September 28 marked International Safe Abortion Day. A more accurate name for the day orchestrated by abortion activists might be International “Safe” Abortion Lie Day. The premise of the day is that abortion is necessary for women and legal abortion is safe. The data show abortion is not necessary for the health and safety of women and legal abortion always kills at least one human being and harms another.
Despite what the abortion industry continues to claim, abortion is not necessary for women’s health. Often, abortion activists will jump immediately to the most extreme and rarest circumstances in which a pregnancy poses serious risk to the mother’s health. Even then, abortion is not necessary to save the life of the mother. How can this be? Terminating a pregnancy is not the same thing as deliberately killing a child in the womb.
Many people are unaware of the fact that a high-risk pregnancy can end without abortion. In part, this is because the abortion industry has taken the phrase “termination of pregnancy” as a euphemism for abortion. The two are not the same. Every pregnancy terminates: most with birth, some with miscarriage or stillbirth, and some through the deliberate killing of an innocent and defenseless child in the womb.
In life-threatening circumstances, abortion is not a safe or logical choice. Sometimes terminating a pregnancy prematurely is necessary to save the life of the mother, and sometimes, tragically, this leads to the demise of the baby. But that is not at all the same as systematically dismembering a living child in the womb. Former-abortionist Dr. Anthony Levatino explains why abortion is never necessary to save the life of a mother.
Further evidence of this fact comes from strongly Pro-Life countries that effectively ban all abortions. If abortion is necessary to women’s health and safety, as abortion activists claim, then we would expect to see sky-high maternal mortality rates in Pro-Life countries. The data do not show any such danger. Ireland, for example, until earlier this year had a constitutional amendment recognizing the equal Right to Life of the preborn baby to his or her mother. As such, Irish law, for the past 20 years, banned virtually all abortions. Yet, as the Life Institute shows, Ireland had one of the lowest maternal mortality rates in the world and an excellent record on addressing women’s health issues during pregnancy without abortion. Even the pro-abortion United Nations ranked Ireland as one of the safest places in the world for a mother to have a baby.
The fact that abortion is not necessary for women can also be seen in Argentina, which earlier this year rejected legislation to overturn an abortion ban. Fordham University professor Charles Camosy explained how legitimate women’s advocates saw the Argentine abortion bill as an attempt to ignore real women’s health issues. Pro-Life, women’s advocates pointed to the example of Chile, which successfully decreased the maternal mortality rate significantly after protecting preborn babies from abortion. Helping women and killing their babies are not the same thing, and abortion is never necessary to save the life of the mother.
The other lie at the center of International “Safe” Abortion Day is that legal abortion is safe. A procedure that violently ends a human Life would not be described by most people as “safe.”
Additionally, the families of women like 24-year-old Cree Erwin-Sheppard and 23-year-old Keisha Marie Atkins know that legal abortion is also not safe for women.
Another stunning example of the “safe” abortion myth comes from incoming Planned Parenthood President Leana Wen. In her introductory video, Wen recalls watching a young woman die, allegedly following an at-home abortion. Wen implies that Pro-Life laws are responsible for this woman’s tragic death. And yet, the alleged incident took place in Maryland or Washington, D.C., places that have virtually no restrictions on abortion. The idea that “safe,” legal abortion mills protect women is demonstrably false.
The studies on which the abortion industry relies to push “safe,” legal abortion are flawed and highly speculative. The data lie on the side of Life. In addition to the moral and ethical principles that guide the Pro-Life position, common sense, logic, and facts support protection of the preborn. Women deserve to know the truth, and the truth is that there is no such thing as a “safe” abortion. Don’t let the predatory, profit-driven abortion industry have the last word.