were harmed as a result of illegal abortion.Many women died or suffered serious medical problems after attempting to self-induce their abortions or going to untrained practitioners who performed abortions with primitive methods or in unsanitary conditions. During this time, hospital emergency room staff treated thousands of women who either died or were suffering terrible effects of abortions provided without adequate skill and care.Some women were able to obtain relatively safer, although still illegal, abortions from private doctors.If John Boehner and other Republicans really wanted to cut down on the number of abortions, they would make sure that1. women were educated about contraception and 2. they had plenty of access to birth control.But they do just the opposite, because that makes too much sense.