By Samantha Kamman – Contributor
One of the many lies the abortion industry espouses is that abortion is somehow safer than childbirth. Aside from the obvious fact that childbirth does not lead to the deliberate termination of a child, further examining this claim proves the abortion industry is being deliberately misleading. The bulk of their reasoning comes from a study published in Obstetrics and Gynecology by an abortion provider, Dr. David Grimes. The study is incredibly flawed, and should not be taken as serious evidence that abortion is safer than natural birth.
While the study conducted by Grimes may have helped convince the pro-choice movement on the “safety” of abortion, the study merely compared nationally reported maternal death rates with data on abortion-related deaths collected from the Center for Disease Control. The flaw in Grimes’ study becomes apparent, as there is no formal reporting on deaths as a result of an abortion procedure, and as Personhood Education found, abortion is underreported by a factor of 50% when complications arise. The mortality rates of abortion are often underestimated, and there is further evidence that shows abortion providers cannot be trusted when it comes to providing this data.
An investigative reporter by the name of Kevin Sherlock found 29 abortion-related deaths in L.A. County alone from 1970 and 1987. Shockingly, four of those deaths occurred during a period where the CDC reported there had been no abortion-related deaths. Delving deeper, Sherlock discovered 30-40% more abortion-related deaths than what had originally been reported. After much research, Sherlock stated he is confident that “with his limited resources and the tendency of abortionists and state health authorities to minimize or obscure the paper trail surrounding abortion-related deaths, he has documented only a fraction of the deaths that are actually occurring as a direct result of abortion.”
The method used to gather accurate data on abortion-related deaths means studies must be conducted objectively in order to compare the rates of natural pregnancy deaths and deaths caused by abortion. One such study that conducted itself like this came from the National Research and Development Center for Welfare and Health in Finland, where international health experts found 94% of abortion-related deaths are not being recorded in national data reports on abortion. Another study performed by the same researchers found women are four times more likely to die in the year following an abortion than women who gave birth naturally. Then there’s a study published by the Southern Medical Journal, where researchers examined death records for 173,279 women in California who had induced abortion or delivery. Their studies found women who had abortions were twice as likely to die in the following two years, and the higher mortality rates for women who had undergone an abortion persisted for at least eight years.
Over that eight year period the researchers studied, they found: “women who aborted had a 154 percent higher risk of death from suicide, an 82 percent higher risk of death from accidents, and a 44 percent higher risk of death from natural causes such as cardiovascular disease.”
The fact that the abortion industry does not take studies like this into consideration demonstrates their bias. While they continue to claim that abortion is a safe procedure, statements like that conveniently ignore peer-reviewed studies that provide evidence to the contrary. Terminating a child before it can exit the womb is a huge mental and physical risk, and the abortion industry is only hurting women by perpetuating the myth that such a procedure is completely safe.
