Truths and Myths of Abortion
by FCL Vice President J. White
The Guttmacher Institute states that “Twenty-two percent of all pregnancies (excluding miscarriages) among American women end in abortion. It is commonly thought that the abortion procedure is not painful for the fetus (Latin for “young one”) and has little impact on the mother.
For over a decade, scientific studies have dispelled the myth that animal and human pre-born and new born babies are incapable of feeling and/or expressing pain. Modern pain scoring tools and physiological indicators show that pain is present and observable in the fetus and the neonate. Researchers have found that a 20-22 week old fetus has complete pain pathways and the ability to express pain. In fact, pain might be exaggerated because of the lack of a mature modulating capabilities and unmyelinated fibers of their immature nervous system. (Jorgensen, K; Anand, KJS and Hickey, P; Buoncore and Bellieni and others). In addition to the abortion, violence against the pre-born babies is also perpetrated when children are born alive after late abortions. In 1981, Dr. Willard Cates of the Centers for Disease Control estimated that children are born alive 400-500 times a year and then made to die by strangulation or drowning. Some are allowed to die by lack of any attentiveness to their prime needs.
Babies feel pain and so do the women who feel that abortion is their only alternative. States are not required to report abortion data to any federal agency. An accurate assessment of the impact and harm to women is also very difficult because of reporting procedures and coding for US death certificates. Even so, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have received reports of the deaths of 398 women from legal abortion between 1973 and 2004.
Limitations also exist in the reporting of the physical after-effects of abortion because there are no standard reporting procedures of complications in Canada, the U.S., or the World Health Organization. If complications are reported, they are only short term. Negative reports are more frequent in other countries. How can we account for that? Are our abortion procedures in North America less threatening? Or in North America are we missing complications because of short-term follow-up and incomplete reporting and coding? What affect does the politization of abortion have on statistics in North America?
No matter what the prevalence or severity of the risk, no one can argue that some women undergoing an abortion might experience cervical or uterine damage, future reproductive problems, and subsequent abuse of drugs or alcohol. Worldwide and US studies are showing an increasing concern about abortion’s increase cancer risk for reproductive system, and rectal cancer, and even more so for breast cancer. A special issue of the “Journal of Social Issues” dedicated to the psychological effects of elective abortion concluded that “there is now virtually no disagreement among researchers that some women experience negative psychological reactions post abortion.” The editor, Gregory Wilmoth then states that the disagreement concerns the prevalence and severity of these negative reactions, how to classify them, and define the severity that might constitute a public or mental health problem.
Do women really have a choice in their decision making when they are not provided with information that is available? Why is “informed consent” a necessity in other medical procedures and not in this area of women’s health? Aren’t women and their children worthy of more? “First Wave” Feminists like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton unanimously opposed abortion, claiming that it was a symptom of society’s
exploitation of women.
The exploitation continues today especially in the case of young women, African-American and Latino women. More than half of the women obtaining abortions in 2004 were in their 20’s. Although the overall U.S. abortion rate is down, the rate for African-Americans is 5 times that of white women and for Latinas, it is 3 times the rate.
No matter how you look at it, what we have here is a failed social policy. We stand with actor Margaret Colin who asked members of Congress, “Is this the best we can do for her? We stand with our feminist foremother, Eleanor Kirk, who in1868 linked the need for women’s rights to the safety of their unborn children and asked, “Why doesn’t somebody ask, what has become of the babies”?