She accidentally confused the annual number of abortions and the number of people who died from complications.
Actual number of people estimated to have died of abortion complications in 1970: ca 40. Unlikely that 50's & 60's annual numbers were orders of magnitude larger.
Actual number of people estimated to have died of abortion complications in 1970: ca 40. Unlikely that 50's & 60's annual numbers were orders of magnitude larger.
It's true that there used to be high numbers of people dying from abortion complications--1,000 or so a year. Those figures date from the era before the invention of antibiotics, when any sort of surgery carried a high risk of dying from concomitant infection.
To be clear, back-alley abortions, performed in highly non-optimal circumstances, were more risky than getting a D&C in a hospital of the era. But a substantial portion of the deaths were the result of inability to treat infection.
Maternal mortality plummeted in the mid-20th c because of blood transfusions and antibiotics. These things also made abortions much safer. academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/7…
