The maternal mortality myth in the context of legalized abortion

Abstract

It was quoted recently in the literature that “The risk of death associated with childbirth is approximately 14 times higher than with abortion.” This statement is unsupported by the literature and there is no credible scientific basis to support it. A reasonable woman would find any discussion about the risk of dying from a procedure as material, i.e., important and significant. In order for the physician–patient informed consent dialogue to address this critical issue, the physician must rely upon objective and accurate information concerning abortion. There are numerous and complicated methodological factors that make a valid scientific assessment of abortion mortality extremely difficult. Among the many factors responsible are incomplete reporting, definitional incompatibilities, voluntary data collection, research bias, reliance upon estimations, political correctness, inaccurate and/or incomplete death certificate completion, incomparability with maternal mortality statistics, and failing to include other causes of death such as suicides. Given the importance of this disclosure about abortion mortality, the lack of credible and reliable scientific evidence supporting this representation requires substantial discussion.

Keywords:

• Maternal mortality
• Childbirth
• Elective abortion

Notes

1 See, for example, the Guttmacher Institute's critique of CDC incidence data: “The estimates presented in this report are subject to some limitations and should be considered provisional. First, not all states are included; the estimates assume that changes in abortion incidence in the excluded states are similar to the overall trend seen in the reporting states. Second, the completeness of abortion reporting to state health departments can vary from year to year. We attempted to exclude all states that had inconsistent reporting, but if (for example) reporting improved in some states we included, it would mean that earlier state reports were too low and that the percentage decline we calculated was too small. In such cases, our new estimates of the number of abortions would be too high” (Finer and Henshaw 2006, 3).