Abortion 14 Times Safer Than Childbirth?
Only one study proclaims this to be true. There's a reason for that.
Pro-choice advocates, politicians, and the media often repeat the claim that abortion is safer than childbirth. Some even claim that it is 14 times safer than childbirth.
This claim is used to argue against laws that require women be informed about the risks of abortion before receiving one. These laws are said to be a scare tactic that exaggerate the dangers of abortion. They also use this statistic to support the claim that abortion bans will result in increased maternal mortality.
However, the claim that abortion is 14 times safer than childbirth is dubious at best and dangerously wrong at worst.
The oft-cited source of the claim is a 2012 study by Elizabeth Raymond and David Grimes. Both researchers are pro-choice, and David Grimes was himself an abortionist. The problem with the study is that it compares different sets of data that are not collected in the same way and are not equally representative.
Dr. David Reardon notes in his “Rebuttal of Raymond and Grimes” that the director of the CDC has explicitly stated that maternal mortality rates and abortion mortality rates “are conceptually different and are used by the CDC for different public health purposes.”
Additionally, there are several factors associated with the method of collection that will cause abortion-related deaths to be underreported compared to childbirth-related deaths.
One such problem is that a major source of data is death certificates in which the cause of death is reported by the attending physician. It can often happen that the physician will not be aware of a recent birth, and it is even more likely that the physician will not be aware of an abortion due to most abortions being provided by specialists rather than personal physicians and the social stigma that might prevent a woman or her family from revealing that she had an abortion.
Another problem comes from how deaths are coded. Only one code is used for abortion, and this is not even intended to be used as a code for cause of death. This is because deaths due to a surgical treatment are reported under the complication, not the type of surgery.
For example, if a woman dies during an abortion procedure, the cause of death would be reported as whatever the complication was, such as an embolism, not as abortion. Thus, it is nearly impossible for an abortion-related death to actually be coded as such. In contrast, childbirth-related deaths have a variety of codes that cover complications related to pregnancy and giving birth, such as ectopic pregnancy and postpartum hemorrhage.
Additionally, abortion can cause complications in later pregnancies, such as scarred tissue resulting in an ectopic pregnancy, and this would not be recorded as an abortion complication.
In addition to these methodological issues is the fact that abortion statistics are not even required to be submitted in many states. The Guttmacher Institute, whose data is used by the CDC, reports that only 28 states require providers to report post-abortion complications.
Four states do not require providers to submit any information about abortion whatsoever. Among these states are California, Maryland, and New Jersey, which have some of the highest abortion rates in the country.
Further undercutting the results of this study are studies done in countries with more precise, standardized data about maternal and abortion mortality which have found the exact opposite results. A study conducted in Denmark found that “compared to a first pregnancy ending in a live birth, an abortion prior to 12 weeks is associated with 80% higher risk of death within the first year and a 40% higher risk of death over 10 years.”
Similarly, a study performed in Finland found that the mortality rate after birth (28.2/100,000) was significantly lower than the mortality rate after an induced abortion (83.1/100,000).
Following the results of this study in Finland, a study was done in California by linking Medicaid records of abortions with death certificates - a method which is necessary for accurate data. This study found that “compared with women who delivered, those who aborted had a significantly higher age-adjusted risk of death from all causes (1.62), from suicide (2.54), and from accidents (1.82), as well as a higher relative risk of death from natural causes (1.44), including the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) (2.18), circulatory diseases (2.87), and cerebrovascular disease (5.46).”
Beyond mortality, studies have also found that abortion is associated with increased risk of suicide, PTSD, mental health problems, and lower general health.
Not only is the claim that abortion is 14 times safer than childbirth not supported by sound evidence, but some studies appear to show the opposite is true.
Studies performed with full and accurate data, using effective methodologies, find that abortion is much more dangerous than childbirth. Abortion doesn’t just have a higher risk of death; it is associated with a plethora of other problems and complications. If abortion is not actually safer than childbirth, then the claims based on it being so fall apart.
Banning abortion, rather than increasing the maternal mortality rate, is likely to lower it, and informing women of the risks of abortion is no longer a scare tactic but an ethical necessity.
It is important to set the record straight about the dangers of abortion. We cannot afford to brush its risks under the rug.