The 1950s weren’t wonderful for everyone

To the Editor;
The author of a recent OpEd, “The 1950s were a wonderful decade,” states that “abortion was a rarity.”

This is not true. According to the Guttamacher Intitute, in that decade illegal abortions are estimated to have numbered between 200,000 to 1 million each year.

These numbers likely don’t include the women who caused their own abortions using desperate, unsafe measures that killed some of them.

In the 1950s, I was told by friends who had children but wanted no more, that they flew to Puerto Rico for abortions.

The 1950s was undoubtedly a wonderful decade for white, middle-class people, for men educated by the GI Bill, for straight Americans and for the New York Yankees.

They were not so good for many others.

Peg Cruikshank
Corea