The National Organization for Women recently posted an Emergency Alert with the headline, "Bush Picks Anti-Roe Nominee ... Women's Lives on the Line."

In the alert, NOW posted photos of four women it said "are the faces of women who died because they could not obtain safe and legal abortions," the false threat being that a Supreme Court reversal of Roe will result in unsafe and illegal abortions and ultimately women's deaths.

It's interesting that this emergency alert about "safe" abortions comes from a group that fights abortion clinic safety regulations to the point that many mills have lower standards than animal clinics and also fights to keep women barefoot and ignorant about abortion risks.

Likewise, NOW's sacrosanct concern for "women's privacy" falls flat when considering it has no problem making a spectacle of dead women for its propaganda campaign who had no say in the matter.

And what about those four women?

If deaths from illegal abortions were so prevalent, why did NOW have to scour back to 1929 to find one (Duvall) and 1940 for another (Shirley)?

Coincidentally, 1929 and 1940 are key years in the discussion of abortion-related deaths. It was in 1929 that penicillin was discovered and 1940 when antibiotics were first used on humans. Pro-aborts admit, "[T]he introduction of antibiotics ... permitted more effective treatment of the infections that frequently developed after illegal abortion," which is why the number of reported deaths from illegal abortions plummeted from 2,700 in 1930 to 193 in 1965.

So Barbara Boxer was fictionalizing when she recently told the Associated Press that illegal abortions would mean, "[A] minimum of 5,000 women a year will die."

The third of NOW's four faces of death, Becky Bell, died in 1988 – after abortion was legal. Pro-aborts championed Becky because she was 17 when she died of "septic abortion with pneumonia," according to the coroner, and Becky's home state of Indiana had recently passed a parental consent law. (Even so, minors may always obtain legal abortions via judicial bypass.)

But the medical examiner, John Pless, later clarified, "I cannot prove she had an illegal abortion. I cannot prove she had anything but a spontaneous abortion" [miscarriage]. Becky's best friend said she had miscarried.

Five specialists evaluated the report, which stated there was no uterine infection or marks of abortion instruments in the birth canal or at the cervix.

It turned out Becky had been promiscuous since age 15 and was a known drug user. Her parents placed her in drug rehab earlier in 1988 for several weeks. The weekend before Becky died, she was, according to the coroner's report, "reportedly at a party where various drugs were being used [cocaine, 'speed,' and LSD] ... and later claimed that someone had put 'speed' in her drink."

The type of bacteria causing Becky's fast and deadly form of pneumonia did not originate in her reproductive system, but was consistent with that found in aspirated vomit. The specialists unanimously concurred that Becky died from pneumonia due to vomit inhalation.

When the coroner's report was made public, Becky's parents, who had been traversing the country with pro-aborts decrying parental notification laws, disappeared into the woodwork and haven't been heard from since. Pro-aborts know the truth, and yet almost 20 years later still promote the lie.

NOW's fourth face of abortion is Rosie Jimenez. Rosie also died after abortion was legal, in 1977. Pro-aborts blame her death on the Hyde Amendment, which banned taxpayer funding for Medicaid abortions. Yet Rosie died with a $700 scholarship check in her pocket, and she was the single mother of a 5-year-old. So why isn't Rosie herself held responsible for an apparent pattern of reckless choices? And if the multi-million dollar abortion industry truly cares about women's lives, why doesn't it extend "charity" every so often?

At any rate, NOW's latter two examples make the point that legalized abortion does not stop illegal abortions. In fact, according to Planned Parenthood's research arm the Alan Guttmacher Institute, "The legal status of abortion does not appear to affect levels of abortion in a population in a straightforward way.

Are you sure you want to go there, NOW?

And what about the faces of death due to legal abortions? There are four timely faces NOW could showcase – four who have died just since 2003 from legal RU-486 abortions.

But abortion champions don't want to spotlight women who have died from legal abortions. That's because today's abortion champions are today's abortion profiteers. To make abortion illegal again would break up their monopoly.