If you’re a pro-life activist, you’ve probably heard this argument before: We need abortion because we have high maternal mortality rates. Or even, Minorities specifically need abortion because they have higher mortality rates. This is basically the logic behind a new study from the Commonwealth Fund, but while it attempts to drive this pro-abortion narrative, there are two really important cracks in the author’s’ study. Here’s what you should know about this study and why maternal mortality is definitely not an argument for abortion:  

The study entitled “The U.S. Maternal Health Divide: The Limited Maternal Health Services and Worse Outcomes of States Proposing New Abortion Restrictions” essentially concludes that states with stronger pro-life laws suffer with higher maternal mortality rates than states with more pro-abortion laws. The article states:  

“Compared to states where abortion is accessible, states that have banned, are planning to ban, or have otherwise restricted abortion have fewer maternity care providers; more maternity care “deserts”; higher rates of maternal mortality and infant death, especially among women of color; higher overall death rates for women of reproductive age; and greater racial inequities across their health care systems.”  

But fear not! The authors add that this can be mitigated by, among other things, “increased federal funding for reproductive health care.” (That’s code for taxpayer funded abortion.) Yet, how does this reasoning work? It’s not much of a fix for a mothers’ mortality rates if the solution is just to strip them of their motherhood by killing their children. That’s just saying, “Pregnant women have higher mortality rates so let’s just make less of a problem by having less pregnant women.”  

Instead, an authentic solution would be to focus on improving our healthcare systems in meaningful ways for pregnant women.  

However, there is yet another reason why this study is flawed — and that is because the United States has no national abortion reporting law meaning we really don’t have true statistics about abortion. This makes it impossible to compare the health outcomes of pregnancies versus abortions because we just don’t have the data.  

Students for Life of America (SFLA) President Kristan Hawkins recently published an article on this topic at The Washington Times entitled “What We Don’t Know About Abortion Can Hurt Us.” She wrote:  

“Abortion in America is marketed by its proponents as completely safe. The problem is that the conversation ends with “don’t ask, don’t tell” style assurances because there is no national abortion reporting law tracking or monitoring a chemically or surgically induced event impacting women across the country… 

“The most plentiful U.S. abortion data comes from groups like the abortion-industry think tank that Planned Parenthood founded, the Guttmacher Institute; abortion sales teams such as Rebecca Gomperts and her compatriots who operate an international chemical abortion empire, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which admits that their data is only voluntarily submitted from states and isn’t even submitted by America’s most abortion-friendly locations like California and Maryland.”  

Hawkins continued, “Trusting the abortion data self-servingly offered up by the abortion industry is like trusting the tobacco industry to be the sole provider of all information on the harms of cigarette smoking. In fact, their voluntary reporting system has been found to underestimate the total abortion count by hundreds of thousands each year. 

“Most significantly, it’s impossible to credibly make the claim that abortion is safer than childbirth (which even the CDC pointed out was a faulty premise because of the poor data pool).” 

Click HERE to read Hawkins’ article in full at the Washington Times.  

To sign our petition for a national abortion reporting law, click HERE.  

READ NEXT: A Semester of Pro-Life Victory at Clemson University — Despite the Abortion Lobby’s Harassment