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A study by family planning advocates concluding that abortion is safer for women than carrying a child to term has been sharply criticised by doctors who say the years-old claim has been debunked by data on the long-term effects of abortion. Dr Elizabeth Raymond and Dr David Grimes published the study in the February 2012 issue of the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology, examining estimated mortality rates associated with live births and induced abortions in the United States in the period 1998–2005. The data, taken from the Centers for Disease Control and the Planned Parenthood-funded Guttmacher Institute, found 8.8 deaths per 100,000 live births, versus 0.6 deaths per 100,000 abortions.
 
Raymond and Grimes are associated with Family Health International, a leading pro-abortion international family planning group, and both have lobbied for distribution of the abortifacient Plan B pill without prescription in America. Their conclusions were dismissed by several pro-life doctors who pointed out that, because they failed to include the long-term adverse effects of abortions, the claim that abortion’s mortality rate is lower misrepresents the overall effects of abortion on women versus bringing a child to term.
 
“[Abortion] is not safe when you look into the long term,” Dr Mary Davenport, president of the American Association of Pro-Life OB/GYNs, told LifeSiteNews.com. “They were only talking about immediate death. If you do the math, there is a much higher rate of risk-taking behaviours,” including suicide attempts and substance abuse, she explained.
 
Microbiologist and bioethics commentator Dr Gerard Nadal told LSN that such data fails to account for the physical damage often sustained by women during abortions, including damage to reproductive organs that has been strongly linked to subsequent pregnancy complications or even sterility. Meanwhile, he said, abortion’s link to increased risk of breast cancer, and childbirth’s protective effect against cancer, is ignored.
 
Another obstetrician, Dr. Matt Phillips of CEC For Life, agreed, saying the study’s claim is “at least 20 years old” and based on skewed information. “You can make the numbers look any way you want to make them,” he said.
 
Patrick Carr of Family & Life noted that countries where abortion is illegal, such as Ireland, routinely have the lowest maternal mortality rates in the world, while areas with liberal abortion laws such as South Africa top the maternal mortality charts.
 
Those who work with post-abortive women also say that the study fails to reflect the real-life consequences of abortion. Fr Frank Pavone of Priests for Life, which oversees the Rachel’s Vineyard Ministry and the Silent No More Campaign, called the study’s conclusion an “outdated myth.” Experience with post-abortive women, he said, “shows that it is often only years or decades later that the harm abortion causes a woman becomes evident, or that the link of that harm with abortion becomes known.
LifeSiteNews. January 23. Reuters. January 23. Obstetrics & Gynecology. January 23.