Looks like the story out of Chicago on the massive underreporting of abortion numbers and complications in Illinois is starting to get national attention–the Los Angeles Times reprinted it today. Their backyard has a big need for accurate abortion reporting, too…
Meanwhile, The New American seems to be one of only a few U.S. outlets so far reporting on an interesting Australian study from last month finding that 2.2 percent of first-trimester surgical abortion patients and 3.3 percent of first-trimester RU-486 medical abortion patients required admission to hospital emergency rooms after their procedures:
Research from Australia has found that use of the abortion drug RU-486 by women is far riskier than surgical abortion. According to the online Australian, a study of nearly 7,000 abortions performed in South Australia between 2009 and 2010 “found that 3.3 per cent of women who used mifepristone [RU-486] in the first trimester of pregnancy — when most elective terminations occur — later turned up at hospital emergency departments, against 2.2 per cent who had undergone surgery.”
The study also found that “the rate of hospital admission jumped to 5.7 per cent for recipients of early ‘medical’ abortions — using drugs — compared with 0.4 per cent for surgical patients re-admitted for post-operative treatment.”
If the complication rates for abortion in the U.S. are anything like those in Australia, that could mean there are tens of thousands of women having to go to the emergency room because of their abortions each year. Those are just the ones with complications requiring emergency treatment. And those are just the physical complications.
