{"id":204438,"date":"2019-06-12T09:36:40","date_gmt":"2019-06-12T14:36:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=204438"},"modified":"2019-06-11T23:42:55","modified_gmt":"2019-06-12T04:42:55","slug":"ob-gyn-whether-abortion-safer-childbirth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/ob-gyn-whether-abortion-safer-childbirth\/","title":{"rendered":"I\u2019m an OB-GYN. 9 out of 10 of us won’t do abortions, because it isn’t healthcare."},"content":{"rendered":"
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(The Daily Signal<\/a>)\u00a0\u201cPregnancy kills, abortion saves lives<\/a>.\u201d So proclaimed a recent New York Times commentary by Dr. Warren Hern. Talk about clickbait.<\/p>\n

The fact is, abortion ends life.<\/p>\n

A fetus is a living human being. The human heart starts beating in early pregnancy. Hence, the recent rise of \u201cfetal heartbeat laws,\u201d designed to protect life. In Roe v. Wade,<\/ins> the Supreme Court ruled that fetal life lacks the (ill-defined) trait of \u201cpersonhood,\u201d but it never denied that such life is a living human being.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve worked as an obstetrician\/gynecologist for 28 years, and I am grateful for the responsibility to care for two patients: the preborn baby and his\/her mother.\u00a0I love and value both of their lives, and I have no doubt that each unborn human has the potential to make significant contributions to the world.<\/p>\n

I am not alone. Studies indicate that 9 out of 10 OB-GYNs will not perform an abortion when requested by their patients. That statistic alone should dispel the false assertion that abortion is a necessary part of women\u2019s health care.<\/p>\n

In his column, Hern repeated a common claim that \u201cabortion is safer than childbirth.\u201d Yet he must be aware that the studies supposedly documenting a low risk of death from induced abortion are based on very poor data. For starters, they rely on voluntary reporting\u2014a notoriously weak methodology.<\/p>\n

READ:\u00a0Roughly 80% of late-term abortions are elective. Here\u2019s how we know.<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Moreover, they are woefully deficient in death certificate documentation. High-quality records-linkage studies from Europe show that 94% of abortion-related deaths are not identified on death certificates. Thus, the abortion-related deaths documented by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention represent only the tip of the iceberg.<\/p>\n

Using what little data it could collect, the agency concluded that the risk of maternal mortality rose dramatically throughout the period of pregnancy. The risk following an early second trimester abortion was 15 times higher than if the abortion had been performed at eight weeks, 30 times higher in the mid-second trimester, and 76 times higher after viability.<\/p>\n

Abortion advocates often claim that later abortions occur infrequently. In fact, around\u00a0100,000\u00a0are performed every year after the first trimester. This includes\u00a013,000\u00a0abortions occurring after viability, when the fetus has the potential to survive separated\u00a0from his\/her mother.<\/p>\n