Dear Colleague,

Countries with pro-life laws are repeatedly told that in order to reduce maternal deaths, they need to make abortion "safe" and legal.  This month's Definitions article examines the facts behind this claim, from the ways maternal deaths are selectively defined and recorded to the research institutions backed with Western funding being established in the global South for the purpose of generating evidence that so-called "unsafe" abortion is causing deaths, injuries, and financial costs that can only be prevented by the provision of "safe" abortion.

Meanwhile, those same Western countries working to create an international right to abortion achieved their own relatively low maternal mortality, not by liberalizing their abortion laws, but through medical advances, economic development, and political will to make birth and early childhood safe.  These same things, not more abortion, can deliver good maternal and child health in the rest of the world—if the maternal health issue is not hijacked by those promoting controversial agendas.

Sincerely,

Rebecca Oas, Ph.D.
Director of Research

Among those who advocate for abortion as a human right, the talking points are well-worn and deceptively simple: abortion complications are a major contributor to maternal deaths and injuries, the only alternative to “unsafe” abortion is “safe” abortion, and national laws and policies should be amended to maximize the availability and acceptability of this procedure as a component of basic health care. For those who take a pro-life position—specifically, those who hold that human beings are persons both before and after birth and have intrinsic human dignity from conception to natural death—these arguments must be opposed, but to disprove them requires reexamining many of the seemingly innocuous methods and terminologies used in the field of maternal health. This paper explores the ways in which the medical and scientific fields have been weaponized against unborn human life and how ideology masquerades as “facts” and “evidence” to promote this deadly agenda.  Read more >>>