The Ethics of Abortion Statistics
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America deserves the truth when it comes to abortion statistics. I recently attended a meeting/retreat for pro-life lawmakers and organizations in Harrisburg, the capital of Pennsylvania. One of the speakers pointed out that the USA has abysmally bad official abortion statistics. The states of California, New Jersey, Maryland, Michigan and several others send no abortion statistics to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). This means that some private organizations generate better data than the US government. The Charlotte Lozier Institute found that what should be objective information, reporting the numbers and kinds of abortions is now a partisan issue in the US. They conclude that “a federal mandate for states to report abortion data to the CDC would be important for ensuring a high standard of transparent, complete, and quality abortion data that could improve public health research and ultimately protect the wellbeing of women and their unborn children.”
A casual reader of the mainstream news in 2024 would have seen articles like this one which used estimated numbers from the Guttmacher Institute and claimed that the number of abortions in the US rose slightly in the year after the US Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision reversing the Roe v. Wade ruling that had legalized abortion. It is important to note that the Guttmacher Institute was housed in the Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) building for many years and led by Alan Guttmacher who served as PPFA’s president for more than a decade. His institute had an affiliation within PPFA and funding from them until 2007. All this points to Guttmacher having a solidly pro-abortion agenda, but it must be said that their numbers are more reliable than the CDC’s official statistics that do not have numbers from California and several other important US states.
I am reminded of the sarcastic quotation from author and social critic Mark Twain who said in his autobiography: “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” The phrase points to the tendency to use made up or manipulated statistics as a way to persuade people of a weak argument. In this circumstance, the incredible assertion is that banning or restricting abortion in many states following the Dobbs decision only led to a greater number of abortions. Professor Michael New told the gathering in Harrisburg, which I attended, that Guttmacher’s numbers included a high number of presumed or estimated abortions based on distribution/mailing of the abortion pill. In fact, they claimed that 63% of all US abortions happened using the mifepristone and misoprostol pill combination. Dr. New pointed out, however, that it is documented that some women order the abortion pill and then decide not to take it. Others take it and then have its effects reversed with the help of pro-life doctors. Another recent phenomenon was women ordering the pill who are not even pregnant but want to have it in their possession “just in case.”
It is indeed quite difficult to generate reliable statistics on abortion in the United States given the poor data collection and reporting requirements. Professor New had a better suggestion to measure the impact of Dobbs. It is much easier to count births than it is to keep track of abortions. Texas had already put into place a ban on abortions after a fetal heartbeat can be detected, roughly at 6 weeks of pregnancy, in 2021. This resulted in a 2% increase in births in 2022 even before the near total ban on abortions went into effect there after Dobbs. Simply by looking at the number of abortions before it became illegal in Texas and the rise in the number of births since then, Dr. New estimates that over a thousand children are now spared death by abortion in Texas every month thanks to the protective law. Sadly, not all babies in danger of abortion were saved since it is evident some pregnant mothers go to neighboring states to abort their babies.
The ethical principle of informed consent requires that people be made aware of the risks associated with any medical intervention before choosing to undergo it. Countries like Finland have excellent abortion statistics because everyone is enrolled in the government health plan and all medical interventions are documented. It is obviously highly immoral for the government to permit and pay for abortion, but it does yield data for research. One study using Finnish data found that “the risk of death from legal induced abortion is reported to be almost four times greater than the risk of death from childbirth.” Other studies from multiple countries also found increased mortality associated with induced abortion. “During the eight years following pregnancy, women who aborted had a significantly higher age-adjusted relative risk of death compared to delivering women from all causes (1.61, 95%CI 1.30 to 1.99), suicide (3.12, 95%CI 1.25 to 7.78), and homicide (1.93, 95%CI 1.11 to 3.33), as well as from natural causes (1.44, 95%CI 1.08 to 1.91), circulatory diseases (2.00, 95%CI 1.00 to 3.99), and cerebrovascular disease (4.42, 95%CI 1.06 to 18.48).” Very few women considering abortion are aware of or informed of the true medical risks of the procedure and the longer-term consequences of this decision.
Direct abortion is the intentional killing of an innocent human being and therefore can never be ethically justified. This very clear judgment from the Church and traditional morality is undermined by moral relativism and laws in many places allowing and even encouraging the practice. Sadly, the grossly inadequate nature of official statistics in the US makes it difficult to show scientifically the negative physical consequences of abortion as has been conclusively demonstrated in other countries. The US situation also allows groups like the Guttmacher Institute to propagate false numbers in service of a pro-abortion agenda.
Joseph Meaney received his PhD in bioethics from the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Rome. His doctoral program was founded by the late Elio Cardinal Sgreccia and linked to the medical school and Gemelli teaching hospital. His dissertation topic was Conscience and Health Care: A Bioethical Analysis. Dr. Meaney earned his master’s in Latin American studies, focusing on health care in Guatemala, from the University of Texas at Austin. He graduated from the University of Dallas with a BA in history and a concentration in international studies. The Benedict XVI Catholic University in Trujillo, Peru, awarded Dr. Meaney an honorary visiting professorship. The University of Dallas bestowed on him an honorary doctorate in Humane Letters in 2022.