Life Links 10/15/09

Here’s the Alan Guttmacher Institute’s most recent foray into guessing how many abortions occur worldwide using estimates from pro-choice organizations. Unfortunately, some news organizations take these ideological-based guesses as gospel. Here’s a telling quote from AGI president Sharon Camp

The researchers said preventing the need for abortion entirely was unrealistic, but said eliminating unsafe abortion by improving access to contraception and increasing pressure to lift abortion restrictions was a worthwhile and achievable goal.

"Women will continue to seek abortion whether it is safe or not as long as the unmet need for contraception remains high," Camp said. "With sufficient political will, we can ensure that no woman has to die in order to end a pregnancy she neither wanted nor planned for."

I guess they’re not on aboard with the pro-choice frame of reducing the need for abortion. That’s just unrealistic because women apparently will always need abortion.

Political will can somehow ensure that no woman will die from abortion? How ridiculous is that statement?

The appendix table 1 is useful in providing a list of countries and the reasons abortion is legally permitted in those countries.


Paul Zummo takes apart Michael Sean Winters’ post on abortion, health care and the Hyde Amendment.


Big Blue Wave translates the gist of a story (from French) about a woman from Quebec who almost died after having a second trimester abortion. After bleeding heavily after the abortion she was sent home.

On the way, the bleeding got worse. The pain became almost unbearable. They headed towards St. Jerome Hospital. She arrived at about 1 pm, and underwent an emergency operation in which she received a blood transfusion. She told le Journal de Montreal that the staff told her that had she arrived five minutes later, it could have been fatal. "They saved my life," she said.

She says that she is traumatized and wonders if she will ever be able to have more children. But she was even more traumatized by what happened AFTER the abortion, when she tried to reach the abortionist on several occasions, but to no avail. At this point, she doesn't want to talk to him, and intends to lay a complaint against him.

Charmaine Yoest has an editorial in the Wall Street Journal entitled, “Tax Dollars Shouldn’t Fund Abortion.”