POLITICS & POLICY

New Report Misleads on

the Health Risks of
Abortion for Women
By  MICHAEL J. NEW  & DONNA HARRISON March 28, 2018 12:20 PM

Supporters of a California law, requiring pro-life pregnancy centers to post signs notifying women of the availability
of state-funded contraception and abortion, hold a rally in front of the U.S. Supreme Court, March 20, 2018. (Andrew
Chung/Reuters)

The report is the latest attempt by the abortion industry to downplay the
well-documented physical and psychological risks of abortion.

E
arlier this month, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering,
and Medicine (NAS) released a report on the safety of abortion in the
United States. It examines various methods used for abortion and
concludes that abortion is safe and poses minimal health risks. The report also
puts a negative spin on pro-life laws, arguing that many of them have no basis
in medical research, and states that some abortion-specific regulations create
barriers to safe health care. This report has received sympathetic coverage from
a number of mainstream-media outlets including National Public Radio,
the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times.
There is far less substance in this study than meets the eye. Indeed, a pro-
abortion-rights bias is readily apparent in this report. The consultants on the
National Academies report include both the abortionist Willie Parker and
George Washington University law professor Sara Rosenbaum, a vocal
supporter of Planned Parenthood. Two of the consultants are also affiliated
with the Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health, which supports legal
abortion.

But no pro-life researchers or scholars served as authors or consultants on this

report, and it was financed by a number of foundations, including the Packard
Foundation and the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, which have given
sizable grants to Planned Parenthood.

The report begins with an analysis of abortion trends. It notes correctly that the
incidence of abortion is declining and that the U.S. abortion rate is 50 percent
of what it was in 1980. But it gives pro-life efforts little credit for those trends.
Instead, the report cites increased contraception use as a key reason for the
decline in the abortion rate, even though unintended-pregnancy rates were
largely stable between 1981 and 2008. It does acknowledge that pro-life laws
may have played some role in the decline but fails to mention the significant
decline in the percentage of unintended pregnancies that end in abortion.

Most of the report cherry-picks studies showing that abortion does not lead to
either physical or psychological health problems. For instance, the 2011 British
Journal of Psychology meta-study on the mental-health effects of abortion was
not included. This meta-study is a survey of 22 published studies that combines
data on 877,181 participants, presenting a body of peer-reviewed research
showing that abortion increases the likelihood of depression, anxiety,
alcoholism, drug use, and suicide.

Additionally, while the National Academies report mentions that there is

evidence linking induced abortion to premature births, it downplays this risk.
The report states that there is an increased risk of pre-term birth only among
women who either had two or more aspiration abortions or conceived within
six months after having an abortion. In actuality, 49 studies have demonstrated
a statistically significant increase in premature births or low-birth-weight risk
in women who had prior induced abortions.

Furthermore, ongoing debates about the safety of certain abortion procedures

are ignored. For example, the National Academies report declares tele-med
abortions—in which medical professionals supervise medical abortions via the
Internet—safe based on two studies of Iowa women. But a 2015 study of
abortion safety in California, based on comprehensive and reliable data from
Medicaid billing records rather than surveys, found that medical abortions
resulted in four times the complication rate of first-trimester surgical abortions.
Given that chemical abortions are already riskier than early surgical abortions,
it stands to reason that performing medical abortions without physician
supervision only increases those risks.

The National Academies report also dismisses the abortion–breast cancer link,
even though academic studies dating back to the 1950s show that abortion,
particularly late-term, increases the risk of breast cancer. The Melbye et
al. study, which appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1997, is
the largest and most influential study on the subject (despite its many
documented methodological flaws). Even though it is frequently cited by
skeptics of the abortion–breast cancer link as evidence that induced abortion
doesn’t increase the risk of breast cancer, this study actually does provide
strong statistical evidence that abortions performed after 18 weeks’ gestation do
increase breast-cancer risk. The National Academies report makes no mention
of this.

Several media outlets have cited the report’s conclusion that abortion safety is
contingent on geography, pointing to limitations on the procedure in many
states that supposedly reduce the safety of abortion. However, the report
provides neither an analysis of abortion safety by state nor an analysis of how
abortion restrictions affect the procedure’s safety. Instead, the report cites
research purporting to show that certain pro-life laws are correlated with
increased travel distances to abortion facilities and delays for women seeking
abortions.

These types of restrictions, though, are often good public policy and offer health
benefits. For instance, a recent study of Utah’s 72-hour waiting period found
that, of 500 women seeking abortions, approximately 8 percent did not go
through with the procedure. Women who chose to remain pregnant reported
being less confident in their decision to seek an abortion. The study showed
that a non-trivial percentage of women who seek abortions are conflicted about
the decision, and waiting periods often result in some of those women choosing
life.

Supporters of legal abortion have often argued that abortion procedures pose
few health risks to women, but they rarely subject this claim to rigorous
empirical scrutiny. Abortion-rights groups have shown almost no interest in
improving abortion-reporting requirements to allow for better data on
abortion-related injuries and deaths. These groups, along with their allies in the
mainstream media, typically ignore the growing body of data from foreign
academic journals demonstrating the dangers abortion can pose for women’s
health. This National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine report
is the latest attempt by the abortion industry to downplay the well-documented
physical and psychological risks of abortion.

Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this article neglected to note the
methodological deficiencies that have been identified in the Melbye et al. study
on the possible link between birth control and breast cancer.

Michael J. New is an associate professor of Economics at Ave Maria
University and an associate scholar at the Charlotte Lozier Institute.

Donna Harrison is a board­certified obstetrician and gynecologist, and
executive director of the American Association of Pro­life Obstetricians and
Gynecologists (AAPLOG).