A pro-abortion group recently announced the theme for its May 28^th Call for Action 2013: “Access to Contraceptives is a Human Right.”  In November, the United Nations Population Fund released their “State of World Population 2012: By Choice, Not By Chance – Family Planning, Human Rights and Development,” which stated:

“Recent statistics show that 867 million women of childbearing age in developing countries have a need for modern contraceptives. Of that total, 645 million have access to them. But a staggering 222 million still do not. […] The remaining 222 million women have an unmet need for contraception.”

According to the UNFPA, 100% of “unmet need” for contraceptives is attributable to lack of access.  But is that really true?  The facts say otherwise.

Read the whole thing to find out exactly how the researchers manipulated the data to bolster their claims. Oas goes on to say:

Why would the UNFPA focus so much of their attention on an issue affecting only 8% of the women they mean to target?  Simply put, their glossy reports are intended for policymakers representing donor countries.  If you’re asking for billions of dollars for family planning – $8.1 billion a year, to be exact – it’s easier to make your case in terms of providing access to one’s basic human rights than in terms of foisting contraceptives on women who are skeptical of their effects or opposed to them on principle.

But the beliefs and preferences, and even the health and safety, of women in the developing world is trumped by the ideological commitment to population control, as one investigator found:

PRI investigator Joseph Meaney, visiting a UN refugee camp in Albania in 1999, was struck by the fact that many of the Kosovo refugee women he was speaking to were eager to have more children, in part to make up for those they had lost to Serbian atrocities. When he mentioned this to a UNFPA doctor, the man exploded with disdain for his charges: “They’re refugees, don’t you see! They can’t have children!”

Read more: She shouldn’t have to choose between barrenness and death.

By Christina Dunigan

The abortion-lobby response to the Kermit Gosnell mass murder debacle has been to insist that Gosnell was not enabled by pro-choicers, even though — in the spirit of Janis “Aghast in My Gut” Compton-Carr, perhaps — they employed him, referred to him, failed to report him, and deliberately turned a blind eye to him.

It’s not their fault because, you see, women were “forced” to go to Gosnell because the unenforced regulations somehow made it impossible for responsible abortionists to undercut Gosnell’s supposedly unbeatable discount prices.

Gosnell, the abortion lobby insists, is only an example of what we would see were abortion to again be criminalized.

The abortion lobby seems to forget that first of all, Gosnell arose during the pre-Roe days, already being enabled by pro-choice heroes such as Harvey Karman and the Jane abortion ring in Chicago. Had the then-nascent pro-choice movement followed the lead of the local feminists — who were protesting the supercoil experiment and letting the air out of the bus tires outside Gosnell’s clinic — Gosnell would have been recognized as the quack he was, imprisoned, and stripped of his license, and unable to open up and brazenly operate an abbatoir like his Women’s Medical Society. Would women really have been worse off if Gosnell had been slapped in irons back in 1972?

What of other “back-alley butchers”? It turns out that they, like Gosnell, had their enablers, and were able to flourish in the world of “safe-n-legal” abortion.

Milan Vuitch

Milan Vuitch

The most celebrated beneficiary of pro-choice enabling was Dr. Milan Vuitch. He was openly perpetrating abortions in the District of Columbia, daring anybody to arrest him so that he could challenge the law. They did, and he did, and although the D.C. abortion law was not struck down, it was re-interpreted so that the state had to prove that the abortion had not been necessary to save the woman’s life, rather than having the onus on the abortionist to prove that it had been necessary. This was in 1969. Vuitch continued his abortion business, though it wasn’t until after Roe struck the law down entirely (in 1973) that he really relaxed, secure in his confidence that the law couldn’t touch him.

On June 15, 1974, seventeen-year-old Wilma Harris of West Virginia went to Vuitch’s Laurel Clinic for a “safe and legal” abortion. Five days later, she was dead. Wilma’s family sued, noting that Vuitch and his staff had allowed Wilma to lapse into a coma and lie unattended for 12 hours before transferring her to the hospital.

Vuitch administered general anesthesia himself for an abortion he performed on Georgianna English on January 12, 1980, and she never woke up. When Vuitch was investigated, it was discovered that he kept patients overnight in his home (an unlicensed facility) which he designated “The Annexe.” Inspectors also noted repeated violations of medical standards regarding sanitation and anesthesia. Vuitch also admitted during another case that he had lacked hospital admitting privileges since 1963.

WDVM-TV in Washington, D.C. won the Peabody Award for its investigation of Vuitch,  uncovering how Vuitch’s practice had been cited for a multitude of violations, such as in 1980 for dirty instruments and lab specimens being refrigerated with food; in 1981 for taking patients to Vuitch’s home overnight and having expired drugs; in 1982 for unlicensed drug distribution and mixing dirty and clean surgical instruments and for a patient sent home though she was passing red urine and had a catheter still inside her body; and in 1983 for having anesthetic drugs “not freshly prepared and yellowish in color.” The investigator also noted that despite these violations, the city kept renewing the clinic’s license until 1982, after which Vuitch just operated without one.

In spite of the terrible toll on Vuitch’s patients, he remained a hero to the pro-choice movement and was hagiographically eulogized upon his death in 1993.

Jesse Ketchum

Less well-known than Vuitch was Dr. Jesse Ketchum. Vuitch was a crusader. Ketchum was just an abortionist. He operated his abortion practice alongside a legitimate (if somewhat lawsuit-prone) medical practice. Although Ketchum’s criminal abortion practice wasn’t the best in the world, he evidently maintained some standards and protocols for screening patients. No patient deaths have been attributed to Ketchum’s criminal practice, which was largely supplied with patients via Clergy Consultation Services, an abortion advocacy group which, rather than address women’s issues, simply ensure that by hook or by crook (literally, in their referrals to the likes of Jesse Ketchum), they got their abortions..

Ketchum was arrested when an undercover policewoman arranged for him to perform an abortion at a motel in Southfield, Michigan, and his case was taken up by abortion advocates who rallied on his behalf.

When New York legalized abortion on demand in 1970, Ketchum set up shop in a Buffalo motel suite. For Ketchum, New York must have seemed like the Promised Land. Abortionists were flaunting safety standards with impunity. Practices such as injecting patients with saline then sending them home to abort raised eyebrows, to be sure, but they didn’t get anybody thrown in jail.

On May 28, 1971, Ketchum seriously injured a woman in a botched abortion, but no harm befell him. Ketchum decided to do hysterotomy abortions — which involve slicing the uterus open to remove the baby — in his office. It didn’t take long for this practice to turn deadly. In the second half of 1971, Ketchum caught the eyes of the authorities by allowing two hysterotomy patients to bleed to death.

His first victim was 25-year-old Margaret Smith, who had traveled from Ketchum’s home state of Michigan to New York for a “safe and legal” abortion because she had been exposed to rubella. Ketchum performed a vaginal hysterotomy on Margaret at 10:30 the morning of June 16, 1971. Margaret was then left virtually unattended until her boyfriend returned at 2:00. He found Margaret unresponsive, and begged Ketchum and his staff to do something. Paramedics were summoned, but they were unable to revive Margaret. She was taken to a hospital across the street from Ketchum’s office, where she was pronounced dead on arrival. Margaret’s vagina had been sutured, but a laceration in her uterus and cervix had not been repaired. She had bled to death.

Ketchum was verily astounded when he was charged with criminally negligent homicide in Margaret Smith’s death. Evidently he didn’t think the state could possibly succeed in their case. He kept taking risks with patient’s lives. Before his case even went to trial, he performed a similar abortion on 37-year-old Carole Schaner of Ohio on October 20, 1971, who was sent back to her motel to die of injuries similar to those that had killed Margaret Smith.

Ketchum was convicted for Margaret’s death on October 26, 1973, despite the fact that Milan Vuitch testified on his behalf. When Roe v. Wade was handed down and assorted criminal abortionists started getting their old convictions thrown out, Ketchum tried Roe for leverage. He got nowhere. Eventually, he was sentenced to prison. Ketchum served little time, however. He was released after less than a year, and relocated to Florida where he managed not to kill any of his patients as a staff physician at a VA  hospital in Miami, from September of 1976 to November of 1977. It turned out that no license was required for a doctor to practice in a government operated hospital. According to the medical board licensee lookup, Ketchum lives on Michigan now. His petitions to restore his medical license, made in 1984 and 1987, were both denied. Nevertheless, despite killing two women, he remains a free man.

Benjamin Munson

Benjamin Munson

Dr. H. Benjamin Munson performed abortions in Rapid City, South Dakota. He opened his practice in 1967. He was convicted in 1969 for performing an abortion on a 19-year-old patient. Munson challenged his conviction, winning in circuit court. The state appealed, and the South Dakota Supreme Court ruled against him. He appealed this decision, which was rendered moot by Roe.

In 1973, Munson discharged 28-year-old Linda Padfield after an incomplete abortion. She died of sepsis three days later. Munson was charged with manslaughter. Yvonne Mesteth paid with her life when Munson made the same screw-up with her that had killed Linda Padfield.

Though not as celebrated as Vuitch, Munson was nevertheless considered altogether respect-worthy because of his purported courage in doing abortions. Seventh Circuit Judge Merton Tice, Jr. instructed the jury to acquit, saying that the state’s case was inadequate because prosecutors could not prove that Munson intended harm to his patient. Thanks to having a friendly judge, Munson remained free to continue his practice, even joining the prestigious National Abortion Federation.

Sidney Knight

Dr. Sidney Knight was facing a number of criminal abortion charges in 1973, when Roe v. Wade made them a moot point. He hung out his shingle and began performing abortions legally. In March of 1974, Janet Blaum went to Knight’s New Orleans facility for a “safe and legal” abortion. Five days later, on March 11, she was dead of brain hemorrhage. Janet’s ex-husband sued Knight on behalf of the couple’s children, alleging that Knight had administered a fatal dose of anesthesia while preparing Janet for the abortion.

Others?

I know there are other “back-alley butchers” who simply started advertising and practicing more openly after legalization. Erstwhile criminal abortionist Hipolito Barreiro (who, like Vuitch, Ketchum, Munson, and Knight, had no pre-legalization deaths I’ve been able to find out about) hired some marginal doctors and opened a “safe and legal abortion” facility in Miami that killed four abortion patients from 1979 through 1983. I have no doubt that other erstwhile “back-alley butchers” have found legalization to be quite a boon.

It’s a shame that women pay with their lives so that abortionists can sleep easier.

~~~

Christina Dunigan runs the Real Choice blog and the Cemetery of Choice at WikiSpaces, documenting the deaths of women from abortion both pre- and post-Roe. This article is reprinted with permission of Christina Dunigan.

Sycloria Williams was recovering from a botched abortion at her Pompano, Fla., home on July 21, 2006, when two homicide detectives knocked on her door. They asked if she knew why they were there. “Yes,” Williams said immediately. “Because the baby was born alive.”¹

It took investigators one week and three separate searches to find the corpse of Williams’s infant, which was hidden away in the abortion clinic in Hialeah, Fla.² It was a tiny black girl, only 25.5 centimeters from head to toe, born prematurely on July 20. Her body was badly decomposed, discolored and infested with maggots, but the autopsy report and an expert physician’s review both suggested she had drawn breath on her own before she died.³

The body had been hidden, according to a tip received by the police, on the roof⁴ or perhaps in the dropped ceiling of the abortion clinic,⁵ then later in a biohazard bag within a medical-waste box in the malodorous recovery room.⁶ Florida’s Department of Health later alleged that Williams’s doctor had “falsified [her] medical records in an apparent effort to conceal his errors and the true events of July 20, 2006.”⁷

Those “true events” — the alleged murder of an infant who was not supposed to be born alive — turned out to be harder to sort out than anyone expected, and the conclusion also proved hazy. In the end, no one was successfully held responsible for the infant’s death in either criminal or civil court, despite efforts at prosecution.

Read the rest here. All three clinics are still operating and many of those involved are still performing abortions.

The legalization of abortion was supposed to protect women from unlicensed and unregulated “back-alley” hacks who performed unsafe surgeries that maimed and killed women. But as we’ve seen, abortion is still practiced with the ethics of the back alley. The difference is that while illegal abortionists were routinely investigated and closed down by authorities, most legal abortionists are able to continue to ply their dangerous trade with the protection of the law. Further, the abortion industry and their allies continue to fight measures that would protect the rights, health and safety of women.

Learn More
Gosnell’s abortion atrocities no “aberration:” Closing arguments leave questions about clinics elsewhere in America by Kirsten Powers at USA Today
Two Deaths from “Safe and Legal” Abortions: Would More Women Die If Not for Legalization?
5 Myths About Back-Alley Abortions
Exception or Rule? Gosnell’s “House of Horrors” Not So Rare
Abortionists Are Not Held Accountable for Mistakes
Forced to Abort? Don’t Count on Clinics to Help

Resources to Share
Special Report on Invisible Abortion Deaths
Special Report on Coercion Inside the Abortion Industry
Forced Abortion in America: A Special Report
Physical Risks of Abortion Fact Sheet
Psychological Risks of Abortion Fact Sheet

Protecting the Rights of Women
Protection from Coerced and Unsafe Abortions Act

To the contrary, the combined results indicated that, compared to delivery of an unwanted or unintended pregnancy, abortion “was associated with small to moderate increases in risks of anxiety, alcohol misuse, illicit drug use/misuse and suicidal behavior.”

According to the authors, the absence of any “beneficial consequences for the mental health of women having unwanted or unintended pregnancy” poses a particularly pressing legal dilemma in England, Wales, Scotland, New Zealand, and most states in Australia.  Abortion is only legal in these countries if there is reasonable medical evidence that abortion reduces the physical or psychological health risks associated with continuing the pregnancy.

Christchurch Health & Development Study Team

Over 90 percent of abortions in these societies are provided on the grounds that abortion has mental health benefits compared to carrying an unwanted pregnancy to term.  But as noted by the authors, there is literally no medical evidence to support the conclusion that abortion ever reduces mental health risks.

This means that abortions “officially” being performed for reasons of psychological health are actually being performed in violation of the principles of evidence based medicine, since there is no evidence of any mental health benefits associated with abortion.

While not discussed by authors, the same problem surrounds cases where abortion is recommended in order to reduce the physical risks associated with pregnancy.  There are literally no studies showing that abortion reduces physical risks to women.  Instead, every record linkage study examining mortality rates associated with abortion show that abortion is also linked with an elevated risk of maternal death in both the short term and the longer term.  This mortality research creates a strong presumption against accepting that abortion has a beneficial impact on physical health compared to allowing pregnancies to continue.

Team Led by Pro-Choice Atheist Recommends New Grounds for Abortion

The lead author of the study, Dr. David Fergusson, is the director of the Christchurch Health and Development Study in New Zealand, a study which has been tracking a cohort of 1,265 children born in the Christchurch region for over 30 years.

In a prior interview, Fergusson identified himself as a pro-choice atheist.  He is not opposed to abortion for any moral reasons, but believes the evidence indicates that abortion can be traumatic for some women and that it is ”scientifically irresponsible” to hide the evidence of abortion’s mental health risks.

In this most recent study, Fergusson and his team suggest that the “unacceptable” practice of physicians authorizing “large numbers of abortions on grounds for which there is, currently, no scientific evidence” might be corrected by amending the law to allow physicians to perform abortions when there are “serious threats to the social, educational, or economic well-being of the woman and her immediate family.”

Expanding Reasons for Abortion Pointless

But would expanding the list of reasons to allow abortion actually make it easier for doctors to discern when an abortion will cause more benefit than harm in a woman’s life?

No, says Dr. David Reardon, director of the Elliot Institute and one of the leading American experts on the aftereffects of abortion.

“Fergusson’s analysis is correct in its demonstration that there are no documented mental health benefits from abortion,” Reardon said.  ”But he is mistaken if he assumes that there is any scientific evidence that abortion improves the social and economic well-being of women of women either.”

Reardon argues that since abortion is inherently a medical intervention, it is inherently the duty of physicians to form a reasonable, evidence based medical decision about whether an abortion is more likely to hurt than help a woman.

“If there are no benefits to abortion and abortion actually increases the physical, psychological, and social risks to the woman, as the best research shows, it is the obligation of physicians to recommend against these contraindicated abortions,” he said. “Changing the law to allow physicians to perform abortions for ‘social reasons’ without any evidence of benefit, especially in light of all the evidence of risks, does a disservice to women who expect and desire their doctors to protect their health, not endanger it.”

Citing:

• Fergusson DM, Horwood LJ, Boden JM. Does abortion reduce the mental health risks of unwanted or unintended pregnancy? A re-appraisal of the evidence. Aust N Z J Psychiatry. 2013 Apr 3. [Epub ahead of print]

Related Articles:

• Abortion Causes Mental Disorders: New Zealand Study May Require Doctors to Do Fewer Abortions
• Teens Cope With Unwanted Births Better Than Abortion: New Study
• Study: Abortion Provides No Mental Health Benefits Even When Pregnancy is Unwanted
• Alter abortion law to reflect real grounds: call

The announcement is troubling on many levels. Jacqueline Harvey of Reproductive Research Audit documents the risks to women and girls: (1) selling EC over the counter makes it more difficult to protect and care for teens who may be victims of sexual assault or abuse; (2) EC does not reduce teen pregnancy rates, but does increase the rates of sexually-transmitted diseases among teens; (3) selling EC over the counter promotes risky sexual behavior among women and teens, especially among younger girls; and (4) easy availability of EC makes it more likely that users will abuse the drug, leading to potential health risks for teens and women.

Read Dr. Harvey’s analysis here.

Update:

Download Dr. Harvey’s full report (with complete citations) on EC here.

The American College of Pediatricians has also released a statement opposing the sale of EC over the counter to teens.

Learn more:
The Best Kept (Ugly Little) Secret in America: The Lies and Distortions Behind the Push for the Morning After Pill

The American Journal of Public Health has preliminarily released an electronic version of Changes in Service Delivery Patterns After Introduction of Telemedicine Provision of Medical Abortion in Iowa, a study which examines the effect that offering webcam-advised prescriptions for abortion pills has had on both the number of abortions and the demographics of women seeking abortions in Iowa. Daniel Grossman leads four other authors in this study, which employs a questionable unit of analysis and unsupported conclusions — namely that “Recent legislation to ban telemedicine abortion may adversely affect public health by preventing women from accessing abortion earlier in pregnancy, when it is safer.”

Even if the authors could support the claim that tele-medicine (or “tele-med”) contributed to the modest reduction in late-term abortions, they still fail to note medical abortions have greater rates of complications than surgical abortions. The researchers only examine geography and service delivery, not safety or complication. However, by taking the number of abortions by type provided in the Grossman et. al study and then considering the percentage of women facing complications from each abortion method (also provided by Grossman in this and previous articles), we were able to conclude the following:

Continue reading here.

The following statement was released by The Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer on April 24, 2013.

The Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer commented on a Danish study led by Christina  Braüner entitled, “Induced abortion and breast cancer among parous women: A Danish cohort study.”[1]

Braüner’s team studied a very limited segment of the population and misrepresented their findings. They stated they “did not find evidence of an adverse effect of induced abortion on breast cancer risk in parous (childbearing) older women overall….”

But they didn’t look at parous women overall. They underestimated the risk of abortion by recruiting only women ages 50-65 and excluding all women already diagnosed with cancer. Pre-menopausal women were excluded, as were childless women, although there was no legitimate justification for it.

Women susceptible to breast cancer because of earlier abortions were either already dead or excluded from participation in the study because they already had cancer. The abortion-breast cancer link has been established in many studies with study subjects age 45 or younger. [2,3,4,5,6] Braüner’s group did not refute them.

Importantly, their abstract reported they had conducted “a follow-up of approximately 12 years” after entry into the study. The average age at abortion in Denmark is 27. [7] Median age at recruitment in the study was age 57. That’s a 30 year difference. The follow-up period actually included a range of between 1 and 50 years following abortion with an average of 30 years. The oldest women who had abortions were 49, but the youngest women were 15. [7]

Professor Joel Brind (Baruch College, City University of New York) said, “The important point is that all the women in the study who had had an abortion were the ones who did not get cancer for an average of about 30 years after the abortion. By that time, the study showed that these survivors had no greater risk of breast cancer much later in life than those who did not have any abortions, if the data set is valid, that is.

“Concluding from this that there is no evidence of an ABC link is a gross exaggeration and irresponsible. It’s like saying: ‘Don’t worry about breast cancer if you have an abortion,’ that is, just worry for 30 years, and then you can stop worrying! (although your risk is still higher than it would have been had every child you aborted been carried to term instead).”

Abortion was legalized in 1939 in Denmark, not 1973, as the authors claimed. In 1956 it was liberalized, and in 1973 abortion on demand became legal.

The authors unnecessarily relied on self-reports of abortion histories at entrance to the study. Then they speculated whether underreporting of abortions may have occurred.

Karen Malec, president of the Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer, challenged Braüner and her colleagues.

She said, “If these researchers are sincerely interested in determining whether abortion raises risk, why don’t they look at the whole cohort and use data linking records of abortions with records of breast cancer? In a 1997 Danish study, one-fourth of the study subjects (about 350,000 women) were under age 25. They’re 16 years older today. Why not use that database? [8]

“Aside from the question of whether abortion leaves the breasts with more places for cancers to start, accepted risk factors for breast cancer include childlessness, small family size, delayed first full term pregnancy and little or no breastfeeding. Abortion deprives women of the protective effect of childbearing.” [6]

~~~

The Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer is an international women’s organization founded to protect the health and save the lives of women by educating and providing information on abortion as a risk factor for breast cancer.

Learn More
Read this four-part series on abortion and breast cancer by leading expert Dr. Joel Brind, a professor of biology and endocrinology at Baruch College of the City University of New York.

The Abortion-Breast Cancer Link: Those Stubborn Facts Again (Part One)
The Abortion-Breast Cancer Link: The Cover-Up (Part Two)
The Abortion-Breast Cancer Link: The Dagger Under the Table (Part Three)
The Abortion-Breast Cancer Link: The Biology (Part Four)

References:

1. Braüner C, Overvad K, Tjønneland A & Attermann J. Induced abortion and breast cancer among parous women: A Danish cohort study. Acta Obstetricia et Gynecologica Scandinavica 2013. Available at: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/aogs.12107/abstract.

2. Daling JR, Malone DE, Voigt LF, White E, Weiss NS. Risk of breast cancer among young women: relationship to induced abortion. J Natl Cancer Inst 1994;86:1584-1592. Available at: http://jnci.oxfordjournals.org/content/86/21/1584.

3. White E, Malone KE, Weiss NS, Daling JR. Breast cancer among young US women in relation to oral contraceptive use. J Natl Cancer Inst 1994;86:505-514. Available at: http://jnci.oxfordjournals.org/content/86/7/505.abstract.

4. Pike MC, et al. Oral contraceptive use and early abortion as risk factors for breast cancer in young women. Br J Cancer 1981;43:72-76. Available at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2010485/.

5. Howe HL, Senie RT, Bzduch H, Herzfeld P. Early abortion and breast cancer risk among women under age 40. Int J Epidemiol 1989;18:300-304.

6. For a list of 70 epidemiologic studies examining the question whether abortion leaves the breasts with more places for cancers to start, see: http://bcpinstitute.org/FactSheets/BCPI-FactSheet-Epidemiol-studies.pdf.

7. Danmarks Statistik. Befolkningens bevægelser 1994 (Vital statistics 1994). Danmarks Statistiks trykkeri, Copenhagen 1996:60-62.

8. Melbye M, Wohlfahrt J, Olson JH, Frisch M, Westergaard T, Helweg-Larsen K, Andersen PK. Induced abortion and the risk of breast cancer. N Engl J Med 1997;336:81-85. Available at: <http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199701093360201.

Nineteen years old and pregnant, Cynthia Galvan had an abortion pill in her mouth and turmoil in her soul. She was unmarried and felt unprepared for motherhood.

A medical abortion was the solution. The day before Galvan had ingested the first drug in the RU-486 regimen, mifepristone, intended to detach the embryo from the uterus. Now she was taking a misoprostol pill, which would cause her body to expel the baby.

Yet she doubted. Her mother was in tears over her decision, and a local pro-life doctor told Galvan over the phone he might be able to reverse the effects of the prior day’s pill.

A call to Planned Parenthood’s staff suggested the opposite: The baby was already dead, they assured her—or if not, it would be born with major birth defects. They warned that unless she took the second drug to expel the pregnancy now, she could experience severe pain.

Galvan spit the pill out, unsure who to believe.

Read the rest here.

Need Help?
For information on abortion pill reversal and doctors who can help, visit www.AbortionPillReversal.com. Find other pregnancy help and resources here.

Download Issue (pdf format)

Contents:

Pre-Abortion Screening Law to Take Effect
Federal Court Recognized Risk Factors in Ruling on South Dakota Law

Appeals Court: All Abortion Risks Must Be Disclosed
Argument to Invert Traditional Medical Standards Rejected

Contact Your Legislators and Lobbyists About Our Model Bill

Empower Women, Not the State
Why Right to Redress Laws Are the Best Way to Help Abortion-Vulnerable Women

Special Section: Research Round-Up on The Latest Findings and Controversies on Abortion and Mental Health

Most Studies Show Abortion Linked to Mental Health Problems: Women Cope With Delivery of Unplanned Pregnancy Better Than Abortion

Abortion and Mental Health Controversy Reignited By New Study

Rehash of Abortion Safety Claim Ignores All Inconvenient Evidence to the Contrary

Hearings on Abortion and Mental Health Are Overdue: Elliot Institute Launches Petition Campaign

Abortion Linked to Preterm Birth, But Why Aren’t Women Being Told?

Why Prior Abortions Raise Autism Risk

Everyone Wanted Me to Have An Abortion … Except Me
A Former Abortion Clinic Worker Shares Her Story

Volume 19, Number 2, Fall/Winter 2012

Download Issue (pdf format)

Contents:

Higher Death Rates After Abortion Found in U.S., Finland and Denmark
Large Record-Based Studies Show Abortion Is Not Safer Than Childbirth

CDC Reports of Abortion Deaths Double; Many Clinic Deaths Go Uncounted

New Study Finds Multiple Abortions Increase Risk of Maternal Death

Special Section on Abortion and Sexual Assault Pregnancy: Listening to Women Who’ve Been There

Abortion Doesn’t Help Pregnant Sexual Assault Victims: Survey Says Most Don’t Want Abortion, Say It Adds to Trauma

An Open Letter to Congress, State Legislators and the Media From Women Who’ve Been There

The Despicable “God Intends Rape” Comments

A Call to Action: Support the Campaign for Congressional Hearings on Abortion and Sexual Assault Pregnancy

“Rape Hurt My Mother, But Abortion Devastated Her”

My Rape Pregnancy and My Furor Over Social Myths

One of the strongest practical arguments in favor of the Roe regime is that abortion has been around since time immemorial and outlawing it only drove it underground, leading women to endanger themselves by seeking out the services of back-alley quacks. The Philadelphia grand jurors recounted a powerful example from their own city’s history.

It was called the Mother’s Day Massacre. A young Philadelphia doctor “offered to perform abortions on 15 poor women who were bused to his clinic from Chicago on Mother’s Day 1972, in their second trimester of pregnancy.” The women didn’t know that the doctor “planned to use an experimental device called a ‘super coil’ developed by a California man named Harvey Karman.”

A colleague of Karman’s Philadelphia collaborator described the contraption as “basically plastic razors that were formed into a ball. . . . They were coated into a gel, so that they would remain closed. These would be inserted into the woman’s uterus. And after several hours of body temperature, . . . the gel would melt and these . . . things would spring open, supposedly cutting up the fetus.”

Nine of the 15 Chicago women suffered serious complications. One of them needed a hysterectomy. The following year, the Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade. It would be 37 more years before the Philadelphia doctor who carried out the Mother’s Day Massacre would go out of business. His name is Kermit Gosnell.

Back-alley abortions were indisputably a problem before 1973. That’s no defense of the Roe regime, which failed to solve it.

Women Still Injured and Killed After Legalization

Indeed, the legalization of abortion has failed to prevent women from being exploited, abused, traumatized, maimed, injured and killed before, during and after abortion.

Women and girls still die from abortion, including Tonya Reaves, Jennifer Morbelli, Christin Gilbert and Karnamaya Mongar, to name just a few, but their deaths are no longer automatically investigated by police or even counted in the official statistics.

Research has linked abortion to higher death rates among women in the years following, as well as increased rates of breast cancer, substance abuse, depression, suicide, subsequent preterm birth, anxiety disorders and other problems. Yet abortion clinics routinely fail to screen for known, statistically validated risk factors that increase women’s likelihood of psychological problems after abortion.

Nor are the abortionists usually held accountable for the deaths and injuries they cause. Dr. Lenora Berning, an emergency room doctor who has treated women injured by abortion, notes:

Abortion is one of the most frequently performed surgical procedures in the United States, yet it is the least regulated. It is the only elective surgical procedure that I know of in which the doctor performing the procedure is not responsible for follow-up care, nor does he or she take an active role in dealing with the complications. Not only this, but the very nature of abortion clinics, which practice in isolation from the rest of the medical community, keeps the abortion provider free from accountability for these complications.

Filthy clinics, substandard care, illegal procedures, untrained and unlicensed staff and the other appalling conditions found at Gosnell’s clinic are, unfortunately, not as rare as most people think, nor did they go away with legalization. For example, a Delaware clinic was recently closed and is being investigated over allegations of multiple botched abortions.

Women Are Less Free After Legalization

But risking these hazards is necessary in order for women to maintain their reproductive freedom, right? To the contrary, the legalization of abortion has done nothing to advance women’s freedom. Given research and anecdotal evidence showing that most women who abort are pressured to do so, and that most abortions are likely unwanted, one could argue that abortion has made women less free.

Before Roe, a woman or girl who was being pressured or coerced to abort could resist on the grounds that it was illegal, unsafe and immoral. Legalization has made it easier for those around her to insist that because abortion is legal, it must be “safe,” and because it is “socially approved,” it must be moral. It makes it easier for them to refuse to support her desire to continue the pregnancy and insist that she abort anyway.

For example, when actress Hunter Tylo was fired from the TV show Melrose Place after she became pregnant, her pregnancy discrimination suit quoted a producer as saying, “Why doesn’t she just go out and get an abortion? Then she can work.”

And an article published several years ago on a popular men’s web site offered advice to men about how to pressure their wives or girlfriends into unwanted abortions. The article was taken down after numerous complaints, but not before readers saw Isabella Snow’s advice that men weren’t obligated to support their child “beyond what your conscience and the law expects of you.” Rather than asking men to step up to the plate, Snow suggested they threaten abandonment in order to secure an abortion, regardless of the woman’s wishes:

This was her decision, not yours, and the bulk of the responsibility is now hers. Take a moment to spell this out for her when she gives you her final decision; it just may sway her over to your side.”

The legalization of abortion has not ended child abuse (child abuse rates have increased since 1973) or violence against women. At least two studies of maternal death rates found that homicide was the leading cause of death among pregnant women. Tracking news stories reveals that in many cases, the perpetrator wanted to get rid of the pregnancy and attacked or killed the victim after she refused to abort. For teens and young girls, abortion is often used to cover and up and continue sexual abuse by getting rid of the evidence of the crime — the resulting pregnancy.

Putting Abortion Ideology Before Women

Given all this, one would think that abortion advocates would be fighting to stamp out abuses and improve the standard of care in abortion clinics, as some have recently claimed. But reality has proven these claims to be false.

Evidence of physical and psychological harm to women is routinely dismissed and attacked by abortion advocates and their allies. Nancy Russo, a spokesperson for the American Psychological Association, admitted that a study linking abortion to increased rates of mental health problems among women (a study conducted by a pro-choice researcher, no less) would have no effect on the APA’s position on abortion because “to pro-choice advocates, mental health effects are not relevant to the legal context of arguments to restrict access to abortion.”

Abortion advocates have repeatedly fought efforts to implement common-sense measures  — such as screening for coercion and pre-existing risk factors for post-abortion psychological problems — that would protect the rights, health and lives of women facing abortion. In fact, while abortion clinics claim to protect women’s “right to choose,” they actually don’t promote any other option than abortion.

Gosnell’s clinic advised women to pay more for sedation if “your decision is being forced by your parents or partner,” while a Kansas clinic pre-printed their forms to show that no reports of abuse had been filed for their patients. Former clinic workers have reported that they were trained to hide information from women and pressure them to abort, with one former Planned Parenthood counselor noting that “Planned Parenthood’s mission is to pressure as many women into having abortion as it can.” And women have told, over and over again, about being denied vital information and coerced or bullied into abortion by clinic staff.

Even when problems come to light, they are often not reported — or if they are, they are often ignored by both the regulators and the media.In Gosnell’s case, his clinic had not been inspected in 13 years. Staff members and others who knew about the problems, including an official from the National Abortion Federation (which denied Gosnell’s application for membership based on deficiencies at his clinic), didn’t report the problems.

According to the Grand Jury report, health officials “knew that Gosnell and his clinic were offering unacceptable medical care to women and girls, yet DOH failed to take any action to stop the atrocities documented by this Grand Jury.” Further, the Grand Jury “discovered that Pennsylvania’s Department of Health has deliberately chosen not to enforce laws that should afford patients at abortion clinics the same safeguards and assurances of quality health care as patients of other medical service providers.”

Since Gosnell’s arrest, abortion advocates have continued to fight proposed regulations elsewhere, even ones that could save women’s lives. It appears that political protection for abortion trumps the health and lives of women and girls (to say nothing of the lives of children, including those born alive).

Legal Abortions, Back Alley Ethics

So it seems that the only real difference between getting an abortion before Roe and getting one after is the door by which you enter.* As one researcher pointed out, “While abortion is legal, it is still practiced with the ethics of the back alley.”

In a letter posted at Fredricksburg.com, Eileen Roberts, president of Mothers and Advocates for Mothers Alone, and the mother of a teen girl injured by abortion, wrote:

How can we be so naive to think that every surgical procedure of abortion is safe and use the argument that women would resort to back-alley abortions? Legalizing abortion simply gave the back-alley physician permission to put his shingle on the front door.

… Abortion may be currently legal, but it is anything but safe for either mother or child. In every abortion someone dies.

My 14-year-old was told she was going to the best abortion clinic in Virginia. Her boyfriend and a so-called adult friend, who transported her 45 miles from our home, did not know her as her parents did.

She suffered emotional and physical consequences from a so-called safe, legal abortion.

To add insult to injury, my husband and I were responsible for more than $27,000 in medical costs to repair the damage done by the abortionist.

In my opinion, this was an example of a legal back-alley abortion.

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* Prior to Roe, women seeking illegal abortions at doctor’s offices were often instructed to enter by the back door after regular office hours to allay suspicion — hence the term “back alley abortion.” Most illegal abortions were, in fact, performed by doctors.

Updates:
Gosnell’s abortion atrocities no “aberration:” Closing arguments leave questions about clinics elsewhere in America by Kirsten Powers at USA Today
Gosnell-Like Abortion Practices Are Business As Usual in New Mexico
Gosnell Is Not the Only One: Ten Other Notorious Abortionists

Learn More:
Two Deaths from “Safe and Legal” Abortions: Would More Women Die If Not for Legalization?
5 Myths About Back-Alley Abortions
Exception or Rule? Gosnell’s “House of Horrors” Not So Rare
Abortionists Are Not Held Accountable for Mistakes
Forced to Abort? Don’t Count on Clinics to Help

Resources to Share
Special Report on Invisible Abortion Deaths
Special Report on Coercion Inside the Abortion Industry
Forced Abortion in America: A Special Report
Physical Risks of Abortion Fact Sheet
Psychological Risks of Abortion Fact Sheet