In Kansas earlier this year, legislators trying to look into the deaths of five women got quite a shock: They were told in a March 9 hearing that five women had died after the same elective procedure but, astonishingly, the Kansas Public Health Department could neither confirm nor deny the figures.
In fact, across the United States, public-health departments only haphazardly collect information about deaths and complications from this elective procedure, which touches the lives of at least one out of every ten people in the United States. The procedure is abortion.
Abortion advocates commonly claim that “abortion is safer than childbirth.” But is that true? Little published information exists in the United States on deaths and complications resulting from abortion.
In the U.S., there are two sources of data on abortion deaths and complications, both equally unreliable: the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the Alan Guttmacher Institute. Both rely on voluntary (not mandatory) reporting. Neither has any reliable mechanism for double-checking the accuracy of the submitted information.
The CDC gets its data on the number of abortions from state public-health departments; the reporting is completely voluntary. In contrast to most important health indicators — births, deaths, cancer, HIV, STDs, etc. — there is no national reporting law requiring that abortions or their complications be reported to national health officials or agencies.
Most state abortion-data collection is haphazard and relies on the willingness of abortion providers to share their records voluntarily. Some states, like California — which has a quarter of all abortions annually (300,000) — don’t report at all. California, New Hampshire, and Alaska haven’t reported their abortion data to the CDC since 1998. So the CDC data is not much better than “garbage in, garbage out.”
This nonchalance about deaths and complications from a procedure performed on one out of every three pregnant women in the United States is unconscionable, especially in light of a study in the April 2010 Lancet showing that maternal mortality in the United States has increased.
Is it mere coincidence that maternal mortality in the United States began to increase at the same time that the abortion-inducing pill Mifeprex (RU-486) was approved for abortions? There is no systematic tracking of deaths and complications from RU-486, just as there is no systematic required tracking of deaths and complications from any abortion.
The second source of abortion complication information comes from the Alan Guttmacher Institute.
The Guttmacher Institute also obtains data voluntarily from abortion providers, who are generally in no position to address complications from abortions. Typically, when a woman suffers a complication after an abortion, she is simply told to go to the nearest emergency room. The abortion provider washes his or her hands of any further responsibility or knowledge.
As the abortionist is ignorant of the deaths or complications resulting from the procedure, the abortion provider has no significant data to pass along to the Guttmacher Institute. What the abortion provider does not know, Guttmacher cannot know.
Further, Guttmacher is hardly an unbiased source of information. Guttmacher used to be the “official research arm” of Planned Parenthood, the largest provider of abortions in the U.S.; now they just have an unofficially cozy relationship — and a shared political agenda.
Given the currently available data, even the most basic questions about abortions cannot be reliably answered, including:
How many abortions are done annually in the United States? What are the immediate and long-term risks from abortion? How many women die from surgical and Mifeprex abortions? How many women suffer damage to their reproductive organs after abortion? How many women are hospitalized after botched abortions? How many women commit suicide after abortion? How many women suffer major depression after abortion? How many women experience preterm birth in their next pregnancy because of damage done during the abortion of their last child?
Women need this kind of basic medical information before they make a decision to abort. And it is the responsibility of Congress to make sure that the agencies responsible for public health collect the information that women have a right to know.
It’s time for Congress to hold hearings about what happens behind the closed doors of abortion clinics across America. Any procedure involving tax dollars and affecting one in three pregnant women deserves closer scrutiny. And the United States also needs a National Abortion Reporting Law to allow for a true picture of the deaths and complications resulting from abortion.
Women do not need pious platitudes about “safe” abortion. They deserve the facts.
— Donna Harrison, M.D., is an obstetrician-gynecologist in southwestern Michigan and past-president of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists. Clarke Forsythe is senior counsel for Americans United for Life, and author of Politics for the Greatest Good: The Case for Prudence in the Public Square.
Worthy goal. But ain't gonna happen. If abortion was safe, then the stats would be collected and trumpeted.
It is likely true that the risks of abortion equal or exceed the risks presented to mothers when abortion was illegal.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe CDC goes through the motions of collecting the information, and they then broadcast it as if it's accurate. But their data collection is haphazard. (I researched it extensively; read Chapter 4 of "Lime 5" for a rundown.)
It's akin to sticking a basket under an apple tree, counting the apples that fall into it, and telling people that this number is an accurate count of all the apples that fell from that tree.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThis is pretty profound and shocking. The compounded effect of this lack of data, furthermore, is that people presume without even being told it that it "must be safe" because there isn't a "warning label" or other stat out there to say otherwise. We put such labels on cigarettes, on candy made in factories where peanuts are present, but the only warning of danger a pregnant woman gets from all but the most conscientious doctors (who don't have a big profit motive in the game the way Planned Parenthood does) is a stack of 'release' forms that everybody signs because they don't even see them until they're already en route to the surgical suite and don't understand anyhow thanks to the obtuseness of legal language, all intentional. Consider this: The Federal government thanks to the HIPPA laws intrudes on every medical relationship between patients and providers, even non-surgical and distant ones like equipment providers or insurance companies....but they don't even insist on basic stats and risk assessments on what is clearly a very dangerous procedure?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThis is not surprising at all. For the left, safety and consumer protection are only important insofar as they are politically useful.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseMaybe it's just me being cynical again, but I find it interesting that abortion is the only surgical procedure performed in the US, where statistics gathering isn't mandatory.
Now why is that?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIf anybody doubts that the CDC has zero real interest in accurately counting abortion deaths, bear with me. This story needs to be told in full to really convey its importance:
At the 1992 National Abortion Federation Risk Management Seminar, abortionist Robert Crist spoke of 17-year-old abortion patient of his who had died. He was clearly speaking about Latachie Veal.
After Latachie's death, her family sued. There was mainstream coverage in Texas, where Latachie died, and in Missouri, where Crist had another dead patient.
Prolifers picked up the story and it went nationwide.
Present at the NAF seminar was CDC staffer Lisa Koonin, who was responsible for tallying abortion deaths.
The CDC did not count ANY abortion deaths in Latachie's race and age range the year she died.
Nearly everybody doing abortion research or activism noticed Latachie's death -- except the woman we were paying to notice.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"Some states, like California — which has a quarter of all abortions annually (300,000) — don’t report at all."
Can I respectfully beg the question, where did the 300,000 figure come from if CA doesn't report? I ask because this article highlights inaccurate reporting but seems to subscribe to it nonetheless.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThey don't report them to the CDC, but the Alan Guttmacher researchers call all the abortion facilities in California that they know of and ask them for their numbers. They pass these along to the CDC, which picks and chooses when to include and when to omit.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseJami - Please reread the article, it does NOT state that abortions are not reported. It reads that complications and even deaths due to abortions go unreported. The number of women (through counseling and those who do not feel comfortable seeking counsel) who commit or attempt suicide after an abortion is not reported either. The article states this quite precisely. Planned Parenthood does not provide any type of counseling for these women who suffer from remorse following an abortion. I know through a friend who works at a hotline service that these numbers are quite high, yet no one seems to care about this end of the right to life/right to choose debate. It is appalling!
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