by Randy O'Bannon, Ph.D. | LifeNews.com | 12/12/14 7:44 PM
What if you walked into the waiting room of any of the country’s abortion clinics and told the young mothers
waiting there in the lobby that there’s a new study indicating that the “procedure” they’re about to undergo
will, in the coming year, send thousands of women to the emergency room or back to the clinic to deal with
a complication or a “failed abortion”?
How many of them would say that makes them feel more comfortable with their decision? None, you would
suspect.
Yet if one actually reads a new study (as opposed to the press release) out of the University of California –
San Francisco (UCSF), that’s what is being acknowledged but cloaked. Instead of a true picture, you get a
UCSF release trumpeting the results as showing that the “Major Complication Rate After Abortion Is
Extremely Low” (UCSF Release, 12/8/14).
But a closer look at the data shows there is some
real stretching and spinning going on here, belying
the “extremely low” complication rate assertion. As
you read our analysis, be sure to focus in on what
the authors consider to be “minor” complications.
The UCSF study, “Incidence of Emergency
Department Visits and Complications After Abortion,”
is based on a recent study of California Medicaid
recipients. It appeared in the December 8, 2014,
edition of the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology.
California is one of the states that pays for the abortions of women enrolled in Medicaid. The study looked
at the billing data from 50,273 MediCal patients who had 54,911 abortions in 20092010.
The authors do not give comparable state data from those years, but note that of the 181,730 abortions
performed in California in 2011, about 51% were covered by the state’s MediCal program. This study
looked at just those records of patients were treated under the feeforservice (vs. managed care) part of
the program. [1]
Nearly 8% (or between one in 12 and one in 13) of women showed up at the clinic or a local Emergency
Room (ER) seeking some service within six weeks of their abortions. Some of those were eliminated from
further study because billing records appeared to show that they came in for some service unrelated to the
abortion. (These were not specified, but this could be something like smashing a finger in the car door,
coming down with the flu, etc.)
But even pulling these out and other “complications not validated,” one is left with a substantial number of
women dealing with medical problems resulting from their “safe” abortions.
On the billing records of those women returning to the clinic or going to the ER, they found women
hemorrhaging, dealing with infections, uterine perforations – the sort of problems we’re supposed to think
were relics of the early days following the Roe v. Wade decision when abortionists were just learning their
craft.
A surprising number of these were related to the new chemical or “medication” abortion method that was
supposed to offer women a safer alternative to surgical abortion.
There were nearly four times as many surgical abortions (34,755 first trimester, 8,837 2nd trimester or
later) tracked by the study as there were chemical abortions. (11,319). Yet there were more identified
complications associated with the chemical method (588) than they were for the surgical ones (438 for first
trimester, 130 for 2nd or later) combined.
The complication rate for chemical abortions was 5.2%, versus complication rates of 1.3% for first trimester
suction aspiration abortions and 1.5% for second trimester or later methods. This would make chemical
abortions four times riskier than early surgical ones and more than three times less safe than a second or
third trimester procedure.
This is hardly the “advance” or “improvement” that women were promised when the government was
asked to approve RU486 more than a decade ago.
A number of these complications involved “incomplete” or “failed” abortions [2]. Most of these were
identified as “minor” complications by researchers (there were also “minor” hemorrhages, uterine
perforations, and infections).
UCSF originally found 535 repeat abortions within six weeks –165 “subsequent medication [chemical]
abortions,” and 370 “subsequent aspirations.
Theoretically, some of these could be new abortions, but much more likely is that these are chemical or
surgical procedures that were performed to complete the earlier incomplete or failed abortions.
These may not all have been counted as complications, or they may have fallen into the category of 658
“Other” or “Undetermined” complications. The latter seems likely, given that the “treatment” for 400 of
these (about 61%) was “uterine aspiration.”
The point which their own data makes abundantly clear is that these abortions far from being as
safe or successful as advertised.
Remarkably, the researchers attribute the high rate of complications (the majority of which they term
“minor” and “expected”) among women having chemical abortions to “aspirations performed presumptively
or to alleviate bleeding or cramping symptoms.”
In other words, bleeding or cramping was so bad that women came back to the clinic or went to the ER,
where doctors (noticeably including those from the clinic who would have seen ordinary abortion bleeding
before) decided emergency surgery was needed. Yet in most cases, UCSF wants us to believe, this was
just a “minor” or “expected” complication.
All told, the study found that 2.1%, or about one out of every 48 abortions, were connected to a
complication that was diagnosed or treated at some medical facility. Though perhaps lower than the
complication rates one might expect for essential lifesaving major surgery, this is hardly the risk free
“procedure” the abortion industry and lobby wants people to think it is. It is also higher than people might
expect for a “procedure” that abortionists have been working to perfect for over 40 years.
Remember this study was of a selected population in California. What if one applied these results
nationwide, based on the estimate there are now roughly 1.05 million abortions annual?
It would translate into more than 22,000 women visiting their local ER or returning to the clinic for medical
care each year. How many women in clinic waiting rooms today would be surprised to hear that number?
How many would be reassured of abortion’s safety?
An important consideration to keep in mind: This focuses on just the first six weeks, makes no effort to
track complications or injuries that might occur later on, such as infertility, subsequent premature birth, or
breast cancer, which can be heartbreaking, expensive, or even deadly. And we have not even begun to
consider the longterm psychosocial effects of abortion and the health consequences that flow from
subsequent depression, drug abuse, eating disorders, and documented higher rates of suicide.
The UCSF researchers admit that there may be critical data missing from their study. Some complications
might never have been recorded and there was no data at all on abortion’s maternal mortality, possibly the
most critical piece of information.
Also, by relying on MediCal codes, we could not assess whether any of the complications lead to deaths
or detect complications not documented by the billing codes. For instance it is possible that complications
seen or treated at the original abortion facility did not result in any MediCal reimbursements, thereby
undermining the complication rate.
This last sentence tell us that if a woman returned, distraught and bleeding, to the abortion clinic where she
first went for her abortion, and the clinic decided not to make waves and charge the state to complete the
abortion or repair the damage done by the first procedure, there would be no record of the complication.
In the light of recent operations like those of abortionist Kermit Gosnell’s, such a scenario does not seem
farfetched. If true, it would point to an even higher complication rate.
On the whole, by tracking and matching the billing records of clinics and hospitals, the study does
represent an improvement over surveys which simply relied on abortionists selfreporting. This is probably
one reason why the numbers were as high as they were, even with some still potentially serious holes in
the data.
One thing is clear. No matter the spin, no matter the “medical progress,” no matter the experience, the
special training, the new methods, abortion has not become “safe” or even appreciably safer. Women are
still being injured by abortion, and women are still dying.
Of course, the biggest “complication” is that someone – the innocent unborn child – dies in every
“successful” abortion. This alone is evidence that abortion is an inherently unsafe and unsound “medical
procedure.” Abortion violates the most basic principle of medical ethics: “first do no harm.”
Abortion harms women and children. What further research do we need?
[1] The data from this study was supposed to be better because patients who did not return to the clinic but
went instead to the ER were included by cross referencing the abortion billing and treatment coding.
Researchers looked at any billing for any medical service occurring anywhere within six weeks of their
original abortion billing and sought from codes to determine whether or not that treatment was abortion
related.
[2] “Incomplete” abortions, of which there were 231, would be those abortions in which some part of the
baby, placenta, gestational sac remained in the woman’s body. “Failed” abortions, of which there were 30,
would be when the baby remained and the abortion failed to occur.