Abortion Clinics Aren't Reporting Complications, Missouri Officials Say
Lack of Oversight is Common Elsewhere
A statement
released last month from the director of the Missouri Department of
Health and Senior Services has called out abortion clinics in the state
for violating a law that requires them to report complications. Randall
Williams stated that his department will enforce the law:
Since
1979, Missouri law has required providers of abortion services and
those who treat abortion complications to report every complication they
diagnose or treat after an abortion to the Department of Health and
Senior Services within 45 days.
It has recently come to my attention that this law was not complied with under previous administrations.
This is unacceptable.
As
soon as I became aware of this problem, the Department of Health and
Senior Services took steps to ensure future compliance with the law and
understanding of the importance of these reports.
As a
board-certified obstetrician and gynecologist who practiced for 30
years, I recognize that every procedure including abortion has
recognized risks and potential complications. By the standard of care,
these risks should be discussed with the patient prior to the
procedure. And when the law requires complications to be reported, each
and every complication should be reported.
The Department of Health and Senior Services will rigorously enforce this law in the future.
It
is good that Missouri officials are making a move to enforce the law,
but this seems to be the exception rather than the norm. As Dr. Lenora
Berning has pointed out: Abortion
is one of the most frequently performed surgical procedures in the
United States, yet it is the least regulated. It is the only elective
surgical procedure that I know of in which the doctor performing the
procedure is not responsible for follow-up care, nor does he or she take
an active role in dealing with the complications. Not only this, but
the very nature of abortion clinics, which practice in isolation from
the rest of the medical community, keeps the abortion provider free from
accountability for these complications.
Those who support
abortion on demand will claim that the reported complication rate for
abortions is low. They may be right. Not necessarily because there are
few complications, but because the complications are underreported. They
are underreported because there is no accurate process in place today
to quantify the harmful repercussions of abortion. The abortion industry
has successfully kept abortion and abortionists free from the type of
review, regulation, and accountability that is an integral part of the
rest of the medical profession.
In
her statement, Berning went on to cite cases that she had treated
involving women who had been injured or killed as a result of mistakes
by abortionists. She noted:
Had this quality of care
been provided by any other medical provider — family physician,
obstetrician, or emergency physician — it would be considered grossly
negligent. By an abortion provider, it does not even cause a stir. In
fact it goes unnoted and unreported. ... There is no other
practice of medicine where people can suffer and die from complications
of your intervention without your being in some way professionally
accountable, involved in their care, and at the very least, made aware
of it — except abortion. Indeed, many states do not even require abortionists to report complications or injuries from abortion at all:
The
U.S. abortion data and reporting system, unlike many other countries,
relies completely on voluntary reporting. No federal law requires the
reporting of abortion numbers, complications or deaths. (Denmark, in
contrast, requires mandatory reporting by providers of all induced
abortions.)
In fact, only two national organizations collect
abortion data in the United States: the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention, a federal government agency, and the private abortion
advocacy group, the Alan Guttmacher Institute. Reporting of abortion
data to both is completely voluntary and not all states participate.
Even
the most basic statistics about abortion — for example, the annual
number in the United States provided by the CDC — is based entirely on
estimates, and is therefore vulnerable to human error. How reliable can
the annual number of abortions be if California, which used to report
approximately one-quarter of all abortions across the nation annually,
hasn’t reported its data to the CDC for several years?
It’s
impossible to say how safe abortion is in the United States when only 26
states require providers to report injuries and complications from
abortion.
If abortion advocates were really concerned
about the health and safety of women, one would think that they would
be fighting to stamp out abuses and improve the standard of care in
abortion clinics. Instead, abortion advocates and their allies claim
abortion is "safe" while routinely dismissing and attacking evidence of the physical and psychological harm of abortion. For example, Nancy Russo, a spokesperson for the American Psychological Association, admitted
that a study linking abortion to increased rates of mental health
problems among women (a study conducted by a pro-choice researcher, no
less) would have no effect on the APA’s position on abortion because “to
pro-choice advocates, mental health effects are not relevant to the
legal context of arguments to restrict access to abortion.” Further, abortion advocates have repeatedly fought efforts to regulate clinics or implement other common-sense measures — such as screening
for coercion and pre-existing risk factors for post-abortion
psychological problems — that would protect the rights, health and lives
of women facing abortion. |
