Framing violence against women as violence against the womb brings the violent act of abortion into the picture, so I was curious about comparing abortion with the usual violent act against women, rape.
Here is a graph of the abortion rate (source)
Here is a graph of the rate rape (source)
The interesting thing here is that abortions are reported as rate per 1000, while rapes are reported at rapes per 100,000. They need completely different scales to talk about the rates.
Put in rather stark terms, then, the rate of self-inflicted violence against the womb is approximately 50 times higher than the rate of other-inflicted violence. In other words, if we compare frequency, there are 50 abortions for every 1 rape.
I think Big Ocean Women recognizes this reality when say, shortly afterward, that they are seeking to "safeguard the womb ... to protect it from objectification and violence, whether committed by others or self-inflicted." But even they do not point out the full scale of the violence.
