Straight thoughts 127

January 14, 2005

Ten times more women are dying today, as a result of abortion, than in 1972

How is that possible, if legal abortion has reduced the fatality rate by ten times as a result of the procedure being performed under a controlled medical environment? The answer is that the availability of free, un-prosecuted abortion has boosted the number of women seeking to abort their offspring by a hundred times. When abortion was illegal we had about a thousand abortions per year in Canada; now we have over a hundred thousand per year. The evidence about the past and the current number of fatalities due to abortion is not easy to get in Canada, nor widely advertised, but it is obtainable nonetheless from corresponding data from the US:

Fatalities among women carrying a baby to full-term, according to the latest issue of the Consumers Report, is 11.8 per 100000[1].

A study of pregnancy-associated deaths published in a March 2004 issue of the "American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology" (AJOG) has found that the mortality rate associated with abortion is 2.95 times higher than that associated with pregnancies carried to term[2].

About 115,000 abortions per year are committed In Canada. Thus, about 40 women [3] are dying as a result of abortion, per year, in Canada. These deaths are reported under various categories, but not as abortion complications, since no Canadian hospital keeps statistics on deaths caused by abortion.

How many women died of “back-alley” abortions before abortion laws were changed? Pro-abortion activists fabricated the idea that “thousands” of women were dying when abortion was illegal (see the testimony by Dr. Nathason[4]). However, according to the U.S. Bureau of Vital Statistics[5], there were 39 women who died from illegal abortions in 1972 in the U.S., the year before Roe v. Wade.

Given that Canadian/US abortion and population figures are about 1:10, Canadian fatalities due to abortions could have been approximately 4 per year in 1972 and would be less (if any) today. This number is so low that it must be considered as an approximate average over several years and not as a specific expected number for one particular year.

Across Canada, we had about 4 deaths per year when abortion was illegal, and we have today 40 deaths with abortion being legal.

In addition, abortion is causing delayed deaths and suicides (only a couple of "other" causes of death are reported here):
- It is not known how many women die of breast cancer, caused by abortions[6][7].
- American Life League president Judie Brown also points out that "a woman obtaining an induced abortion is 6 times more likely to die from suicide (intentional injury) than women who give birth, and 3 times more likely to commit suicide than the general population."

CONCLUSION:

Ten times more women are dying today, as a result of abortion, than in 1972, when abortion was illegal (to the best of our statistical knowledge applied to the available data). This is without considering delayed complications and suicides. If you only cared about the health of adult women, then you would conclude that abortion must be stopped on the above basis only. Every woman who wants to undergo the procedure should also be told that her risk of death will triple with the abortion and possibly quadruple, when considering the delayed consequences.

A much more important reason for stopping abortion is because it kills unborn children (male and female). The real number of women dying from abortion is then more than 57000, of which about 40 adult, in addition to over 57000 men. Unfortunately these figures are also incomplete, as an undetermined, but large number of women, unborn and adult, are killed by contraceptive pills, Morning After Pills, patches and rings with contraceptive chemicals, such as methotrexate and misoprostol, and delayed complications resulting from the use of these chemicals.

Abortion is indeed a scourge for women in Canada!

Giuseppe Gori is the Leader of the Family Coalition Party of Ontario.

REFERENCES:

[1]. Consumers Report - "Abortion Options", February 2005
http://www.consumerreports.org/main/content/
display_report.jsp?FOLDER%3C%3Efolder_id=552537&ASSORTMENT%3C%3East_id=333141&bmUID=1105592541880

[2]. Study: Maternal Death Rate From Legal Abortions Three Times Higher than from Childbirth
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2004/mar/04030801.html

[3]. 2.95 x 11.8 x 115000/100000 = 40.

[4]. Dr. Bernard Nathanson -- who was one of the original leaders of the American pro-abortion movement and co-founder of N.A.R.A.L. (National Abortion Rights Action League), and who has since become pro-life -- admits that he and others in the abortion rights movement intentionally fabricated the number of women who allegedly died as a result of illegal abortions.

How many deaths were we talking about when abortion was illegal? In N.A.R.A.L. we generally emphasized the drama of the individual case, not the mass statistics, but when we spoke of the latter it was always "5,000 to 10,000 deaths a year." I confess that I knew the figures were totally false, and I suppose the others did too if they stopped to think of it. But in the "morality" of the revolution, it was a useful figure, widely accepted, so why go out of our way to correct it with honest statistics. The overriding concern was to get the laws eliminated, and anything within reason which had to be done was permissible

[5]. From the U.S. Bureau of Vital Statistics Center for Disease Control, as cited in Dr. and Mrs. J. C. Wilke, Abortion: Questions and Answers, rev. ed. (Cincinnati: Hayes Publishing, 1988), 101-2.

[6]. "Evidence-based Guidelines No. 7: The Care of Women Requesting Induced Abortion.", Britain's Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (RCOG).

[7]. 1996 "Comprehensive review and meta-analysis," by Dr. Joel Brind and colleagues at the Pennsylvania State College of Medicine. This shows overwhelming evidence of an abortion-breast cancer connection and was found to be credible by the RCOG