The best argument for legal abortion is a lie

Easily the best argument for legal abortion is the claim that before Roe v. Wade desperate women were commonly dying from botched illegal abortions. In fact, Planned Parenthood's president, Dr. Leana Wen, frequently claims that before Roe "thousands of women" died every year because of botched illegal abortions.

Except that neither of these things is true, and the fact-checkers at the liberal Washington Post give Dr. Wen and Planned Parenthood four Pinocchios for a statistic Dr. Wen was told repeatedly was false but continues to cite anyway.

Remember, this is WaPo reporting this.

In 1972, the number of deaths in the United States from legal abortions was 24 and from illegal abortions 39, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Before Roe 90% of illegal abortions were performed by licensed doctors, and once antibiotics became widely used deaths from illegal abortions were relatively rare.

This from an organization that also claims that abortion is only three percent of what it does- a statistic it arrives at by counting each abortion once, but breaking down everything else it does into multiple incidental steps and then counting each step separately. It's been pointed out that if the NFL used the same formula, it could prove that football is only a small part of what it does and that it's actually in the business of selling hot dogs.

There remain many arguments that can be cited in favor of legal abortion by those who are inclined to make that argument, but honesty would seem to demand that they concede that what most people would see as their best argument is, in fact, a lie.