Tuesday, March 08, 2005

Are Minnesota's abortionists really bad or are Michigan's abortionists really good?

A look at abortion complications

Many prolife groups state that abortionists don't always report complications resulting from their abortions very accurately. For example, in Michigan there were 29,540 abortions in 2003 but only 10 reports of immediate complications(8 of them being shock) and only 14 reports of subsequent complications (6 of them being "retained products" aka body parts.

Now lets look at Minnesota's abortion statistics for 2003. In Minnesota there were 14,024 abortions performed in 2003, less than half compared to Michigan. On page 23 of Minnesota's abortion report it lists 40 "intraoperative complications" (meaning they occurred at the time of the abortion) and page 24 lists 124 "postoperative complications" (65 being "retained products).

Isn't it odd that Minnesota which less than half as many abortions as Michigan has 4 times as many immediate complications and almost 9 times as many subsequent or postoperative complications? Are the abortionists in Michigan that good? Are the abortionists in Minnesota that much worse? Or maybe, just maybe is there a slight or miniscule possibility that abortionists in Michigan don't always report complications from their abortions?

Also, a quick note for Prof. Glen Stassen - you say that 66% of women abort because of economic reasons (you used an old Alan Guttmacher survey that allowed women to make multiple responses). It is interesting to note that Minnesota (your state of origin) lists reasons why women obtain abortions on page 21 of their 2003 report. According to the report, 2,493 of the 12,680 responses (some women didn't respond and women were allowed to give more than one response) said that economic reasons were why they were having an abortion. That's less than 20%. A much larger response (5,621 or 44.3%) was garnered by the "does not want to have children at this time" option. Are you sure that 66% of women abort because of economic reasons? What about the possibility that large portions of women abort because they might not understand the reality that they already have a child which happens to be growing inside them at the current time or that they might understand that they have a child growing inside them currently but think that because abortion is legal that it is ok to have someone end that child's life?

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