"Toxic abortion" is a phrase that should be on the lips of every environmentally conscious legislator. And what is "toxic abortion"? Pretty much what it sounds like: the termination of a pregnancy - even one that is dearly wanted - through exposure to toxins from pollution in the environment.
So, who in their right mind would be against eliminating toxic abortion? Who could possibly favor allowing industries to expose their employees and their communities to any among the list of chemicals known to increase the chances of that poor, defenseless, unborn baby being killed? And again, this is much worse than a medical abortion, where a woman chooses to terminate a pregnancy, probably because of circumstances that would burden her ability to have a child. These deaths are just as likely to be of fetuses that are wanted, whose mothers-to-be welcome their coming into the world, only to have that dream cruelly ripped from them by any of a horde of contaminants.
And here are some of the culprits:
* Petrochemicals * Heavy metals * Organic solvents * Tetrachloroethylene * Glycol ethers * 2-Bromopropane * Ethylene oxide * Anesthetic gases * Antineoplastic drugs
** Source: About.com: Toxic Chemicals and Miscarriage
By the way, it is a mistake to allow these deaths to be called "miscarriages" - these are unnatural deaths brought about by the hand of man; if these are miscarriages, then so are all pregnancies terminated by taking a pill or a poultice.
The number of toxic abortions occurring in this country is probably in the hundreds of thousands, considering the tens of thousands of toxic waste sites featuring some of the above ingredients, (this article puts the number at 36,000, including 1,290 of the worst offenders on the "National Priority List") and the ubiquity of gasoline and gas and oil fumes (hello, "petrochemicals"). Does it hurt that some of these are the same culprits to blame for global warming? Nice coincidence, but we can keep that a separate issue, since we're talking about preventing toxic abortion, here.
So here is the call to action: call your Congressmen, your state legislators, your town council, and tell them that you are concerned about toxic abortion. Tell them exactly what it is, and that you want as much as is humanly possible to be done to stop it. Tell them that you want your air, your water, and your household to be protected against toxic abortion-causing substances. Tell them that you want sufficient funding to be allocated for studies to determine exactly what chemicals pose exactly what risk, and that you want the propagators of those pollutants to be held accountable for the lives they have snuffed out.
And if your legislators should balk at stamping out toxic abortion, then turn it around and let all the women who want abortions know that they can get one for free without ever going near a clinic or being hassled by a protester - they need only spend a few weeks breathing the air and drinking the water at any of those thousands of toxic waste sites conveniently spread around the country (even in the states most hostile to abortion), and they'll massively raise their chances of ridding themselves of that pregnancy in a completely legal (and unregulated) way.
