“Abortion on demand: empowerment — or bamboozlement — of women?”

Great column in today’s Post, about the dangers of induced abortion, especially with regards to premature birth in subsequent pregnancies and the risks associated with that:

Given the accessibility of these studies to abortion providers, if I were the mother of a post-IA, PTB [preterm birth] infant or toddler with autism or cerebral palsy, and had not been informed as a matter of regulatory course of IA’s [induced abortion] risk for a future PTB, I’d be angry. Litigiously so.

Perhaps it’s time we stepped back from the ideological “whether” of abortion, and introduced the evidence-based “whither” of abortion into the national discussion. As an ice-breaker, we might begin at legal abortion’s beginning by asking why, uniquely amongst surgical interventions, suction abortion — the most common method — has never been animal-tested, a clear violation of the Nuremberg Code for research ethics in human experimentation.

Abortion on demand: empowerment — or bamboozlement — of women?

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Andrea adds: Oh that Barbara Kay–if only she would stop engaging in pro-life fear mongering. As we all know abortion is the safest procedure one could ever get!

Seriously though, people involved in the pro-choice movement genuinely believe this “abortion is safe” sentiment to be true. Ie. they are not informed, so they can’t possibly offer information to women seeking advice. I’m going to sound a lot like a feminist when I say this, but women’s health really has been so substantially politicized in this regard that one can’t get simple answers. The pro-choice people–those who meet face to face in the clinics with women getting abortions aren’t aware of the body of literature and view any awareness as a pro-life conspiracy. The other point is that abortion and any health effects on women is a substantially under-researched topic. We’ll never know when and how complications exist if we don’t connect the dots between a visit to a private abortion clinic and subsequent trips to the hospital. It’s really quite devastating when you think about it.

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Rebecca adds: I am not so sure that workers in abortion clinics – the doctors performing them, the counsellors advising about them – don’t know about these studies. I have had conversations to this effect with people who’ve filled these roles and others in the elective abortion business, and none of them are dumb, or fail to stay current on the research.

They tend to take one (or more) of three attitudes toward this work.

1) “The research is based upon faulty premises, or carried out in poor faith, since the researchers clearly have “an agenda”.  This is nonsense; clear methodology discloses what the premises of a study are, and if it’s a solid approach to sound data, the intention of the researchers is irrelevant. But there is lots of evidence of people choosing to believe nonsense when it backs up their position.

2) “Women are in acute distress when they seek abortions. They know that all medical procedures carry some risk, just as all medications do, and belabouring this point to women in distress is a disservice to them.” This runs contrary to accepted practice in every other aspect of medicine. Short of an emergent life-or-death crisis, informed consent must always be obtained before any treatment is carried out.

The fact that this isn’t always followed scrupulously, and that far too little counselling about the risks and benefits of routine treatment is provided, doesn’t excuse failing to inform women seeking abortions of the demonstrable medical consequences of that choice.

3) “Women are in acute distress when the seek abortions, and don’t need or want to know if there is a long term cost to the short term cure they so desperately want.” It hardly needs to be said that, were this attitude taken toward women seeking any other form of elective or urgent surgery, it would (rightly) be decried as sexist, patriarchal and offensive.

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