Abortion Is Safer Than Childbirth?

There's been a lot of confusion going around the interwebs in recent months regarding the safety of childbirth. Thanks to a ridiculously deceptive and patently false video, several pro-choicers now believe that having an abortion is actually safer than giving birth. Let that kind of logic sink in for a minute. Well, it would take longer than a minute... seeing as the assertion is anything but logical. Somebody quoted this "revelation" in response to a post on social media regarding a woman who died from complications following an abortion. The following is the short conversation that ensued, with the person making the claims in red, my thoughts in blue, and the thoughts of others in the conversation in various different colors:

Tom: Good thing most methods of abortion are several times safer and have less health risks than continuing pregnancy. :)

Deena: Doesn't change the fact that in and of itself continuing pregnancy is safe (unless we're dealing with medical complications), or that killing human beings is wrong.

Nicholas: So several abortion methods are more safe, and less risky, than continuing a pregnancy to its natural end, that is, birth?

...OK. And I thought I'd heard all the ridiculous rhetoric out there.

Tom: Most, if not all. Only 1.5% of abortions occur after 21 weeks and "patial birth" abortions (intact dilation and extraction method) are illegal so not a ton of data but there certainly isn't any evidence suggesting even late term abortions carry more risk than giving birth. 

"The pregnancy-associated mortality rate among women who delivered live neonates was 8.8 deaths per 100,000 live births. The mortality rate related to induced abortion was 0.6 deaths per 100,000 abortions. In the one recent comparative study of pregnancy morbidity in the United States, pregnancy-related complications were more common with childbirth than with abortion."

*The comparative safety of legal induced abortion and childbirth in the United States. [Obstet Gynecol. 2012*

Kayla:  I hope this is sarcasm

Tom: Not sarcasm just an alternative viewpoint who has no intention of trolling. 

[There is] a strawman argument saying that the pro choice side is "pro abortion. Pro choice is more of a legal view than a moral one. There are pro choice people who are against abortion but realize they are going to take place legal or not and its a lot safer for women to have them done in a legal setting. I believe drugs should be decriminalized and addictions should be treated as a health issue not a criminal issue but I in no way advocate for heroin use. 

Harriet: If you are prochoice on abortion, it is the same as being pro-abortion since abortion involves the murder of an innocent child. For you to legally support a parent's decision to kill their own kid is so evil as to be the same.You might as well be gungho for abortions always.

In the same breath, you can say you're prochoice on rape or slavery...and then try to argue, 'don't like slavery, don't own a slave.'

As for your semantics on intact dilatation and extraction, you can try to sanitize it by using medical terminology, but the baby is still partially born before being stabbed in the back of the head and having its brain sucked out. 

Then, you dismiss it by saying that partial birth abortion is illegal anyways.

So,my question is how far are you willing to go to compromise with evil and delude yourself about the significance of the issue? 

You are in a lot of denial, which is why you try to straddle the fence and call yourself 'prochoice'. I wonder what you will do when/if you have your walk-thru Auschwitz experience on this matter. Will you keep turning your head and your eyes away from the incinerators and body parts and photographs? Will you wave your hands and still make up excuses for your irresponsibility, moral cowardice, and callous indifference to human life?

Saint Anthony of Padua Holding Baby Jesus- Bernardo Strozzi

Tom:  I think even pro lifers would agree there's a difference between terminating a 5 week old pregnancy and murdering an already born human or raping someone. 

On the partial birth abortions, my point was that they are already illegal and the whole point of the pro choice movement is to make all or most abortions illegal. I doubt a mother would wait that long then decide to abort I'm sure partial birth abortions would only be for if the mother was in danger. 

Idk what your point was with the Auschwitz reference but that's just a slippery slope fallacy.

As far as drawing a line of when abortion of any kind is acceptable id like to ask you the same if you don't mind. Do you sympathize with pregnant women who were raped? Are you for/against the morning after pill? What about forms of abortion that only require taking medication?

I think a woman should have a choice but prefer it be before 20 weeks. There are circumstances where the woman's life is in danger and would need an abortion late term and I would like the doctor to be able to make that choice without too many legal barriers.

Nicholas: Harriet is right on with your choice of semantics, Neal. It is appalling.

Me: "So several abortion methods are more safe, and less risky, than continuing a pregnancy to its natural end, that is, birth?"

Tom: "Most, if not all."

Ok, so that's a yes then, I take it. Here's the thing: your assertion... is utterly ridiculous. The reason being, most importantly, is that I completely reject your faulty premise. Why?

First, who are the "several abortion methods" more safe for? Who are they less risky for? Just the mother? The child? Or both the mother and child in utero? I'm guessing you mean the mother, but we have to define terms here before continuing, otherwise we're talking past ourselves.

My questions to you are these: is the child (lets get even more "biological" if you want... "is the organism") growing and gestating inside the mother a person? Is the organism (using your arbitrary dating schema) who as at or lower than 20 weeks gestation a person? Is the organism who is over 20 weeks gestation a person?

You said: "even pro lifers would agree there's a difference between terminating a 5 week old pregnancy and murdering an already born human or raping someone"

Which difference do you speak of here? Obviously there is a difference in the sense that rape and murder are two different things, both heinous. And the murder of a 5 week old organism (a "pregnancy" isn't 5 weeks old by the way; someone can be said to have been carrying a child for five weeks however, and the organism itself who is growing is 5 weeks old) is different from the murder of an human outside the uterus, as the way they are murdered is totally different. Analogously, the "termination" of a 2 day old infant is different than the "termination" of a 30 year old football player, because you could easily smother the former with a pillow, while it would take a lot for an average person to kill the 30 year old.

In the moral and ethical sense, of course there is no difference. The murder of a human at any age is reprehensible and wrong. That's why we must define terms. Who is human, from the three questions I gave you a few paragraphs up?

This is why I reject your premise in its entirety. The study is wrong because it fails to take into account that at least one human always dies in the case of an (successful) abortion. The chances of two humans dying during delivery is not as high. If we were really talking about "The comparative safety of legal induced abortion and childbirth in the United States" as the title of this study states, we'd be looking at how this affects both woman and child, not just the mother. That's why you're comment on partial-birth abortions is unnerving. You really think that killing a child through partial delivery is safer, or as safe, for the mother than actually delivering the child? That sounds even more absurd than your premise that "several abortion methods are more safe, and less risky, than continuing a pregnancy to its natural end".

***

Following this exchange, I soon came across an article which articulated the points we were all making towards Tom in great clarity, and it included plenty of excellent sources. Here's an excerpt from that article, with the link below:

"Notably, before repeating the discredited myth that “abortion is safer than childbirth,” Plank admits a profound truth that abortion advocates generally avoid. By prefacing her arguments with the statement “if you only look at the safety of the mother,” she tacitly recognizes that abortion concerns the safety of two human beings. Abortion is always unsafe for the baby. (You know, that whole “crushing of body parts” that Plank displays annoyance over pro-lifers being “particularly vocal” about lately.)"

Full article can be found here.