Analysis

Not all states require abortion complications to be reported. This has to change.

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Around half of all U.S. states don’t report complications of abortion; therefore, all of the abortion industry claims of abortion’s “safety” are meaningless. Only 27 states (though as of December 2019, Guttmacher now reports 28) are required by law to report abortion complications — and women and children are paying the price for it.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, in 2019, six states introduced legislation regarding abortion complication reporting, and three of those states enacted the new laws. In Arkansas, Governor Asa Hutchinson signed a bill that requires abortionists to report any medical complication that results from an abortion. In Indiana, Governor Eric Holcomb approved a law that alters the state’s 2018 abortion complications reporting requirements to include more details about the complications experienced by women. And in Idaho, abortion reporting requirements took a side step when Governor Brad Little signed a law that actually removes certain complications from the state’s abortion reporting requirements and only requires that abortionists report any unusual complications. This means that typical and frequent complications won’t be reported, thereby creating the image that abortion is danger-free.

The problem is… it isn’t.

Dr. Bryan Calhoun, vice chairman of the Obstetrics and Gynecology Department at West Virginia University, wrote a letter to West Virginia Atty. Gen. Patrick Morrissey in 2013, who was considering new regulations for abortion facilities. Calhoun reasoned that abortionists should have admitting privileges at local hospitals because of the number of injuries that occur.

“We commonly (I personally probably at least weekly) see patients at Women’s and Children’s Hospital in our emergency room or ultrasound center with complications from abortions at the centers in Charleston: so much for ‘safe and legal,” wrote Calhoun. “These patients are told to come to our hospital because the abortion clinic providers do not have hospital admitting privileges to care for their patients, so we must treat them as emergency ‘drop ins.’… No other medical providers are allowed to care for patients, have no backup coverage and then abandon them to the emergency room. We would be held ethically and legally liable.”

One doctor seeing at least one woman injured by abortion every week adds up to a lot of women, but without accurate reporting there will never be enough information to give to women before an abortion. Women will continue to go into abortion procedures blind to the true risks.

READ: Abortion pill dangers are unknown because half of U.S. states don’t report complications

Lakisha Wilson, 22, died after her abortion at Preterm abortion facility in Cleveland when she suffered uterine atony and hemorrhaged. Tia Parks, 26, died after a first-trimester abortion at the same abortion facility. A 21-year-old woman in Rhode Island suffered a perforated uterus during an abortion at the Providence Health Center this year. Margaret Sanger Planned Parenthood in New York City recently hospitalized nine patients within just eight months. And the abortion pill, which is hailed by the industry as the safest way to kill a preborn child, has also killed at least 24 women. The true number, however, may never be known since abortion groups advise women who suffer complications from the abortion pill to tell ER doctors that they are having a miscarriage.

No matter how much Planned Parenthood and abortion advocates push the idea that abortion is safe, the truth is there are complications that can range from minor injuries to death. Women have been left infertile. They have had holes punctured in the uterus. They have hemorrhaged and died. But women aren’t typically given this information. Women in Missouri who are seeking abortions at the St. Louis Planned Parenthood — called the most dangerous abortion facility in the nation — likely don’t know the full risks, because the media continuously fails to report the truth: the facility has injured at least 75 women. This facility lost its license because of its failure to protect women, yet it remains open because certain politicians believe abortion access is more important than women’s safety.

The fact is that the abortion industry injures women, takes little to no responsibility, and then allows those injuries to go unreported in order to keep up the myth of “safe” abortions.

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