[Wamvan] [WAM!] Abortion Safer Than Giving Birth: Study

[Natalie Hill]

Good point, Frances.

I agree - this is not the kind of information that is intended to be useful
or helpful for women in the midst of making the very difficult choice
between keeping or terminating a pregnancy.  It is far more complex than
that.

However, where I do see this study being useful is as a counterpoint to the
harmful propaganda disseminated by so-called crisis pregnancy centres
(religiously-funded institutions designed to coerce women out of having
abortions, under the cloak of fair and unbiased counseling).  These centres
repeatedly thrust "information" on the women who use them about how they
are likely to develop a wide range of health issues - everything from
depression to breast cancer - if they go through with an abortion.

Even though those "facts" were never substantiated in the first place, this
study is a concrete source of evidence that can now be cited when engaging
with these people and these institutions.

In that way, I think it is worth sharing.

On Tue, Jan 24, 2012 at 6:50 PM, Frances Kissling <fkissling at gmail.com>wrote:

> Sometimes facts are not very useful. Women choose to have babies or not
> have babies rarely based on "let's see, I am now pregnant and it would be
> safer to have an abortion rather than a baby". Some facts, such as this one
> have very little salience in convincing anyone of anything. Its the Lakoff
> argument about frames of reference beating out facts time and time again
>
> On Tue, Jan 24, 2012 at 8:36 PM, Joanna Chiu <chiu.joanna5 at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> Have any WAMmers written about this?
>>
>> Excerpted from Reuters, see:
>>
>>
>> http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/23/us-abortion-idUSTRE80M2BS20120123
>>
>>
>>
>> ABORTION SAFER THAN GIVING BIRTH: STUDY
>>
>> By Genevra Pittman, January 23, 2012
>>
>>
>>
>> NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Getting a legal abortion is much safer than
>> giving birth, suggests a new U.S. study published Monday (in the journal
>> Obstetrics & Gynecology). Researchers found that women were about 14 times
>> more likely to die during or after giving birth to a live baby than to die
>> from complications of an abortion.
>>
>>
>>
>> Experts say the findings, though not unexpected, contradict some state
>> laws that suggest abortions are high-risk procedures ( . . . ) What makes
>> it complicated ( . . . ) is when the law interferes and requires doctors to
>> state information that isn't always balanced or medically sound -- usually
>> exaggerating the risk of abortion.
>>
>>
>>
>> The researchers on the new study combined government data on live births
>> and pregnancy- and abortion-related deaths with estimates on legal
>> abortions performed in the U.S. from the Guttmacher Institute, which
>> conducts sexual and reproductive health research and education ( . . . )
>> Most abortions have typically been done surgically ( . . . ) but since the
>> abortion drug mifepristone was approved for use in the United States in
>> 2000, the number of medically-induced abortions has been on the rise. Both
>> methods are now considered equally safe ( . . . )  with the main risk --
>> though very small -- coming from medication- and procedure-related
>> infections ( . . . )
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Joanna Chiu
>>
>> www.joannachiu.com <http://www.joannachiu.com%20>
>> twitter.com/joannachiu
>> Ph: 917 767 6145
>> WAM! Vancouver <http://www.wamvancouver.wordpress.com%20>
>> <http://twitter.com/joannachiu>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>
>
>
> --
> Frances Kissling
> Visiting Scholar
> Center for Bioethics, University of Pennsylvania
>
>
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