Given the horrors of abortion, it is not surprising that it is surrounded with so many entrenched myths. Those who seek to justify this ghoulish trade will use all sorts of euphemisms, half-truths, and patently weak and false arguments to promote abortion. Two of the most notorious myths going around about abortion are these:
-Abortion must remain legal to prevent backyard abortions and harm to women.
-Abortion is a safe and harmless procedure for women.
The truth is, abortion is extremely harmful to women, and legalising abortion has done nothing to make it safer. Indeed, it seems on a regular basis that we hear media reports of women being harmed and even killed as part of the abortion procedure. Many of these injuries and fatalities of course are never even reported or made public.
There would be innumerable cases of such harm and hurt to women. But simply consider just one local abortion mill, and its gruesome record. It is in the news yet again this week, as it has been so many times previously. As the Melbourne Age reports:
“A 42-year-old woman died days after attending a controversial abortion clinic in Croydon last week. Authorities have confirmed that the woman was taken to the Box Hill Hospital where she died on Sunday, after earlier having ‘a procedure at a private Croydon clinic’.
“A spokeswoman for the Coroners Court of Victoria said yesterday that the ‘unexpected’ death of the woman, from Sunshine, would be investigated. It is the fourth investigation involving the clinic in six years. Anaesthetist James Latham Peters allegedly infected more than 50 women with hepatitis C at the same clinic in 2008 and 2009. Peters, who was bailed on a $200,000 surety, will return to court in May for the remainder of the committal hearing.
“The surgery’s owner, Dr Mark Schulberg, was in 2009 found guilty of unprofessional conduct for failing to gain legal consent to perform a late-term abortion on an intellectually disabled woman. And earlier this year it was revealed that a 40-year-old woman was left fighting for her life in the Box Hill Hospital after Dr Schulberg performed a late-term abortion surgery on her.”
Multiply all this by abortion mills around the country, and around the world. Just how many cases of injury and death occur each year? But the pro-aborts keep peddling their myths and falsehoods. The pro-abortion camp is fond of speaking about rusty coat-hanger abortions and other horror stories associated with illegal abortions. But there are a number of mistruths and deceptions going on here.
First, legalising abortion did not make abortion safer. It was made safer in the 1940s and onwards with the availability of antibiotics. As one doctor reports, “Death rates from infections and all types of surgeries, including illegal abortions, had already fallen precipitously after World War II, when antibiotics finally became available to the general public.”
Second, the majority of abortions performed before legalisation was done in doctor’s offices, something even the pro-abortion Planned Parenthood has admitted. So this whole idea of women having abortions at home or in their backyards or wherever is mainly the stuff of myth.
Third, the claim that thousands of women died each year in America before the 1973 decision to legalise abortion is simply not true. Bernard Nathanson ought to know. He was a leading abortionist during this period – having performed 60,000 abortions – and helped to make up this figure of 5,000 to 10,000 deaths a year: “I confess that I knew the figures were totally false, and I suppose the others did too if they stopped to think of it. But in the ‘morality’ of our revolution, it was a useful figure, widely accepted, so why go out of our way to correct it with honest statistics? The overriding concern was to get the laws eliminated, and anything within reason that had to be done was permissible”.
Nathanson goes on to describe the real figures: “In 1967 … the federal government listed only 160 deaths from illegal abortion. In the last year before [Roe v Wade], 1972, the total was only 39 deaths”. While 39 is too many, the figure must be held up to the 1.5 million babies killed each year since 1973.
Fourth, women are still dying from abortions, even though they are now legal. The Melbourne case which I just cited is only the tip of the iceberg here. Yet pro-abortion advocates argue that we must have legal abortion in order to keep the procedure safe and harmless. But the truth is quite the opposite.
There are a number of serious physical problems associated with abortion – even when it is legalised. Death is the worst complication. Former US abortionist Carol Everett recounts a number of cases where botched (and legal) abortion led to the death of the mother. How many women die as a result of abortion is not known, but the figure must be quite high.
There are many other physical complications. Internal bleeding, for example, is normal after an abortion. Not uncommon are perforated uteruses. Pelvic Inflammatory Disease is an infection which occurs with abortion and may occur in as much as 30 per cent of all cases. And women who have had an abortion are two to four times more likely to experience an ectopic pregnancy.
Then there is the growing scientific consensus on the relationship between abortion and breast cancer. One American expert, Dr Joel Brind, an Endocrinology Professor, has said that “the single most avoidable risk factor for breast cancer is induced abortion.”
Fifth, this argument begs the question. It can only be an effective argument if we assume that the unborn are not fully human. If they are not, then, as Francis Beckwith argues, “the abortion-rights advocate has a legitimate concern, as one would have in overturning a law forbidding appendectomies if countless people were needlessly dying of both appendicitis and illegal operations. But, if the unborn are fully human, this abortion-choice argument is tantamount to saying that because people die or are harmed while killing other people (i.e., unborn people), the state should make it safe for them to do so.”
The recent tragedy in Melbourne is a far too common occurrence at the abortion mills. It is time we started challenging the lies of the pro-death camp. And it clearly is time for our politicians to get some moral backbone and start undoing our horrendous abortion laws which allow the death of not only so many unborn babies, but of so many women as well.
http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/woman-dies-after-abortion-clinic-visit-20111220-1p414.html
[1086 words]