Many advocates for women believe that fewer women will be physically damaged by abortion if abortions are legal. They assume that complication rates for legal abortions will match the rates in studies published in scientific journals. This is not likely to be true. Consider this quotation from John and Barbara Willke's book "Why Can't We Love Them Both":
Published reports [on women's health after abortion] from scientific studies all come from university medical centers. Surgery in them is done by highly qualified surgeons. Further, they have immediate access to topnotch care if a mishap occurs. But less than 10% of USA abortions are done in such elite institutions. Consequently their reports of safety or hazards do not in any way reflect the actual situation "out there" where over 90% of abortions are done in free-standing, for-profit abortion facilities or in doctors' offices.
A much better estimate of complication rates comes from former abortion clinic director Carol Everett. She says that in the last 18 months of her directorship, her clinics were doing 500 abortions a month and killing or maiming one of those 500 women every month.
Legalised and widespread abortion in Swaziland would likely injure a lot of women; the government hospitals are already overtaxed, and if unscrupulous individuals knew they could make large sums of money out of a meagrely-equipped room, why wouldn't they? Women going to these individuals would be at risk of horrendous injury without topnotch emergency medicine to care for them when complications occured.
Dr. David Reardon has said that while legalizing abortion reduces the danger rate of each abortion a small amount, the increase in the number of abortions resulting from legalization causes the overall number of injuries to increase. So instead of reducing the number of women physically harmed by abortion, legalization usually INCREASES the total number of women physically harmed by abortion.
The book "Lime 5" documents hundreds of cases of women damaged by legal abortion in the United States. Here is just one sample, names are changed: "Stacy" had an abortion in April 1992 by John Roe 689 at an Alabama abortion clinic. During the procedure he perforated her uterus, suctioned her right ureter completely out of her body, and damaged one of her kidneys. She had to be transported to an emergency room where the fetus and damaged kidney were removed. The facility where Stacy had her abortion was a National Abortion Federation member [NAF members are supposed to meet higher standards than average abortion clinics]. These kinds of things happen in a country with the best medical care in the world. Are we to believe that it wouldn't happen in Swaziland?
Women and children deserve better than abortion. Let us build a culture where sex is saved for marriage and every new life is welcome. No to abortion; yes to love and life.
Rudy Poglitsh
rpoglitsh@live.com
