Things are only going to heat up more on the G8 front leading up to the meetings. It’s pathetic fallacy–Ottawa is so hot right now that last night I found myself wondering–if I had a water bed, could I freeze the thing and then sleep on that? (Yes, air conditioning would be easier. No, I don’t have air conditioning, leading to creative solutions/visions of sleeping on an ice cube.)
Anyhoo. Where were we? The G8.
This was the big, bold cover headline in the Star yesterday.
Lots of ink spilled thus far on this topic. My only new comment is that it is not the least bit surprising to me that there are pro-abortion bureaucrats and politicians working in Minister Oda’s office.
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Poor man’s air conditioning: you freeze a big container full of water, set up the ice block in a tub, and then set up a fan to blow past the ice cube on to your sleeping body. It’s not perfect, but it does cool you down.
The Population Reference Bureau gave statistics showing 19 million unsafe abortions were preformed worldwide in 2000, of which 67,900 resulted in maternal death (source: http://www.prb.org/pdf05/UnsafeAbortion.pdf), or 0.35% (that’s less than half a percent) of all unsafe abortions.
The unsafe abortion mortality rate is higher than it probably should be as well, because the women who die within 42 days of an unsafe abortion, even those who die of the complications listed below, are still considered to have died from the unsafe abortion rather than the complication itself.
From the WHO site-
“Five direct complications account for more than 70% of maternal deaths: haemorrhage (25%), infection (15%), unsafe abortion (13%), eclampsia (very high blood pressure leading to seizures – 12%), and obstructed labour (8%). While these are the main causes of maternal death, unavailable, inaccessible, unaffordable, or poor quality care is fundamentally responsible. They are detrimental to social development and wellbeing, as some one million children are left motherless each year. These children are 10 times more likely to die within two years of their mothers’ death.”
Women in developing countries need care. Providing a higher quality of care, even while not providing abortion, will save many if not most of their lives. Safe cesareans save pregnant women from death due to eclampsia and obstructed labor. Clean hospital conditions and qualified doctors will save women from haemorrhages and infection, and yes, even from the complications that come from unsafe abortions.
side note: I lived in Washington state during a boiling summer drought, and I used to buy those plastic ‘ice cubes’ made for cocktails and put them in my pillow case.
Ice is less dense than water. You’d have to leave empty space in the bed to allow for expansion.
I’m going to quibble with you a bit here, Jennifer. I think you can definitely attribute hemorrhage and infection from abortion to the abortion itself. One of the problems we have here in countries where abortion is legal is that we have no way of tracking post-abortion complications to the abortion itself, as a woman who presents with post-abortion infection at a clinic will be treated for the infection, and no attempt will be made to link it to her previous abortion. We suspect that there are deaths caused by legal abortion in this country, but we have no way of knowing, because cause of death listed on the death certificate will be hemorrhage, or sepsis, or (God forbid) suicide, and not post-abortion complications.
Abortion is not safe in conditions that are not sterile. Period. And there is a severe lack of sterile conditions in developing countries. Provide more sterile conditions, and you will provide the conditions where doctors who wish to flout the law and provide abortions can provide them safely. But we don’t have to train the doctors to do them. Really, abortion has no place at all in a health care initiative that is meant to improve the health of mothers and their children.