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Maternal Mortality: Misleading Information
By Valerie Jane | April 21, 2008
When I was reviewing the CDC reports here and here I noticed something very strange. The JAMA study that a Pro-choicer quoted from on Jill’s site has inaccurate information in it. At least, I cannot find any information from either the CDC or the Guttmacher Institite that verify their claim. Their “fact” of 9.1 maternal deaths out of 100,000 live births from pregnancy and childbirth is what I cannot find. They said there were 0.6 abortion related maternal deaths per 100,000 abortions and that article was wrote in 1992. There are only 2 years where the case fatality rate for abortion was 0.6 and that was in 1981 and 1990. The maternal mortality rate for childbirth in 1981 was 8.5 per 100,000 and in 1990 was 8.2 per 100,000. Now, some may be saying that isn’t much of a difference from 9.1. Well, it is. It is a difference of 22 and 38 women respectively that didn’t die those years.
So I decided to see what organizations are bold enough to say that “abortion is 10 times safer than childbirth”. I know that I am missing many organizations, but these were the ones that came up first on a google search. 
Teenwire - This is planned parenthood’s website for teens. They make the statment “It’s about twice as safe as having your tonsils removed, and is 10 times safer than giving birth if it is performed before the 18th week of pregnancy. ” They do not list any references so I do not know where they got that statement so I can verify it.
National Abortion Federation - They make the statement “Death occurs in 0.0006% of all legal surgical abortions (one in 160,000 cases). These rare deaths are usually the result of such things as adverse reactions to anesthesia, embolism, infection, or uncontrollable bleeding. In comparison, a woman’s risk of death during pregnancy and childbirth is ten times greater.” They do have a reference to a Guttmacher Institute article “Characteristics of women who obtain abortion: A worldwide review”. I cannot find any such statement in that article, however the article is discussing worldwide statistics and does not give this kind of statistic for the United States. Talk about misleading. They also don’t tell you that maternal death occurs in 0.0082% of live births based on the 1990 statistic.
Institute for Women’s Policy Research - Here is their statement - “Legal abortion, on the other hand, is one of the safest surgical procedures available, and is ten times safer than childbirth (Alan Guttmacher Institute 2000). Today, a woman’s risk of dying from complications related to a legally obtained abortion in this country (when performed before eight weeks’ gestation) is significantly lower than her risk of dying as the result of pregnancy or childbirth (AGI 2003).” You will note that they do reference to the Guttmacher Institute however they do not give month, article name, author, date or anything else that would identify where to find verification.
Planned Parenthood - Here is their statement - “In fact, abortion in the first 20 weeks of pregnancy is much safer than childbirth. ” There 
is no reference for this statement and it would be impossible to research based on how vague it is.
Now, if you take the numbers from the CDC, which admits that their numbers are seriously inaccurate, you will get your answer if abortion is safer than childbirth. You will have to remember that you cannot take out the number of abortion maternal deaths from the childbirth maternal deaths stats and that you will be comparing apples to carrots but you will find that the Guttmacher Institute has the correct information (as much as it pains me to admit that!)
“The risk of death associated with abortion in the United States is less than 0.6 per 100,000 procedures, which is less than one-tenth as large as the risk associated with childbirth. “
Isn’t one-tenth a fraction? Isn’t a fraction something that is smaller than whole? Can the statement “ten times more likely” be accurate? The answer is yes to all three. However, the ten times more likely is minutia. There is no reality to the belief that one is safer than the other. This just goes to show the great lengths some organizations will go to so they can mislead the public.
Topics: Facts, Myth VS Truth |
April 21st, 2008 at 9:16 pm
Okay, that is just pathetic. By the way, I LOVE the pic of the PP demon!
April 22nd, 2008 at 9:02 am
Great information, Valerie. I’ll have to remember this when I need it later.
April 22nd, 2008 at 10:54 am
Mk -
Maybe that isn’t Medussa - It’s probably Lilith!
April 22nd, 2008 at 10:56 am
Bethany -
What I love is that it is the Guttmacher Institute that has provided us with the truth, so we don’t have to argue the statistics anymore!
April 22nd, 2008 at 1:29 pm
VALERIE JANE ! ! ! ! I need your phone number ASAP…