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Contrary to pro-choice rhetoric, access to health care is key in saving women’s lives – not abortion

The developing world needs real health care, not abortion.

We can now prove, with hard evidence, that improved health care is the key to lowering the maternal death rate around the world. Abortion should never have been part of the equation.

Last week, the National Right to Life Committee and the Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life Global Outreach sent out a press release concerning the maternal death rate in developing countries. Recent research has been conducted, and an analysis has been released that is extremely helpful in understanding this crisis.

MCCL GO’s comprehensive analysis, “Women’s Health and Abortion,” explains:

A 2010 study published in the medical journal The Lancet shows that deaths worldwide due to maternal conditions (deaths of women during pregnancy, childbirth, or in the 42 days after delivery) declined by 35 percent from 1980 to 2008.  A 2012 United Nations study indicates further decline through 2010.

This progress is welcome and critical, but maternal mortality remains prevalent in the developing world.  In many cases, basic maternal and prenatal health care are lacking.  Often there is no birth attendant, the medical environment is not fully sanitary, emergency facilities and supplies are absent or inadequate, doctors are not trained or equipped to handle obstetric emergencies, and basic medical and surgical supplies such as antibiotics and sterile gloves and equipment are scarce or unavailable. The danger to pregnant women is present whether pregnancy is ended by abortion or live birth.

It should not be surprising that bad or undeveloped health care systems are the actual culprit in maternal deaths. Abortion is by no means necessary to save women’s lives. (Note that removing a baby in an ectopic pregnancy or delivering a baby early to save the mother’s life is not an abortion because the goal is not to kill the baby; the goal is to save one life instead of letting both die.)

Instead of parading abortion as a front to save women’s lives in developing countries, so-called “women’s rights” activists ought to be campaigning and working for truly comprehensive health care for needy women and their families.

‘We have known for decades that most maternal deaths can be prevented with adequate nutrition, basic health care, and good obstetric care throughout pregnancy, at delivery, and postpartum,’ said Jeanne Head, R.N., National Right to Life vice-president for international affairs and U.N. representative.  ’Yet some in the international community have focused their resources primarily on legalizing abortion at the expense of women’s lives.’

It’s absolutely unacceptable for anyone who truly speaks for women to hide behind the smokescreen of abortion. Women in developing countries do not need abortion. What they do need is the ability to access nutrition, doctor’s visits, real family planning (i.e., not abortion and abortifacient birth control), and birthing attendants. Many mothers and their babies would be saved through this type of health care access. Speaking out on behalf of access to abortion actually dooms even more women to death, as it does nothing to provide for their real health needs.

As NRTL’s and MCCL GO’s press release states, we can modernly prove that legalizing abortion does not save women’s lives. In fact, Chile – a country where abortion was made illegal – has the lowest maternal mortality rate in all of Latin America:

Chile offers the most striking proof that maternal mortality is unrelated to the legal status of abortion.  Chile sharply reduced its maternal mortality rate even after its prohibition of abortion in 1989, and now has the lowest maternal mortality rate in Latin America.  Even maternal deaths due specifically to abortion declined—from 10.78 abortion deaths per 100,000 live births in 1989 to 0.83 in 2007, a reduction of 92.3 percent after abortion was made illegal.

Let us join National Right to Life and the Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life Global Outreach in calling on the World Health Assembly to recognize and fight against the true cause of maternal deaths – bad health care systems. As MCCL GO’s Executive Director Scott Fishbach aptly declares:

We urge the World Health Assembly to adopt measures to significantly reduce maternal mortality in the developing world by improving women’s health care. … We call upon the WHA to save lives, not expend endless energy and resources in areas where there is profound disagreement, such as the legalization of abortion.

To learn more, read the full analysis here.

   
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  • peach

    I’ve never heard anyone argue that abortions are necessary to decrease maternal death rates (except in the situations you mentioned). Obviously improved health care is going help that. But you know what’s not going to help poor women in developing countries? An unwanted baby. And what else doesn’t help maternal health? A coat-hanger.

    • Kristiburtonbrown

      Yeah, it’s pretty much just talked about in the situations I mentioned…in developing countries.  But no one is forcing women in these countries to pick up a coat-hangar.  In fact, I’m guessing they don’t even own coat hangars.  Let’s focus on the fact that what they DO need is better health care.  This is what the UN, et. al should be fighting for – not increased abortion which harms women, doesn’t solve any of their problems, and kills innocent children.

      • peach

         The coat-hanger was more of a general comment about women everywhere who would be safer if they had access to legal abortion. It’s sort of a catch-all term for any unsafe self-induced abortion. Which, turns out, 25 000 women in Africa are killed annually by illegal, unsafe abortions and 1.7 million are injured. (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/g8-g20/africa/africas-deadly-backroom-abortions/article1564162/). Legalizing abortion would lower maternal death rate. (Please have a read through the article I linked to).
        I definitely agree with you that health care, along with education (that includes sex-ed and access to birth control), should be a focus. It’s a complicated issue in developing countries and I would never want to see any woman being pressured to have an abortion because she is poor or already has many children or is living with AIDS etc.. But if properly educated, these women should have the right, like women in developed countries, to choose abortion if they want. Maternal health is more than just physical. It’s mental as well and relates to overall quality of life.

        • peach

           http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/g8-g20/africa/africas-deadly-backroom-abortions/article1564162/

          There’s the link

          • Kristiburtonbrown

            The info in that article is truly very sad.  We pro-lifers don’t like it when women die from abortions – legal or illegal.  However, I’d encourage you to read through the analysis I sourced in my article.  Legalizing abortion isn’t the key at all to saving women’s lives.  Chile, as the analysis demonstrates, is a key example of a country where abortion is illegal and maternal death rates are low. It’s wrong for health organizations to be pushing abortion in developed countries on the basis that it saves women’s lives.  No, actually, a focus on better health care, education, etc. would save their lives.  We don’t need to kill one person to save another.  

          • peach

             I’m not arguing that better health care and education aren’t very important. The study very clearly shows how important those things are. But at best, the study shows that abortion (legal or not) had NO effect on the overall decrease of maternal deaths. It was decreasing either way. (I found the original article to read because you linked to a biased source). But women are still obtaining abortions in Chile. The ones who can afford it, can go to other countries or pay a rather large fee for a doctor in their own country. But the ones who can’t afford it, are risking unsafe abortions. And abortion in Chile is illegal in every case, so women are dying from risky pregnancies. “On the other hand, a change in the types of maternal deaths appeared
            progressively in Chile between 1985 and 2007 increasing the proportion
            of deaths due to hypertension, eclampsia, and toxaemias” That’s right from the original study.

            http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-11-08/abortion-ban-republicans-favor-may-be-deadly-in-latin-america.html  
            http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/chile/090203/chiles-abortion-debate

            Chile is a relatively wealthy country. Not exactly a developing nation. A better country to look at would be Nicaragua. They banned abortion and maternal death rates rose.  http://articles.cnn.com/2009-07-28/health/nicaragua.abortion.ban_1_therapeutic-abortion-amnesty-report-nicaragua?_s=PM:HEALTH

          • Kristiburtonbrown

            I appreciate that we can agree on better health care and education.  But the argument you put forth that we should allow abortion because, if it’s illegal, women will die from it is invalid.  People die in armed robberies all the time when they commit them.  People even die when they kidnap others or hold people hostage.  For that matter, men who rape women or molest children end up dying for their crimes in prison when other inmates kill them.  Should we legalize those things because people will “do them anyway” and die from it?  I hardly think so.  A civilized society has to take a stand against the murder, killing, or abuse of innocent people.  If people choose to violate the law and harm themselves, that is their choice.  Sad, but their choice.

      • Detroiter327

        Im sorry but that coat hangar quote is horribly ignorant. Im also very confused how you advocate for better health care internationally but Republicans as a whole have been cutting international health care aid within the last few months. You write frequently about voting for Pro Life candidates, even when they are opposing several of the things you advocate for? Im also confused what “real family planning” is supposed to be if we are excluding birth control.

        • Kristiburtonbrown

          I’m not really sure why you’re asking me questions about Republicans.  I support pro-life candidates, not only GOP candidates.  Also, you must see that my article is about world health organizations, not the Republican party or the U.S. government.  In my opinion, we should cut funds for world health organizations when they keep pushing abortion on women in developing nations.  Finally, I never said real family planning should exclude birth control.  It should include education, health information, and birth control in my opinion, just not the abortifacient kind.