Abstract
Objective
The recent surge of new legislation regulating induced abortion in the United States
is ostensibly motivated by the desire to protect women's health. To provide context
for interpreting the risk of abortion, we compared abortion-related mortality to mortality
associated with other outpatient surgical procedures and selected nonmedical activities.
Methods
We calculated the abortion-related mortality rate during 2000–2009 using national
data. We searched PubMed and other sources for contemporaneous data on mortality associated
with other outpatient procedures commonly performed on healthy young women, marathon
running, bicycling and driving.
Results
The abortion-related mortality rate in 2000–2009 in the United States was 0.7 per
100,000 abortions. Studies in approximately the same years found mortality rates of
0.8–1.7 deaths per 100,000 plastic surgery procedures, 0–1.7deaths per 100,000 dental
procedures, 0.6–1.2 deaths per 100,000 marathons run and at least 4 deaths among 100,000
cyclists in a large annual bicycling event. The traffic fatality rate per 758 vehicle
miles traveled by passenger cars in the United States in 2007–2011 was about equal
to the abortion-related mortality rate.
Conclusions
The safety of induced abortion as practiced in the United States for the past decade
met or exceeded expectations for outpatient surgical procedures and compared favorably
to that of two common nonmedical voluntary activities. The new legislation restricting
abortion is unnecessary; indeed, by reducing the geographic distribution of abortion
providers and requiring women to travel farther for the procedure, these laws are
potentially detrimental to women's health.
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: July 24, 2014
Accepted:
July 18,
2014
Received in revised form:
July 17,
2014
Received:
June 18,
2014
Footnotes
☆Funding: This work was supported by an anonymous donor.
Identification
Copyright
© 2014 Elsevier Inc. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
