Pro-life groups that spend time outside Planned Parethood clinics have recorded eighteen recent instances where women have had to be transported to nearby hospitals by ambulance. The most recent case occurred the day before Thanksgiving in St. Louis:
A St. Louis Planned Parenthood patient was rushed to a nearby hospital after suffering serious abortion complications the day before Thanksgiving, officials with the prolife group Operation Rescue informed LifeNews today. Paramedics arrived at the abortion clinic at approximately 2:45 p.m. on November 21, 2012, and removed the patient from the building with her face covered with a cloth.
Mary Maschmeier of the local pro-life group Defenders of the Unborn told OR, “A counselor spoke to the brother of the injured woman and he said he thought she was going to be okay. We have made contact with him but have not received a returned call. We ask for your prayers for this woman and her family.”
This is the eighteenth medical emergency that Operation Rescue has documented at Planned Parenthood abortion clinics nationwide since January, 2011, including another botched abortion at this same St. Louis Planned Parenthood on February 12, 2011.
Planned Parenthood clinics do not offer a full array of medical services and are rarely held to same standards for health and safety as hospitals. Nor are they required to report numbers for medical complications or patient deaths. This despite the fact that abortion is not a medical procedure as traditionally understood—a procedure conducing to life and health—but rather an attack on the child that can also pose grave risk to the mother.
More information on medical emergencies related to abortion is needed, both through regulatory reporting requirements and gumshoe reporting. What little we now know comes via reports of observers like Operation Rescue and from headline-grabbing cases like that of the once-admired Philadelphia abortionist Kermit Gosnell, charged with the murder of a woman who visited his clinic.
The back alley is alive and well at wholly legal (indeed, government-funded) abortion clinics—where, thanks to the principle of induced demand—far more women seek out the procedure than would were it illegal. The eighteen anonymous women hauled away from Planned Parenthood clinics in recent months testify to the violence abortion can do to mother as well as child.
There has been universal sorrow (and selective outrage) over the death of Savita Halappanavar, but how many women have to be injured or killed during legal abortion before the call rises to end abortion? There is always the possibility—sometimes tragic—of misapplication, but Ireland’s abortion law (which allows for “termination of pregnancy” in select cases) was not in itself responsible for Savita’s death. The question instead is, how many women’s lives has it saved?
November 28th, 2012 | 9:20 am
How many women die or are injured for pregnancy complications each year? What medical services do crisis pregnancy centers offer? (the answer to that last question is “none.”)
November 28th, 2012 | 9:41 am
“How many women die or are injured for pregnancy complications each year? What medical services do crisis pregnancy centers offer? (the answer to that last question is ‘none.’)”
Of course the next question to be asked is how many abortions that turned out badly are the responsibility of a crisis pregnancy center? (The answer to that last question is “none”).
Your analogy is meritless.
A crisis center has never impregnated any woman, nor has one ever “complicated” her pregnancy or prevented a pregnant woman with complications from seeking medical assistance. Planned Parenthood does complicate the hell out of a pregnancy though and when one of their abortions is botched, who should be held accountable?
November 28th, 2012 | 9:48 am
. . . but how many women have to be injured or killed during legal abortion before the call rises to end abortion?
Well, of course, if a person is morally opposed to abortion, the answer is zero. One simply can’t look to the pro-life movement for a reasoned answer to the acceptable injury or mortality rate for abortion.
One thing everyone should be able to agree on, however, is that there is something wrong when 47 out of 183 countries have a lower maternal death rate than the United States. In the US, 21 out of 100,000 women die as the result of childbirth. In many European countries, the rate is less than half that. And also it’s estimated that there are 90 thousand preventable deaths each year in American hospitals.
November 28th, 2012 | 9:49 am
1) The US bans government funding going towards abortions. Fortunately since the vast majority of Planned Parenthood’s work is on other procedures, they can raise the money to pay for abortions from other means.
2) The risk of abortion to the health of a woman is much, much lower than pregnancy and childbirth. Since you mention Savita Halapannavar, please note that what happened to her is only one of many things that can go wrong in pregnancy.
In the UK, 8.2 women die for every 100,000 births. In the US, 16.6 women die for every 100,000 births. (That gap presumably due to the un-insured in the US)
By comparison the death rate from legal abortion is 0.6 per 100,000 women – more than ten times safer than giving birth in the UK, and more than twenty times safer than giving birth in the US.
3) Oh, and all available data shows us that abortion rates decline thanks only to contraception and sexual education – banning abortion just makes it more dangerous.
November 28th, 2012 | 9:50 am
Karen,
You’re assuming an exact analogy between Planned Parenthood and Crisis Pregnancy Centers. There’s a significant difference: The latter do not perform medical procedures. They give advice and other material assistance. Your question seems to assume that CPCs are somehow responsible for adverse consequences of pregnancy, which would have been averted if only the patient had gone to PP. This doesn’t follow. The only way to eliminate adverse consequences is to eliminate pregnancy, which would have a bad effect on the whole race! Your question seems to assume indifference by CPCs to mothers but that’s a false assumption too. CPCs help to provide care that helps preserve both mother and infant.
November 28th, 2012 | 10:01 am
The crisis pregnancy center here in my small town of Erie, Pennsylvania maintains 7 offices in Erie County, one of which is a medical clinic staffed by two volunteer doctors (ObGyns) and a full-time nurse. Of course, this is far from the only channel through which underprivileged patients can get the medical attention their pregnancies require.
November 28th, 2012 | 10:12 am
Somehow when CPCs refer for medical services, that’s “not providing services.” But if Planned Parenthood refers for mammograms, that’s “providing mammograms.”
FWIW, Tim, I’m from Erie, too. Small world.
November 28th, 2012 | 10:20 am
@Joe Sansonese, how about holding responsible those who ensure that in the US, unlike every other Western country I know, abortion clinics are artificially separated from standard hospitals, so that in the cases where complications do occur the patient is in close proximity to assistance.
But that would undermine the interests of anti-choice groups, because those seeking abortions would be even harder to spot amongst the hundreds streaming in for medical procedures of all kinds, people coming in to visit in-patients, etc; and if you can’t spot them how can you heckle and intimidate them?
November 28th, 2012 | 11:48 am
@ Slow learner: The maternal mortality rate in Ireland is only 5.7 in that same study with the rates you quoted for the UK and the US. Poland, which also bans abortion, also has a maternal mortality rate lower than the UK.
If you think the people who pray outside abortion clinics are there to “heckle and intimidate,” you may want to update & broaden your perspective by checking out the 40DaysforLife.com website. You might also want to look at a few more studies on the effect of contraception availability on abortion rates, if you truly believe “all available data” shows increased contraception decreases abortion.
You may also want to check out http://www.rachelsvineyard.org/
November 28th, 2012 | 12:14 pm
Let me make this simple for “slow learner.” Killing an unborn child is by definition a violent and invasive interruption of the natural generative process. The result, a dead baby and an injured woman, is intentional. Comparing abortion to pregnancy is like comparing a slaughter house to a kennel.
November 28th, 2012 | 1:44 pm
“Killing an unborn child is by definition a violent and invasive interruption of the natural generative process.”
Nice rhetorical flourishes tony. Inaccurate representation of the vast majority of abortions, especially the 90%+ which are first-trimester, but why let that stop you?
“dead baby and injured woman” Foetus != baby, the distinction is genuine and important; and very, very few women are injured by abortions. Early term abortion is a simple, medically safe procedure.
“Slaughter house to a kennel”. Yes, because saving a woman from having unwanted children is the same as running an abattoir. After all, both individuals and societies benefit so much from people having children they don’t want or can’t afford.
@Lisa S. that is indeed interesting that Ireland has a lower maternal mortality rate. I don’t know much about Irish healthcare, but that makes it seem that it is actually pretty good. Well done the Irish. However, if you wish to imply that this is due to their anti-abortion policies, cite please.
Widespread contraception does correlate with lower abortion rates. After all, most adults are sexually active. Amongst those who are not ready for children, or do not want them at all, effective contraception will help to prevent them from needing abortion. If they don’t know what kind of contraception is effective, or that they should use it, then there will be pregnancies which are unwanted, and abortions will be the result in many cases. The logic is simple, and the data backs it up.
One example from a whole decade ago:
http://www.fhi360.org/en/RH/Pubs/Network/v21_4/NWvol21-4abortcontception.htm
There are many more, but since you’re posting on the Internet I trust you can use Google Scholar.
As to “heckle and intimidate”, well, just to pick a random example I found this story:
http://sumofchange.blogspot.co.uk/2009/07/i-meet-antis.html
I have seen story after story about this kind of behaviour, so it’s hardly isolated extremists.
November 28th, 2012 | 2:38 pm
Well articulated and supported–only we ought to remember that the induced demand for abortion (caused via its legality) causes a demand for he procedure among many men who induce their demand on, often already abused and marginalized, women. Such men include abortionists who induce their demand on women facing difficult circumstances so they can make a profit. Others are men who induce their demand on their girlfriends so they never have to be fathers–except they are and neglectful ones at that.
November 28th, 2012 | 3:48 pm
Andrew,
It seems to me that “anti-aborts” have a difficult time facing up to the reality that women have abortions because they want to because they don’t want the baby they have conceived. I am all for compassionate treatment of women seeking abortions. Many of them are in very tough spots and need help, not criticism and condemnation. But it is just a fantasy that a significant number of women are lured or forced into having an abortion. Approximately half of women having abortions in any given year are having their second (third, fourth, etc.) abortion. Give women a little credit for knowing the saying, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”
You can’t “induce demand” for an abortion unless a woman is pregnant and does not want the baby. Women who don’t have unplanned or unintended pregnancies don’t have abortions.
Does it ever occur to anyone that painting women who have abortions as helpless victims of men and the abortion industry may very well encourage abortion?
November 28th, 2012 | 7:23 pm
With the title a question, I fully expected the answer to be numbering around 1,600 a day, about half the number of legal abortions, assuming that half of them were Little Women. Perhaps these women were excluded from this article and discussion to limit the scope of argument, but with the title, the obvious seems to stare at me with myriads of tiny mournful eyes.
November 28th, 2012 | 11:34 pm
According to this book on Australia:
http://spinneypress.com.au/books/abortion-issues/
Fast facts:
It is estimated that there are almost 200,000 unplanned pregnancies in Australia every year.
An estimated 23% of all known pregnancies in Australia are terminated. This makes abortion one of the most common surgical procedures in the country, with around 80,000 women undergoing abortion every year.
(quite appalling if you ask me)
Comparatively speaking, Australia’s abortion rate is reasonably low by international standards. For instance, the United States of America has a 30% abortion rate, while countries such as the former Yugoslavia and Bulgaria have recorded abortion rates of over 50%.
Around one in three Australian women will undergo an abortion.
(talk about awful!)
The typical profile of a woman seeking abortion includes: aged in her 20s; single; childless; well-educated; and employed.
(well, there goes the “poor” little girl, “uninformed about birth control” bandied-about image of the abortion seeker)
Studies show that between half and two thirds of all women presenting for abortion were using contraception at the time.
http://spinneypress.com.au/books/abortion-issues/
======
And I just wonder how many of these women believe in having sex outside marriage, that porn is OK, and that homosexuality is normal.
And obviously no one asks about the medical costs of all of this – since resources in a society are limited.
We live in a society where people who are completely irresponsible and unethical about personal relationships and sexuality extort funding from the state to clean up their mess – no matter how much financial damage they cause.
November 30th, 2012 | 11:08 am
“You can’t “induce demand” for an abortion unless a woman is pregnant and does not want the baby. Women who don’t have unplanned or unintended pregnancies don’t have abortions. ”
If I correctly understand you, you are arguing that if exercising some option requires a pre-existing condition in order to be possible, then it cannot be the case that demand for that particular option is externally “induced.”
This is not only without logical force, it is plainly false.
Though it is true that people will not eat junk food unless they are more or less hungry and think it tastes good, it is absolutely not true that advertising or social encouragement do not ever “induce” someone to choose junk food over other alternatives.
And while it absolutely true that kids don’t take up smoking unless they’ve become secondarily addicted, are immaturely responding to peer pressure, or otherwise contain the characteristics that separate kids who take up smoking from those who don’t, do you really want to defend the claim that tobacco advertising or peer pressure never “induced” a kid to smoke?
So it hardly seems reasonable to claim that just because women don’t have abortions unless they’re pregnant without wanting to be, nobody to any degree induces the choice to abort rather than bear the previously or currently unwanted child.
“Does it ever occur to anyone that painting women who have abortions as helpless victims of men and the abortion industry may very well encourage abortion?”
Does it ever occur to you that depicting abortion as the only choice in which humans are 100% rational actors, immune from relational, social, economic, or internal pressures, is simply without merit?
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