Coming to the aid of all pro-lifers who have ever been mocked by the abortion lobby and told that pregnancy is “fourteen times more dangerous than abortion,” a new report by the Charlotte Lozier Institute has found that claim to be a big pile of balderdash (for lack of a well-deserving but coarser word). That’s right; this widely-touted and far-reaching pro-abortion assertion is absolutely false — and on top of that, the report has found that abortion is actually more dangerous for women’s health than pregnancy. Here’s what you need to know:
We Need a National Abortion Reporting Law
The new report, written by two researchers from the Charlotte Lozier Institute, James Studnicki and Tessa Longbons, and published at National Review, is entitled, “Pregnancy Is Not More Dangerous Than Abortion.” The authors begin by tracing back the widespread pro-abortion myth of “abortion is fourteen-times safer than childbirth” to a 2012 paper written by E. G. Raymond and D. A. Grimes.
Studnicki and Longbons discuss the reasoning and calculations behind this paper’s finding, but they have one, big bone to pick with the finding: Math is only as good as the data used to achieve it — and in terms of available data, this mathematic conclusion is a “delusion.” The authors aptly use this term because the needed information to make a comparison between maternal pregnancy outcomes and maternal abortion outcomes is not reliably collected in most countries — and that includes the United States as we don’t have a national abortion reporting law.
Students for Life of America President (SFLA) Kristan Hawkins published an op-ed on this topic at Real Clear Politics, writing:
“You’ve probably heard the line that abortion is safer than childbirth. It’s a common talking point designed to justify abortion with seemingly scientific findings. But in fact, it’s an impossible claim to make… America needs a National Abortion Reporting law, ensuring that abortion is as safe as Planned Parenthood and company claim it to be.”
Even the CDC Said This Myth Was Wrong
Clearly, with such a lack of information, there is zero basis for the assertion that abortion is safer than childbirth — and the authors also included a quote from an old head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) which is particularly condemnatory of this myth. Dr. Julie Gerberding, the head of the CDC in 2004, wrote that childbirth mortality rates and abortion mortality rates are “are conceptually different and are used by the CDC for different public health purposes.” As an example, the authors state that the “deaths per 100,000 live births” (which is a part of the calculation of the “fourteen times safer” myth) includes the deaths of women who died from any pregnancy outcome, notably including abortion.
The Opposite Is True
While this revelation is significant enough, Studnicki and Longbons take it one step further, finding that when you look at data from countries which do report abortion outcomes, the opposite is actually true: abortion is more dangerous than childbirth.
The authors write,
“Larger population-based studies that have access to complete reproductive histories linked to death and health-services utilization invariably show that mortality associated with abortion is higher than mortality associated with childbirth.”
With Finland being one of the few countries that has accurate abortion reporting (and an unfortunately high rate of abortion), the authors cited two Finnish studies on maternal health outcomes after abortion — and spoiler alert, the findings don’t make the abortion lobby look too hot. In a 1997 study, maternal deaths after an abortion were four times higher than deaths after childbirth, and in a 2004 study, maternal deaths after an abortion were more than three times higher.
Don’t Let This Information Go to Waste
It’s time to let this myth be annihilated by truth. The Pro-Life Generation needs to shout these findings from the rooftops, and remember to speak up the next time an abortion supporter tries to use this lie. This misinformation has gone on for long enough, and we need to tell our society the truth: abortion is more dangerous than childbirth.
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