A group of abortion-supporting researchers looked at medical claims for abortion patients with private health insurance for six weeks following their abortions, and compared the outcomes between abortion facilities and surgical centers. They claim to have found that abortions, whether done in abortion facilities or in ambulatory surgical centers, are equally safe. Let’s be clear: utilizing biased research from a group that makes abortion training manuals for the abortion industry, the industry has now crowned itself “safe” in all forms. Therefore, we don’t need any of those pesky little abortion regulations — like requiring abortion facilities to meet certain health and safety standards — because they don’t make women safer, they say.
Does anyone see a problem with this?
Sarah Roberts, who is “an associate professor at Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health [ANSIRH], a research group at the University of California-San Francisco’s Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health,” is the author of an article touting this supposed research in USA Today. She’s also one of the study’s authors. Her employer, ANSIRH, isn’t just a “research group.” And the Bixby Center isn’t just a research center. They’re a significant part of the abortion industry… and their bias has been seen in vivid, glaring colors many times before. In other words… this research shouldn’t be accepted at face value.
The authors
Sarah Roberts’ employer, ANSIRH, is an organization which authored the now infamous 2015 Turnaway Study, which purported to show that women who were denied abortions suffered great anxiety. The study was discredited after “severe methodological errors” were found. At that time, Live Action News writer Calvin Freiburger noted that the ANSIRH Turnaway Study didn’t line up at all with the majority of other peer-reviewed research on the psychological effects of abortion:
… peer-reviewed studies from mainstream researchers and journals… warn us about a 154 percent increased risk of suicide (Southern Medical Journal, 2002), a tenfold spike in suicide attempts among post-abortive teenage girls (University of Minnesota: Minnesota Extension Service, 1986), 65 percent higher risk of long-term clinical depression (Medical Science Monitor, 2003), a doubled chance of hospitalization for psychiatric illness (Canadian Medical Association Journal, 2003), and a fivefold increase in drug and alcohol abuse (American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse, 2000).
Roberts’ employer at UCSF Bixby Center was even behind a study claiming that allowing non-physicians to commit abortions is just as safe as when physicians do it. They were also behind a 2016 study which, according to Live Action News’ Carole Novielli, “attempted to disprove the claim that abortion causes women emotional harm, calling it ‘inconclusive.'”
Roberts herself actually co-authored a 2016 study published in the journal Contraception which purported “to show the ‘level of uncertainty in abortion decision making is comparable to or lower than other health decisions.'” In other words, she and her fellow researchers claim women who want to abort are as certain about aborting as they would be about having a tooth pulled — an idea which, on its face, is ridiculous, and would have to ignore completely the multitude of stories from women who say otherwise. Live Action News’ Carole Novielli noted, “Naturally, the researchers from the University of California–San Francisco claim the study’s results call into question laws that require things like waiting periods and mandatory counseling prior to abortion.”
READ: Former abortion workers reveal ‘abortion counseling’ is really manipulation
Along with Roberts, the most recent abortion facility/surgical center comparison study was co-authored by Ushma D. Upadhyay, who was a co-author of a 2017 study which claimed that “being denied an abortion may be associated with greater risk of initially experiencing adverse psychological outcomes.” (As an aside, I wonder if they would accept any research showing that obtaining an abortion can have adverse psychological outcomes….)
Unsurprisingly, some, if not all, of these studies were funded by foundations which also fund Planned Parenthood and other stalwarts of the abortion industry.
As they say: follow the money. If pro-abortion groups are funding a pro-abortion study through a pro-abortion research group, you can guess there’s a pretty good chance they’re going to ensure they get results that support their pro-abortion views.
The truth
Abortion advocates repeatedly claim that abortion is safe for women. They oppose requiring any sort of parental consent or notification on the grounds that they are just an impediment to minors exercising their rights to bodily autonomy (never mind the fact that children under 18 can’t vote, drink alcohol, or get a tattoo or piercing without parental permission). “Reproductive rights,” they say, overrule everything else.
This supposedly non-biased “research” ignores the fact that abortion has plenty of risks, including hemorrhage, possible uterine perforation, possible laceration of the cervix, and other multiple injuries, including death — yes, even in the first trimester. According to the Centers for Disease Control, there are women who die every single year from legal abortion, and the media turns a blind eye. One of them, Cree Erwin-Sheppard, died after a first trimester procedure at Planned Parenthood in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Her brother explains what happened in the video below:
Article author Sarah Roberts makes sure to trot out the old adage “abortion is safer than childbirth” — a claim that cannot be proven. (But when has the abortion industry allowed facts to stand in the way of propaganda?) Dr. Byron Calhoun, vice chair of West Virginia University-Charleston’s Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, published a report noting that the claim of abortion being 14 times safer than childbirth is “unsupported by the literature and there is no credible scientific basis to support it” because there are too many factors at play to make such a claim. His report’s abstract lists some of these factors as:
… incomplete reporting, definitional incompatibilities, voluntary data collection, research bias, reliance upon estimations, political correctness, inaccurate and/or incomplete death certificate completion, incomparability with maternal mortality statistics, and failing to include other causes of death such as suicides.
If a woman experiences post-abortion complications, where is she going to go for help? Certainly not back to the abortion facility. Most likely, she will visit a hospital emergency room — in which case, the complications may be recorded as pregnancy complications rather than as abortion complications. And what of complications occurring years later?
READ: Abortionist admits to botched abortions: ‘All of us… have complications’
Just as disturbing is the fact that there are plenty of abortion facilities transporting multiple patients to the hospital. The Margaret Sanger Center in New York (a Planned Parenthood facility) sent at least seven women to area hospitals in just the first seven months of 2017. Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region has sent more than 67 women to hospitals since 2009, an awful fact that has earned it the distinction of being considered the “most dangerous” in the nation.
These aren’t random facilities — these are centers run by the industry’s most profitable leader, Planned Parenthood. This abortion corporation is misleading women about abortion’s safety — with the help of its friends conducting “studies” at ANSIRH — all while knowingly injuring women — something they’ve been told is, in some forms, safer than Tylenol.
Women deserve better. Women deserve the truth, not supposed “studies” with results already determined before they’re ever conducted.
