Since the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision in 2022 overturned Roe v. Wade, there has been a constant drumbeat of scare stories about the impact of pro-life laws on women. The latest example is from a paramedic who claims that she has transported women injured because of illegal abortions.
In an op-ed written for the Huffington Post, Phoebe Cohen claimed that, due to her experience as a paramedic, she is predicting that she’ll see countless women needing to be transported in the future due to illegal abortions. Though Cohen didn’t give specifics about the location, she began with the story of one woman, who attempted to give herself an abortion in 2015. “[I]n 2015, abortion was legal, of course,” she said, explaining, “The state I worked in was a conservative state, but it had abortion clinics. Most of those abortion clinics were in the larger metropolitan areas. The closest abortion clinic to the hospital where we were standing was over 100 miles away.”
In this case, the woman had stuck a vacuum cleaner into her vagina, which led to a uterine prolapse, and Cohen said a male EMT joked about it being a mere sexual kink. “The nurse and I exchange a glance,” she wrote. “We’re both middle-aged women. We know the probable reason why our patient stuck part of a vacuum cleaner up into her vagina, but we’re not saying anything.” She was taken to a trauma center, and the end of that story is not known.
But Cohen used that as a jumping-off point to claim that there will be numerous horror stories due to the end of Roe.
How many women died from illegal abortions?
Cohen repeated the tired claim that thousands upon thousands of women died before Roe. “Before Roe v. Wade was passed, the Guttmacher Institute estimates ‘the number of illegal abortions in the 1950s and 1960s ranged from 200,000 to 1.2 million per year,’ and that hundreds of women died each year from botched procedures,” she said. “The true numbers will never be known because the procedures (and often disastrous consequences) were swept under the rug and never officially reported.”
The Guttmacher Institute, notably, is a pro-abortion organization which previously was the research arm of Planned Parenthood, the country’s biggest abortion chain.
In reality, women were not dying by the thousands before Roe. NARAL founder Dr. Bernard Nathanson, who later became pro-life, admitted that the number of women dying from illegal abortions that was fed to the media was completely made up, with the numbers fabricated specifically to scare people into supporting the legalization of abortion. Researcher Christopher Tietze has previously told Washington Post the actual number of deaths from abortion — in 1945, decades before Roe v. Wade — was less than 1,000 a year, and had already been declining. This was mostly due to both the advent of antibiotics, and the fact that most illegal abortions were already being committed by trained physicians… not women using coat hangers in an alley.
The Washington Post’s previous fact check on the issue cited Tietze and former Planned Parenthood medical director Mary Steichen Calderone, who likewise affirmed that the mortality rate had been declining due to antibiotics, and that 90% of illegal abortions were being committed by trained physicians. A 1975 report from the National Academy of Sciences, Institute of Medicine also found that the total number of deaths from abortion “has been below 500 since 1958 and below 100 since 1971.” The Washington Post likewise explained, “The CDC began collecting data on abortion mortality in 1972, the year before Roe was decided. In 1972, the number of deaths in the United States from legal abortions was 24 and from illegal abortions 39, according to the CDC.”
Dangers of pregnancy without abortion
Of course, Cohen made another claim often repeated by the abortion industry: that abortion should be legal because pregnancy is so dangerous. “I have transported women who are mentally ill, women with substance abuse issues and women who are houseless to the labor-and-delivery units of hospitals. I transported one girl, no older than 16, from a McDonald’s (where she was working) to the hospital for preterm contractions,” she wrote. “Being pregnant is also dangerous. I have transported women whose babies were in breech position and required lights and sirens to the nearest high-risk obstetrical surgeon. I have transported women at risk for intractable seizures due to preeclampsia. I have transported one woman with uncontrolled bleeding and possible miscarriage because her husband had beaten her.”
Furthermore, she said, “Infant mortality rates have gone up sharply in Texas since a total abortion ban has been enforced.”
First, the study about infant mortality in Texas was debunked. Infant deaths increased, but births significantly increased… and therefore, the infant mortality rate was actually lower in 2022 than it was in both 2014 and 2017. The infant mortality rate in the United States also saw an overall increase in 2022, according to the CDC. The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) study admitted that most of the deaths were because of alleged fatal birth defects or genetic problems; abortion would have simply killed these children sooner. Where is the logic in that?
Second, is pregnancy truly more dangerous than abortion? The study which claimed that abortion is 14 times safer than childbirth has never been replicated, and was authored by two pro-abortion researchers; Elizabeth Raymond works for Gynuity Health Projects, which works to expand access to the abortion pill regimen and overturn safety standards set by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), while David Grimes is an abortionist. The study did not include statistics from Maryland, Washington D.C., New Hampshire, New York City, or California, none of which report their abortion data. And in fact, there is no federal requirement for abortions or abortion complications to be reported.
Analysis from Dr. John Ferrer of the Equal Rights Institute raised numerous questions about whether or not the data was manipulated in addition to being incomplete. “For example, compared to abortion mortality rates, the ‘maternal mortality rate’ in the RG study is inflated,” he wrote. “The CDC maternal mortality rate takes all birth-related deaths (the numerator) and divides them by only live births (the denominator), so all stillbirths and miscarriages are only addressed in the top number and not the bottom. The result is an inflated mortality rate from childbirth but not abortion.”
Researchers also excluded deaths after an abortion that were unrelated — meaning if a woman contracted MRSA at an abortion facility and died, that would not be included in the study. However, they did not do the same for women who gave birth.
“The study is careful to avoid false positives for abortion cases, presumably since those would undermine its argument, but not so careful with childbirth cases,” Ferrer said. “This double-standard is all the more troublesome because if the same measure were used for both childbirth and abortion then abortion would appear two to four times deadlier than childbirth. Abortion correlates with higher rates of murder, drug-related death, and suicide, but the RG study excludes those cases from the data while including those cases in the data on childbirth. It’s a flagrant double-standard that, by itself ruins the credibility of the RG study.” (emphasis added)
Of course, it is true that there are major problems with maternity care in the United States, like maternity care deserts. But the answer to that is better access to legitimate health care, not more abortion.
Are abortions safe?
The story being told by Cohen, as well as her emphasis on the dangers of pregnancy and the need for legal abortion, insinuates that abortion is a safer alternative to pregnancy, and that without abortion being widely available, women will die. But it’s worth noting that the abortion industry is hardly safe or reliable.
Injuries during abortion are not uncommon, with some facilities more known for injuries than others. The Planned Parenthood facility in Manhattan injured an estimated 33 women in five years; Diane Derzis, who still owns abortion facilities and is known as the “Abortion Queen,” had a facility forcibly closed after it was found in terrible condition, and three patients were hospitalized, one in intensive care, on the same day. Inspectors later found 76 pages’ worth of health code violations at the facility. In Granite City, Illinois, Hope Clinic has had at least 15 injuries since 2023 alone.
Then there is serial killer and abortionist Kermit Gosnell, whose facility was raided for drug-related issues in 2010; authorities found bloody floors, dirty recliners covered with blood-stained blankets, and a cat freely roaming the halls with cat feces everywhere. But sadly, he is not alone, as numerous facilities have been found to have serious problems, ranging from health code violations, operating using rusty equipment, and even committing abortions during a hurricane, with water leaking inside the facility.
Is this why the abortion industry fights against the regulations to which all legitimate health care providers are held? Abortionists claim to be health care providers like any other, yet they refuse to be held to the same standards.
And on top of all of this, women who undergo abortions are frequently instructed not to go to the emergency room if they experience complications from their procedures. Some abortion providers have openly spoken about how they believe women should lie to emergency room staff if they experience complications from chemical abortions. If having complications from a surgical abortion, they are often encouraged to call the abortion facility instead of 911.
Women deserve better than abortion; they need better access to legitimate health care, not widespread access to the deaths of their preborn children.
