UFI News Release
For Immediate Release: October 3, 2007
Contact: Dennis Durband, (480) 632-5450
GOVERNMENT AGENCIES INTENTIONALLY UNDER-REPORT ABORTION DEATHS
MESA, Ariz. – Due to government reporting policies bearing conflict of interest implications, it is virtually impossible to determine the number of abortion deaths in the United States and worldwide. Existing evidence points toward a significant and intentional under-count of abortion deaths by official reporting agencies. Inaccurate reporting leads government and pro-choice organizations to conclude incorrectly that abortion is safer than childbirth.
A group of international health experts published a study in 2005 disclosing that 94 percent of maternal deaths associated with abortion are not identifiable from death certificates alone. Proper identification of pregnancy history, the researchers found, reveals that the death rate associated with abortion is actually three times higher than that of childbirth. Other sources have put that number at four times the number of childbirth-related deaths.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control, which for years collected abortion death statistics, missed or ignored many abortion deaths. In its annual abortion surveillance reports, the CDC reported its “calculations were likely low,” and that it could account for only 94 percent of abortion deaths in the U.S. The CDC employs reporting officials who are themselves abortion doctors and members of abortion advocacy organizations. Not surprisingly, independent researchers found considerably more abortion deaths than the CDC has reported.
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 actual reports of abortion deaths and the rate of death stemming from childbirth.
Canadian abortion doctor Henry Morganthaler suggested that if StatisticsCanada's reporting on abortion deaths is accurate, then legal abortion may be 25 times more dangerous than illegal abortion in his nation. StatsCan reported in 1995 that 1 percent of legal abortions resulted in death.
The Council on Scientific Affairs of the American Medical Association reported that if deaths other than those associated with delivery are eliminated, the figure for annual childbirth deaths in the U.S. would be close to 4 women per 100,000. Included in the “other” category are deaths from induced abortion, tubal pregnancy, molar pregnancy and deaths from heart disease and high blood pressure.
Reporting procedures and codes vary from nation to nation and from state to state, rendering universal reporting an inconsistent proposition. The World Health Organization's International Classification of Diseases coding rule No. 12 makes it nearly impossible to report abortion as a cause of death. 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.
For additional information, see UFI's “Fact Sheet on the Under-reporting of Abortion Deaths.”
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