North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum was interviewed by Kristen Welker on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” where she criticized his recent position change on abortion. Previously, in 2016, he said pro-life laws might make women unsafe; now, however, he says he supports the overturning of Roe v. Wade, and that abortion laws should be left to the states. But is Burgum wrong now? And do pro-life laws put women at risk?
An “evolving” position
During the interview, Welker played a clip of Burgum’s where he previously seemed skeptical about protecting preborn lives from abortion:
When you outlaw the ability to terminate pregnancies and make it illegal, it just makes it unsafe for some of the most vulnerable people in the world — young women who are scared, who are afraid, who are in a spot, you know, that they don’t want to be in. America was an unsafe place for women before Roe v. Wade.
“So, by your own standard, governor, is America unsafe for women as a result of Roe being overturned?” Welker asked.
In response, Burgum said his view on abortion has simply “evolved.”
“No, it’s not,” Burgum replied. “And, of course, this is something that should have been returned to the states. Let’s be clear, that was a comment from over eight years ago. And certainly, I’ve evolved in that position. And I have been clear that I’m opposed to a federal abortion ban. I’m aligned with President Trump on that, and this is something that has to be left to the states.”
Fabricated statistics
While the homicide of undelivered human beings isn’t an issue that should be legal or illegal dependent upon the state in which one lives, the larger question here is whether or not women were unsafe before Roe. And the answer is, quite simply, no.
Laws protecting preborn lives from abortion did not cause thousands of deaths prior to Roe. This notion was completely fabricated by Dr. Bernard Nathanson, one of the founders of the organization formerly known as NARAL Pro-Choice America. Nathanson later became pro-life and admitted that he and his colleagues made the figures up. Their goal was to scare people into supporting legalized abortion. The deception worked.
But how many women did die before abortion was legalized federally, forcing it upon every state in the nation?
The truth
Researcher Christopher Tietze has said the actual number of deaths from abortion in 1945, nearly 30 years before Roe, was less than 1,000 annually, and that number had already been steadily declining due to the discovery of penicillin and the advent of better medical procedures. A Washington Post fact check cited Tietze, as well as former Planned Parenthood medical director Mary Steichen Calderone, who said the maternal mortality rate related to abortion had been declining due to antibiotics, and that 90% of illegal abortions were already being committed by trained physicians.
By the time Roe was set to be decided, the number of abortion-related deaths had plummeted. “The CDC began collecting data on abortion mortality in 1972, the year before Roe was decided,” the Post explained. “In 1972, the number of deaths in the United States from legal abortions was 24 and from illegal abortions 39, according to the CDC.”
A 1975 report from the National Academy of Sciences, Institute of Medicine also found that the total number of annual deaths from abortion was “below 500 since 1958 and below 100 since 1971.”
So no, women in the U.S. were not unsafe before Roe, and now that Roe is overturned, they are still not unsafe — despite countless unverifiable media narratives alleging that pro-life laws preventing the intentional killing of preborn children are putting women at risk.
