Thread by @DSiPaint

I had made a statement earlier today that induced abortions cause more pregnant women to die annually than the lives of pregnant women who are saved by them. This topic seemed worth making into a thread to explain in detail, so here we are. The focus will be on the US.

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First, it’s important to decide on a definition for an induced abortion. As is standard, this CDC definition excludes treatment for ecoptic pregnancies & post-miscarriage treatment. Since the focus is only legally induced abortions, we will discuss illegal ones separately.

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We will exclude the more-encompassing general terms “fetal homicide” or “feticide”, & focus only on actions performed or consented by the pregnant woman.

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It’s important to note that due to the hyper-political nature of induced abortions in the US, statistics on procedures are not always reported. Maternal injuries & deaths are absolutely undercounted. I will get to those in a moment but highlight data we do have.

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The CDC reports on “Abortion Surveillance”, which consist of voluntarily-provided statistics for each of the 50 states, DC, and NYC, generally missing CA & NH, among a few others.

cdc.gov/reproductivehe…

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Near the bottom of the page, Table 23 lists the annual case-fatality rate for 1973-2015. Focusing on the most recent block of years, the total maternal fatalities for legally induced abortions (column 2) was 48, or 6/yr. The total for illegal & unknown legality was 1 in 8yr.

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I’d like to take a moment to explain these numbers:

I mentioned that they are based on voluntary reports. CA is one large area that generally does not report numbers. If I was to extrapolate by population, this may increase the count to 7/yr to 8/yr.

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Another caveat to these numbers is that they are most likely only including women who were immediately admitted into hospitals after serious injuries at abortion clinics. Numbers are very difficult to track, otherwise.

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Many abortion providers (example of Women on Waves provided) specifically instruct women to tell hospitals that they had natural miscarriages, rather than post-abortive injuries (whether medical or surgical). How common is this? That’s unclear, but it taints the data.

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So, back to the original numbers: How many women *actually* die per year from legal induced abortions? It’s *at least* 6/yr avg over the past 8yr records, but we don’t really know for sure.

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Now, let’s look at the other number: Women whose lives are saved by abortions each year. This is even trickier, since no clear numbers seem to be published. Let’s look closer at that definition of a legal induced abortion to see if that may help...

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Key points:
1. It’s an intervention.
2. The intent is termination of pregnancy.
3. The pregnancy must be intrauterine.
4. There must not be a live birth.

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This excludes any procedures on ectopic pregnancies, early deliveries w/ intents of producing live births, & any triage procedures upon the pregnant women that may cause fetal demises as untended consequences.

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In essence, the CDC definition of an induced abortion is limited to the intentional killing of the fetus (or embryo) before performing any lifesaving treatment on the woman. Are there any such instances in which this would be needed to save the woman’s life?

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Dr. Ingrid Skop, MD, of The American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists wrote a paper on Top 10 Myths About Abortion, excerpted in the image.

aaplog.org/wp-content/upl…

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In this paper, she explains how physicians aim to treat two patients. Toward the end of this section, she quotes two abortionists that state inducing abortions to save the woman’s life probably don’t exist.

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For Surgeon General Dr. C. Everett Koop said in 1981, “The fact of the matter is that abortion as a necessity to save the life of the mother is so rare as to be nonexistent.”

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Former abortionist Dr. Anthony Levatino said,
“During my time at Albany Medical Center I managed hundreds of such cases by “terminating” pregnancies to save mother’s lives. In all those cases, the number of unborn children that I had to deliberately kill was zero.”

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The Dublin Declaration on Maternal Healthcare, which has been signed by 244 Ob/Gyns & nearly 800 other medical professionals around the world, declares that “direct abortion” is never necessary to save the woman’s life.

dublindeclaration.com

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Alan Guttmacher said in 1967, “Today it is possible for almost any patient to be brought through pregnancy alive, unless she suffers from a fatal disease such as cancer or leukemia, and if so, abortion would be unlikely to prolong, much less save the life [of the mother]”

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Dr. Bernard Nathanson, co-founder of NARAL said “As early as the 1960s, progress in technology had led to the point where abortion was no longer needed to save women’s lives, if it ever was.”

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Dr. Ron Paul, former Congressman from TX, stated that as an Ob/Gyn he had a career spanning over 4000 pregnancies & never once did he need to induce an abortion to save a woman’s life.

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So, if cases are so rare to non-existent that a woman’s life is in such danger to need an induced abortion to survive, why are abortion laws written w/ that exception?

There are really two main reasons: legal precedent & to handle if an instance should arise.

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CA’s 1850 abortion law (Statutes of California, Ch. 99, §45) shows an early example of an exemption from prosecution to save the woman’s life. This concept was inherited from English common law & still exists in laws today.

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In the 1973 US Supreme Court decision for Doe. v. Bolton, the woman’s health was broadly interpreted in the decision, so state laws must abide by the expanded precedent set in that case.

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Even if legal precedent didn’t exist, legislators can’t account for all possible instances that could arise in the future. Maybe a situation will arise in which inducing an abortion before treatment is needed. Maybe such instance have existed an are just not well-known.

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Whatever the case may be, the count of women’s lives saved w/ induced abortions seems to be negligible.

Since at least 6 women died in the average recent year from induced abortions, it’s clear that induced abortions kill more pregnant woman per year than they save.

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