"Abortion myths and realities": who is misleading whom?

Thomas W. Hilgers, M.D., testifying to the Australian Royal Commission on Human Relationships in 1975, alleged that liberal abortions laws in the U.S. caused more deaths among women of childbearing age than they prevented. This inference was subsequently challenged because his analysis used a misleading extrapolation of linear regression, applied information from 2 incomparable data sets, and selected unreasonable item intervals for comparisons. On October 14, 1981, Hilgers testified before the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution. He stated that America's legal abortion policy has had no measurable beneficial effect on maternal deaths and also implied that "natural pregnancy" was safer than induced abortion. These inferences were based on his recent analysis of abortion mortality with the use of national data from 1940 to 1978. Exception is still taken with Hilgers' inferences for the following reasons: neglect of risk associated with the last half of pregnancy; use of provisional 1978 data; selection of inappropriate states and time intervals; absence of the most appropriate references; use of relative frequency rather than absolute numbers; and aggregation of abortion mortality with maternal mortality. Contrary to the statements by Hilgers, the availability of legal abortion has had a measurable impact on deaths among American women of reproductive age. In 1965, even before the availability of legal abortion, deaths of women from all types of abortion (legal, illegal, and spontaneous) began to decline more rapidly than deaths from other pregnancy related causes. In 1970 the decline of abortion mortality rapidly accelerated and generally continued through 1976. In sum, legalized abortion has had a definite impact on the health of American women of childbearing age who are faced with unwanted pregnancies.