A ten-year study of women in Mexico found that access to legal abortion does not improve maternal mortality, which is a big talking point on the pro-abortion side to claim legal abortion helps women.
Live Action reports:
But instead of discovering data in support of that argument, the study instead found that “states with less permissive abortion legislation exhibited lower MMR [maternal mortality rates]” (emphasis added) than those where abortion laws are more permissive. In other words, pro-life restrictions on abortion did not result in higher maternal mortality rates.
Even in Mexican states that enacted constitutional amendments outlawing abortion, women’s health did not suffer: “No evidence of deleterious or beneficial effect [on maternal mortality] was found for the presence of constitutional amendments protecting the unborn over a 4-year study period.”
To be clear, the Mexico study’s authors did not find evidence that abortion restrictions were the cause of better maternal outcomes. Independent variables between the states explained most of the differences in outcomes. As AAPLOG’s tweet pointed out, “non-legislative factors (female literacy, birth weight, skilled attendance at birth, clean water, etc.) were leading causes” in the lower maternal mortality rates in the states with more abortion restrictions.
The misperception about abortion and maternal mortality has its origins in a big lie told by early abortion activists. In the years leading up to the legalization of abortion, abortion activists like Dr. Bernard Nathanson (one of the founders of NARAL) disseminated false statistics about the number of women dying each year from illegal abortions, as Live Action News has reported. The widely cited figure — that 5,000 to 10,000 women were dying each year from back-alley abortions — was a deliberate fabrication designed to advance the pro-abortion agenda. Dr. Nathanson, who later became pro-life, admitted to fabricating this number because it was a “nice, round, shocking figure.”
The Mexico study correlates with historical analyses of maternal mortality in the 20th century. As a Live Action Pro-Life Replies video notes, maternal mortality in the United States dropped precipitously in the decades prior to the legalization of abortion, and not as a result of legalized abortion. It was the advent of antibiotics like sulfa and penicillin in the mid-20th century, not abortion legalization, that resulted in the dramatic reduction of maternal mortality rates.
Current maternal mortality rate comparisons between countries further refute abortion activists’ arguments. Countries like Poland and Malta — which have tight abortion restrictions — have lower mortality rates, at three and nine deaths per 100,000 live births respectively, while the U.S. rate stands at 17 deaths per 100,000 according to the latest data, as Vox reported.
In fact, states with more restrictions on abortion actually saw *lower* maternal mortality rates, although non-legislative factors (female literacy, birth weight, skilled attendance at birth, clean water, etc) were leading causes.
— AAPLOG (@aaplog) March 1, 2021
“In fact, states with more restrictions on abortion actually saw *lower* maternal mortality rates, although non-legislative factors (female literacy, birth weight, skilled attendance at birth, clean water, etc) were leading causes,” wrote the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists.
The new study deals a big blow to pro-abortionists. What are your thoughts on the result of the study?
Abortion is all about the money. We had a woman come to our church who ran an abortion clinic and had since turned her life around. She said it was phenomenal how much money could be made in abortions. She became wealthy as did all the doctors at the clinic. Then her teenage daughter told her it was dirty money which caused her to reevaluate her life and repent to God.
If statistics were published about the income generated, the truth would come out.
What’s the old saying “follow the money”, if you want to know the truth of a thing.