![]() ![]() ![]() According to anthropologists, abortion is found in virtually every society, going back at least 4,000 years. Abortion takes place in Canada and Greece and France, where it is legal, performed by medical professionals, and covered by national health insurance, and also in Kenya, Nicaragua, and the Philippines, where it is a crime and a woman who terminates a pregnancy takes her life in her hands. We need to talk about ending a pregnancy as a common, even normal, event in the reproductive lives of women-and not just modern American women either, but women throughout history and all over the world, from ancient Egypt to medieval Catholic Europe, from today's sprawling cities to rural villages barely touched by modern ideas about women's roles and rights. Not as something we all agree is a bad thing about which we shake our heads sadly and then debate its precise degree of badness, preening ourselves on our judiciousness and moral seriousness as we argue about this or that restriction on this or that kind of woman. I know, sometimes it seems as if we talk of little else, so perhaps I should say we need to talk about it differently. ![]()
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