In the aftermath of the tragic assassination of Dr. George Tiller, we need to remember what is at stake in the debate over abortion. Indeed, we don’t need to use our imaginations to envision what our nation would be like without legalized abortion; we only need to look at countries like Tanzania, where women suffer and die from policies that religious fanatics are trying to impose in our own country right now. The New York Times reports (h/t to Hullabaloo):

Abortion is illegal in Tanzania (except to save the mother’s life or health), so women and girls turn to amateurs, who may dose them with herbs or other concoctions, pummel their bellies or insert objects vaginally. Infections, bleeding and punctures of the uterus or bowel can result, and can be fatal. Doctors treating women after these bungled attempts sometimes have no choice but to remove the uterus.

Pregnancy and childbirth are among the greatest dangers that women face in Africa, which has the world’s highest rates of maternal mortality — at least 100 times those in developed countries. Abortion accounts for a significant part of the death toll.

Maternal mortality is high in Tanzania: for every 100,000 births, 950 women die. In the United States, the figure is 11, and it is even lower in other developed countries. But Tanzania’s record is neither the best nor the worst in Africa. Many other countries have similar statistics; quite a few do better and a handful do markedly worse.

Even more stunning is the effect that backroom abortions have on maternal mortality around the world:

Worldwide, there are 19 million unsafe abortions a year, and they kill 70,000 women (accounting for 13 percent of maternal deaths), mostly in poor countries like Tanzania where abortion is illegal, according to the World Health Organization. More than two million women a year suffer serious complications. According to Unicef, unsafe abortions cause 4 percent of deaths among pregnant women in Africa, 6 percent in Asia and 12 percent in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Is it clear now what we’re talking about when we talk about choice? Is it clear now that when we talk about access to safe and legal abortion, we’re talking about saving tens of thousands of lives and preventing millions of hospitalizations and crippling aftereffects every year?

Keeping abortion outlawed does not actually reduce the number of abortions; rather, it reduces the safety of those performed. The Guttmacher Institute reports:

Legal restrictions on abortion do not affect its incidence. For example, the abortion rate is 29 [per 1,000 women aged 15–44] in Africa, where abortion is illegal in many circumstances in most countries, and it is 28 [per 1,000 women aged 15–44] in Europe, where abortion is generally permitted on broad grounds. The lowest rates in the world are in Western and Northern Europe, where abortion is accessible with few restrictions.

Where abortion is legal and permitted on broad grounds, it is generally safe, and where it is illegal in many circumstances, it is often unsafe. For example, in South Africa, the incidence of infection resulting from abortion decreased by 52% after the abortion law was liberalized in 1996.

The anti-choice movement won’t paint this picture for you, but this is what they’re advocating: a world where women do not have legal rights over their own bodies and are injured or die due to lack of access to safe and legal abortion. It is a horrifying vision, but it’s one that some anti-choice people are willing to kill for. The best response to the terror waged by Dr. Tiller’s murderer and the hatred of the anti-choice movement is to rededicate ourselves to expanding access to safe and legal reproductive health services and ensure that clinics receive the support and security that they need to operate safely. And we need to ensure that freedom of choice in the United States rests on more than Supreme Court rulings by codifying a right to reproductive choice into law.