Death Rate Following Abortion Much Higher Than Previously Known
ABORTION ASSOCIATED WITH HEIGHTENED
MORTALITY RATE, STUDY REVEALS

By Wanda Franz, Ph.D., President
National Right to Life

In the discussion of abortion, one of the "facts" that carries the most weight with most people is the notion that abortion, by comparison, is safer for the mother than childbirth. However, solid research is beginning to accumulate that undermines this conventional wisdom.

The latest research to examine the issue of death rates associated with pregnancy outcome was published in the August issue of the Southern Medical Journal. By carefully reviewing publicly accessible documents, the authors found that women who have abortions are at significantly higher risk of death than women who give birth.

"Deaths Associated With Pregnancy Outcome: A Record Linkage Study of Low Income Women," showed not only that there is a greater short-term risk of death for aborting women but long-term risk as well. Authors David C. Reardon, Philip G. Ney, Fritz Scheuren, Jesse Cougle, Priscilla K. Coleman, and Thomas W. Strahan found that in the first two years following their abortions women were nearly twice as likely to die as women who carried their children to term. This elevated mortality risk persisted for the entire eight years the study examined.

The study was designed with a similar approach as used in a Finnish study published in 1997. The national study in Finland showed significantly higher death rates associated with abortion than with childbirth.

The Finnish study used a method called record-linkage, which allowed the researchers to match cases of women with various pregnancy outcomes to subsequent death events. This has the advantage that the study does not rely on getting an accurate report from the women, but, instead, uses objective statistics from government files. This is particularly useful in Finland, where detailed health records are kept on everyone by the central government.

The objective of the American study was to use the same approach to examine this association using an American population over a longer period. In order to obtain a similar set of statistics, the authors turned to California Medicaid records for 1989. The 173,279 women who had an induced abortion or a delivery in 1989 were then linked to death certificates for the period 1989 to 1997.

The authors' examination revealed that over that eight-year period studied, the women who aborted, compared to those giving birth, had a 154 percent higher risk of death from suicide, an 82 percent higher risk of death from accidents, and a 44 percent higher risk of death from natural causes. This confirmed the trends found in the Finnish study published in 1997. That government-funded study of maternal deaths revealed that in the first year following an abortion, aborting women were 252 percent more likely to die compared to women who delivered and 76 percent more likely to die compared to women who had not been pregnant.

The American study also compared women whose history of pregnancy outcomes fell into five different categories: delivery only, abortion only, abortion followed by delivery, delivery followed by abortion, and delivery followed by miscarriage.

The delivery-only group had the fewest deaths and the abortion- only group had the most deaths. The analysis revealed that women with a combination of pregnancy outcomes fell between these two extremes. Thus, the authors suggest that delivering a child has a protective effect on women, regardless of the combination of outcomes experienced.

It is often argued that women who have problems after abortion are the ones who had psychiatric problems before having the abortions. This study controlled for that factor by including the records of mental-health visits in the year prior to the pregnancy event. They found that the difference in death rates between the delivery-only group and the abortion-only group continued to be significant even when controlling for previous psychiatric problems.

When the specific causes of death were examined, two findings stand out. One is that abortion increases the risk of dying from AIDS and of dying from cardiovascular disease. The authors point out that previous research has demonstrated that women who have abortions also have a higher rate of drug abuse, which would put them at higher risk of getting AIDS. This study confirms that the negative effects of increased drug abuse leading to illness and death are associated with abortion.

The unexpected finding of increases in cardiovascular disease, and subsequent death, may be explained by examining previous studies on behaviors of women following abortion. Cardiac disease is associated with psychological problems, especially depression, which have been found to occur in women following abortion. In addition, cardiac disease is associated with alcohol consumption and smoking, and both of these behaviors have been found to increase following abortion.

Both this study and the Finnish study are based on records collected from government statistics, which can be validated and are, thus, highly reliable. This is the first American study to use this approach.

It is interesting that the American study is based on a population of poor people in California, who used Medi-Cal to finance their abortions. The findings, however, are the same as in the Finnish study, which is based on a wide range of different kinds of people from all over the country. Thus, even with very different demographics, the American study confirms the findings of the Finnish study. It is very difficult to argue with the results, and our opponents have had nothing to say about the findings of either study.

These studies constitute the beginning of the end of the false consensus that says that "abortion is safer than childbirth." The facts once again demonstrate that our opponents have it all wrong. The truth appears to be that childbirth is safer in abortion, whether the maternal deaths following abortion are due to accident, cardiovascular problems, suicide, or homicide.