Jimenez83

Fact Sheet

THE UNDER-REPORTING OF ABORTION DEATHS

Women who aborted were 3.5 times more likely to die than those who carry to term.
Mika Gissler, et al., “Pregnancy Associated Deaths in Finland 1987 - 1994,” Acta Obstetrica Gynecal. Scandi 76, 1997, p. 651-657.

Most reporting on surgical deaths from induced abortion come from university medical centers. In these hospitals, surgeons are skilled and adhere to high standards for procedures, follow-up and reporting. These hospitals perform less than five percent of abortions in the U.S. The remaining 95 percent of abortions are done in abortion clinics not subject to state inspections and where supervision is suspect and emergency equipment is not required. Many of these profit-driven, cost-cutting abortion facilities have little or no emergency equipment, employ unqualified "medical technicians," use unsanitary practices and reduce their liability risks through poor and fraudulent record keeping. Clinics do not report complications. Victims of botched abortions are merely transported to hospital emergency rooms, where abortion reporting can be obscured by patients denying abortion attempts.
Dr. J.C. Willke, “Abortion Vs. Childbirth - Which is Safer?,” April 2006.

In 1987, Dr. Stephen Joseph, then commissioner of New York City 's Health Department, reported that from 1981 to 1984, there were 30 legal abortion-related deaths in New York City, constituting 17 percent of all legal abortion-related deaths in the United States during that period. The CDC reported 42 U.S. deaths in the same time period. If Dr. Joseph was accurate, then there were 176 legal abortion deaths in the United States in that four-year period.
James Miller, “Legal Abortion Deaths, Part Ii: Misreported, Unreported & Covered Up,” Human Life International  

While the research articles published by investigators within CDC's Family Planning Evaluation Division consistently reflected a favorable opinion of abortion, the egregious misapplication of statistical methods in this particular study strongly suggests that their analyses were being used to deliberately promote an unjustified confidence in abortion safety. Specifically, the CDC researchers used “the Chandrasekaran-Deming theory” [sic] that “compares the results of two independent systems of ascertaining the same event and provides an estimate of the completeness of ascertainment in both systems,” to compare the abortion death tallies generated by NCHS and the data collected by CDC.
Dr. David Reardon, Dr. Thomas Strahan, Dr. John Thorp and Dr. Martha Shuping, “Deaths Associated with Abortion Compared to Childbirth – A Review of New and Old Data and the Medical and Legal Implications,” The Journal of Contemporary Health Law & Policy 20(2): 279-327.

In arriving at the conclusion that abortion's mortality rates are lower than those of childbirth in Roe v. Wade, Justice Blackmun relied on the studies and opinions of population control advocates Christopher Tietze, Malcolm Potts, and Lawrence Lader, all of whom were zealous promoters of liberalized abortion laws. The studies they relied on, however, had many methodological problems, including very limited access to patients for follow-up, no control group of delivering women, and lack of an objective standard for comparing mortality rates of delivering and aborting women. The focus of these abortion advocates appeared to be limited to identifying the risk of death from short-term complications of abortion such as septic infection or therapeutic misadventure. But subsequent experience has shown that abortion can have both subtle and profound effects on women's psychological and physical wellbeing. It is clear that prior comparisons of mortality rates associated with abortion and childbirth have been crudely constructed on the basis of an incomplete and inaccurate reporting system.
Dr. David Reardon, Dr. Thomas Strahan, Dr. John Thorp and Dr. Martha Shuping, “Deaths Associated with Abortion Compared to Childbirth – A Review of New and Old Data and the Medical and Legal Implications,” The Journal of Contemporary Health Law & Policy 20(2): 279-327.

Conversely, for women with known health problems, there is not yet any research showing that abortion is less dangerous for these women than childbirth; there is only the presumption that this may be true. While some medical experts will certainly continue to defend the opinion that abortion is a safe alternative to childbirth, this opinion can no longer be characterized as a “now-established fact.” It is at best an unsubstantiated opinion, most likely a hope, and at worst, an ideological mantra. After 30 years of experience with legal abortion in the United States , it is now clear that mortality risks associated with abortion significantly exceed those associated with childbirth, both in the short term (under one year) and in the longer term. While statistical association is not proof of causation, it is clear that abortion is, at the very least, a marker for elevated mortality rates. In the context of the additional studies reviewed in this paper, it is also clear that the interpretation of a causal effect cannot be ruled out. It is therefore reasonable for legislators to conclude that abortion, at any stage of pregnancy, poses a significant risk to women's health. Since Roe established comparative mortality rates as the standard for determining when states can regulate abortion to protect the health interests of women, this new medical evidence would appear to be sufficient to establish a compelling state interest in regulating abortion throughout all stages of pregnancy.
Dr. David Reardon, Dr. Thomas Strahan, Dr. John Thorp and Dr. Martha Shuping, “Deaths Associated with Abortion Compared to Childbirth – A Review of New and Old Data and the Medical and Legal Implications,” The Journal of Contemporary Health Law & Policy 20(2): 279-327.

 In the late 1980's, investigative reporter Kevin Sherlock found a total of 29 abortions in one California county (Los Angeles ) alone between the years 1970 and 1987. Yet the CDC reported only 12 deaths nationwide for that same time period. Sherlock documented 30 to 40 percent more abortion-related deaths throughout the country than were reported in the CDC's official report. The CDC obstructed his research efforts because the top two physicians overseeing the CDC's Abortion Surveillance Branch, Dr. David Grimes and Dr. Willard Cates, were abortion doctors and one was a member of the National Abortion Foundation.
Kevin Sherlock, “Victims of Choice,” (Brennyman Books: Akron, Ohio, 1996). Mark Crutcher, “Lime 5: Exploited by Choice,” LLife Dynamics, Inc.: Denton, Texas, 1996)

In 1989, four women in Maryland died from abortion injuries. The state's public health report listed zero abortion deaths for the same year. At the 1992 National Abortion Federation Risk Management Seminar in Dallas, Dr. Robert Crist spoke openly of the recent death of one of his abortion patients. Present at that risk management seminar were two high-ranking staff members from the Centers for Disease Control's abortion surveillance activities area: Stanley Henshaw and Lisa Koonin. That abortion death never made the CDC's annual surveillance report.
Kevin Sherlock, “Victims of Choice,” (Brennyman Books: Akron, Ohio, 1996). pp. 134-135

Speaking about abortion deaths, the Illinois Department of Public's Division of Hospitals and Clinics admitted to reporters, "It's unfortunate, but it's happening every day in Chicago, and you're just not hearing about it." Just one year later, during an investigation of only four Chicago-based abortion clinics, investigative reporters for the Chicago-Sun Times identified 12 abortion-related deaths that had not been reported in the state's official statistics.
Ann Saltenberger, “ Every Woman Has a Right to Know the Dangers of Legal Abortion” (Glassboro, NJ : Air-Plus Enterprises, 1982), 27.

Compared to childbirth, post-abortive women are exposed to an elevated risk of death from all causes. The risks persist for at least eight years. A higher risk of death from suicide and accidents are most prominent. Projected on the U.S. national population, this effect may contribute to 2,000-5,000 additional deaths among post-abortive women each year – far surpassing the rate of death during childbirth.
Southern Medical Journal 2002

In 2001, the pro-life organization RVO was sued by the abortion industry after claiming that one in 25 post-abortive women required seven days of hospital care. RVO then demonstrated to a Canadian court that a StatsCan study cited by an abortion center listed only those abortions performed in hospitals and did not include the nearly one-third of abortions performed at abortion sites. Furthermore, only 75 percent of hospitals report abortions to the Statistics Canada Therapeutic Abortions database. Of those, only some declare medical complications, and even then, only "immediate'' complications are taken into account. The abortion industry quickly dropped the lawsuit.
"Abortion More Dangerous Than Pro-Abortionists Claim,” Physicians for Life

A worldwide cover-up of abortion-related deaths has been fostered by the World Health Organization's International Classification of Diseases coding rule No. 12. This rule requires that deaths due to medical and surgical treatment must be reported under the complication of the procedure (e.g., embolism) and not under the condition for treatment, such as elective abortion. This practice makes "abortion" a "ghost" category under which it is simply impossible to code a death due to abortion. Attempts to code a death as caused by “abortion” will result in a "reject message" from the computer programs provided by the National Center for Health Statistics of Washington D.C., a division of the CDC.
Isabelle Bégin, "World-wide Abortion Statistics Scam Exposed," Reality, Oct. 1999.

Women who have had abortions are significantly more likely than others to subsequently require admission to a psychiatric hospital. At especially high risk are teenagers, separated or divorced women and women with a history of more than one abortion.
R. Somers, “Risk of Admission to Psychiatric Institutions Among Danish Women who Experienced Induced Abortion: An Analysis on National Record Linkage,” Dissertation Abstracts International, Public Health 2621-B, Order No. 7926066 (1979); H. David, et al., “Postpartum and Post-abortion Psychotic Reactions,” Family Planning Perspectives 13 (1981): 88-91.

Since the legalization of abortion, the number of ectopic pregnancies has increased four-fold.
“Ectopic Pregnancy-United States, 1987,” Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report 39 (June 22, 1990 ): 401-404.

A large number of employees of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have ties to the abortion industry, and statistics on abortion-related problems have been manipulated. The CDC has worked to reduce medical opposition to abortion.
Mark Crutcher, “Lime 5: Exploited by Choice,” p. 135

Dr. Elizabeth Shadigian, associate professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Michigan Medical School, said that approximately 10 percent of women undergoing induced abortion will suffer immediate complications. One-fifth of those complications are considered life threatening. Rates of complications increase with greater gestational age of the pregnancy, she said.
Report to the South Dakota Task Force on Abortion, 2005.

Non-white women are two to four times more likely to die or suffer serious injury from an abortion than are white women. The best explanation for this discrepancy would appear to be that non-white patients are at greater risk of suffering from negligence, or even hostility, that is rooted in racial bias. This is because many abortion providers believe that abortion is essential for "suppressing poverty, crime, and other problems of society."
Interview with abortionist Edward Allred in the film A Matter of Choice (New Liberty Pictures)

Complications following abortions performed in free-standing clinics is one of the most frequent gynecologic emergencies ... encountered. Even life-endangering complications rarely come to the attention of the physician who performed the abortion unless the incident entails litigation. The statistics presented by Cates represent substantial under-reporting and disregard women's reluctance to return to a clinic, where, in their mind, they received inadequate treatment."
L. Iffy, "Second Trimester Abortions," JAMA, vol. 249, no. 5, Feb. 4, 1983 , p. 588.

CDC has periodically reported data on abortion-related deaths since these deaths were first included in the Abortion Surveillance Report in 1972. An abortion-related death was defined as a death resulting from 1) a direct complication of an abortion, 2) an indirect complication caused by the chain of events initiated by abortion, or 3) aggravation of a preexisting condition by the physiologic or psychologic effects of the abortion.The World Health Organization's coding rule No. 12, together with its recommendation No. 7, states that deaths due to medical and surgical treatment must be reported under the complication of the procedure and not under the condition or reason for treatment. In effect, this makes abortion a "ghost" category under which it is impossible to code a death. Medical coders have, in fact, relayed that any attempt to code a death due to abortion under an abortion category yields a "reject message" from the computer programs provided by the National Centre for Health Statistics of Washington D.C., a division of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia. (This computer program is now used in Spain, Australia , New Zealand, Canada, the United States, and will be introduced in the British Isles this January.) These computer programs simply incorporate the same problematic coding rules already used throughout the world. Only a minute number of abortion-related deaths actually qualify to be declared under abortion, i.e. those for which the medical certificate of death categorically and unequivocally gives abortion as the underlying cause of death. If abortion is mentioned anywhere else on the death certificate, on the underlying cause line, the death gets coded as an accident of some kind, a sudden or unexpected death, an illness (like septicaemia—blood poisoning) or an injury, etc.
Isabelle Bégin, Independent Health Researcher, “ False Abortion Statistics Exposed,” REAL Women of Canada

On the WHO-prescribed medical certificate of death form, there is a confusing (and optional) maternal death question that reads as follows: "If deceased was a female, did the death occur either during pregnancy (including abortion and ectopic pregnancy) or within 42 days thereafter? Yes, No." In this way, deaths due to abortion can very well be attributed to pregnancy in general. This has prompted health professionals throughout the world to tell women the outrageous fallacy that it is 7 to 10 times more dangerous to have a baby than to have an abortion.
Isabelle Bégin, Independent Health Researcher, “False Abortion Statistics Exposed,” REAL Women of Canada

In Statistics Canada's Causes of Death publication for 1995, under those categories in which medical coders have admitted to tabulating abortion-related deaths, there are 1,026 deaths of women between the ages of 10 to 50. The categories given by coders include misadventures during surgical and medical care; accidental cut, puncture, perforation or haemorrhage; accidental poisoning by urea, saline solution, prostaglandins, anti-infectives, sedatives and anaesthetics ; postoperative shock; postoperative haemorrhage; postoperative infection; convulsions; injuries to abdominal organs/blood vessels; and late and adverse effects of the above.
Isabelle Bégin, Independent Health Researcher, “ False Abortion Statistics Exposed,” REAL Women of Canada

"The risk of mortality increases by almost 30% with each week of gestation , and approximately doubles for every two weeks after eight menstrual weeks" (p. 94); "Ten to fifteen percent of all deaths due to abortion are caused by haemorrhage " (p. 77); "Embolism accounts for 24 percent of abortion deaths " (p. 87); " Infection accounts fully for 25 percent o f all deaths resulting from abortion" (p. 85) ; " Mortality due to hysterectomy [caesarean section for termination of pregnancy] is quite high." (p. 61); "The reason why pregnancies of less than six weeks carry a higher risk of major complications is that before seven to eight weeks, the cervix has not softened enough and dilatation, therefore, is more difficult and carries more risk of perforation and cervical injury. Also, menstrual extraction, done early in pregnancy, has a high rate of incomplete abortion with retention of tissue." (p. 69); "Delay of suction curettage from eight to ten weeks gestation increases the risk of a major complication by 60 percent. Delay of abortion from eight to sixteen weeks gestation increases the risk of a major complication by 300 to 1,300 percent. " (p. 71).
Dr. Henry Morgentaler (abortion doctor), “ Abortion and Contraception,” (1982).

If all of the 1,026 deaths of women in 1995, as stated by Statistics Canada, were abortion related, then the mortality rate for legal abortion would be close to 1 percent(1,026 out of 106,458 abortions performed in Canada in 1995). That would make legal abortion no less than 25 times more dangerous than illegal abortion, which, "in developed countries such as the United States or Canada , has an estimated mortality rate of 40 deaths per 100,000 illegal abortions" (0.04 percent).
Dr. Henry Morgentaler, “ Abortion and Contraception,” (1982) p. 130.

The Canadian Medical Association stated: "Physicians need to know the risks of mortality and morbidity associated with termination-of-pregnancy procedures in order to communicate them to women … this information is not readily available, due in part to the World Health Organization's coding rules.
Isabelle Bégin, Independent Health Researcher, “ False Abortion Statistics Exposed,” REAL Women of Canada

Independent Canadian health researcher Isabelle Begin has waded through the maze of misleading, badly delayed and incomplete official abortion statistics in this country and determined that nearly eight percent of Canadian women who have legal abortions -- legal abortions -- "are hospitalized in a life-and-death situation" following the procedure.
Lorne Gunter, “ Abortion still dangerous, Finnish study shows women who abort more likely to die in next year,” Edmonton Journal, August 27, 2000

The political climate protects abortion clinics from bad publicity and state inspections. After all, no politician wants to be called “anti-choice.” The Houston Chronicle reported in 1997 that a “veil of secrecy written into the state law covering abortion clinics” keeps the public from knowing if a clinic is under investigation. Becky Beechinor, who oversaw abortion clinic licensing for the state, told the Chronicle that she could not even confirm whether a particular clinic is licensed. What good are licensing and inspection requirements if the public is not allowed to know what violations are found, or even if inspections are taking place?
"Abortion's Physical and Emotional Risks,” January 18, 2003, Concerned Women for America

The number of maternal deaths is substantially underestimated when death certificates alone are used to identify deaths.
Isabelle L. Horon, of the Vital Statistics Administration at the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, Baltimore , “ Underreporting of Maternal Deaths on Death Certificates and the Magnitude of the Problem of Maternal Mortality.”

World Health Organization Rule No. 12 requires that deaths resulting from abortion are categorized in any of the following:

World Health Organization, coding rule No. 12 and commendation no. 7

Abortion advocates, relying on inaccurate maternal death data in the United States, routinely claim that a woman's risk of dying from childbirth is six, 10 or even 12 times higher than the risk of death from abortion. In contrast, abortion critics have long contended that the statistics relied upon for maternal mortality calculations have been distorted and that the broader claim that "abortion is many times safer than childbirth" completely ignores high rates of other physical and psychological complications associated with abortion. An unimpeachable study of pregnancy-associated deaths in Finland has shown that the risk of dying within a year after an abortion is several times higher than the risk of dying after miscarriage or childbirth.
Dr. David Reardon, “ Abortion Is Four Times Deadlier Than Childbirth,” The Post-Abortion Review 9 (2000).

The World Health Organization, UNICEF and UNFPA developed an approach to estimating maternal mortality that seeks to generate estimates for countries with no data and to correct available data for underreporting and misclassification. A dual strategy was used which involved adjusting available country data and developing a simple model to generate estimates for countries without reliable information. Given the uncertainty of the available data, the estimates are subject to wide margins of uncertainty and cannot be used to monitor short-term trends. Cross-country comparisons should be treated with considerable circumspection because different strategies are used to derive the estimates for different countries, rendering comparisons fraught with difficulty. Nonetheless, the approach, with some variations, was used to develop estimates for maternal mortality in 1990, 1995 and 2000. The estimated number of maternal deaths in 2000 for the world was 529,000 (Table 1). These deaths were almost equally divided between Africa (251,000) and Asia (253,000), with about 4 percent (22,000) occurring in Latin America and the Caribbean , and less than 1 percent (2500) in the more developed regions of the world. In terms of the maternal mortality ratio (MMR), the world figure is estimated to be 400 per 100,000 live births. These rough estimates, based on an admitted paucity of date, included direct and indirect causes of death extending to within 42 days of a live birth. The sponsoring organizations of the estimate indicated a “general problem encountered in attempting to estimate incidence of pregnancy-related complications” because “the different sources of data are neither representative nor comparable.”
Carla AbouZahr, “Global burden of maternal death and disability, British Medical Bulletin 2003; 67 : 1–11.

The overwhelming majority of deaths and disabilities caused by pregnancies with abortive outcome arise from the complications of unsafe abortion, defined as an abortion taking place outwith a health facility (or other place recognized by law) and/or provided by an unskilled person. Unsafe abortion may lead to haemorrhage, infection and death, particularly in settings where there is poor access to hospital and medical care. When infection spreads upwards through the genital tract, causing damage to the fallopian tubes and ovaries, then pelvic inflammatory disease will develop. This condition causes pain and discomfort, and if left untreated, it can result in chronic pelvic pain, bilateral tubal occlusion (due to adhesions and scars formed around the uterus), and secondary infertility Secondary infertility is defined as failure to conceive again after an established pregnancy.
Carla AbouZahr, “Global burden of maternal death and disability, British Medical Bulletin 2003; 67 : 1–11.

In countries where induced abortion is restricted and inaccessible, or even where abortion is legal but difficult to obtain, little information is available on abortion practice. Because of the difficulty of quantifying and classifying abortion in such circumstances, its occurrence tends to be unreported or under-reported. Surveys show that under-reporting occurs where abortion is legal … . An in-depth review estimated a global incidence of unsafe abortion of over 14 unsafe abortions for every 100 live births, amounting to 68,000 abortion-related maternal deaths each year.
Carla AbouZahr, “Global burden of maternal death and disability, British Medical Bulletin 2003; 67 : 1–11.

A 2001 study in Maryland reported that homicide was the leading cause of pregnancy-associated death and cardiovascular disorders were the second-leading cause.
Isabelle Horon and Diana Cheng, March 21, 2001, “Enhanced Surveillance for Pregnancy-Associated Mortality-Maryland, 1993-1998, Journal of the American Medical Association 285(11), 1,455-1,459.

 

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