Is Abortion Safe For the Woman?

Tiller has claimed that his late-term abortion procedure is safer than natural childbirth. He provides numerous statistics to support this claim. (See column to the right.) Unfortunately, there is no way to independently verify or refute Tiller's claims.

Pro-Life picketers have seen several ambulances come to Tiller's clinic over the past few years. (Click here for a list of ambulance trips.) The ambulances almost always go to Wesley Medical Center (WMC) rather than any other hospital. When the ambulance arrives at the Emergency Room, it is guarded by WMC security staff and often by Wichita Police.

anonymous

An ambulances takes a woman out of Tiller's clinic.

Were these ambulance trips the result of abortion injuries? Or was the ambulance trip totally unrelated to abortion? Due to Federal medical privacy laws, it's difficult for an independent investigator to find the reasons for the ambulance trips. In fact, there isn't even a practical way to find the number of ambulance runs to Tiller's clinic, since the Sedgwick County Emergency Communications Office doesn't index ambulance trips by address.

Operation Rescue

Tiller with one of his injured patients.

Pro-Lifers have seen a reduction of ambulance runs since 2005. A former employee says the clinic takes a woman to the hospital about twice a month. She says they take the women in a van to avoid calling an ambulance.

In response to recent vigilance by Pro-Life activists, Tiller has raised his fence by about two feet. It is now more difficult for Pro-Lifers to photograph the ambulances in his parking lot.

photo by webmaster

Above: The fence as shown before Pro-Lifers began to document the ambulance runs. Below: The fence after the additional height was added.

photo by webmaster

The State of Kansas keeps abortion statistics, but they don't keep statistics of abortion injuries. Proposed Kansas legislation would have set specific rules for record keeping and reporting of abortion injuries and deaths.

However, this legislation was vetoed by Governor Sebelius who has taken over $38,000 in campaign contributions from Tiller.

The Federal government compiles abortion injury data though the Abortion Surveillance Division of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).

Centers for Disease Control website

However this data is simply a summary of the abortion injury data provided by the various states. Since several of these states (including Kansas) keep no statistics on abortion injury, the total number of maternal injuries and maternal deaths reported by the CDC would be understated. Thus when Kansas reports the 2005 statistics to the CDC, these numbers won't include the January 2005 death of one of Tiller's patients. These deflated numbers can then be quoted to again "prove" that abortion is "safe" for the mothers.

In a video made around 2001, Tiller claims that no woman has ever died of an abortion at his clinic. But he also claims that no baby has ever been born alive either. (Click here to listen to him say this.) The second claim is a bald-face lie, since a baby was born alive in 1993 during an attempted abortion by Tiller. Later in January 2005, one of Tiller's patients died.

If you wish to believe that Tiller's abortion practice is safe for women, then you'll have to take him at his word. If you wish to trust his rhetoric and believe his statistics, you'll need to have faith. Tiller has lied about simple, verifiable things. So why would anyone trust him to be truthful about injuries or maternal deaths at his clinic? Why would such a liar be forthcoming about medical problems that occurred on his watch? Why would he be honest about something that strikes at the heart and soul of his business?

Click here for a list of ambulance trips.

Do you have specific knowledge or proof of abortion injury or maternal death at Tiller's clinic? Or do you have specific knowledge or proof of a cover-up that involves Wesley Medical Center? If so, please click here to let me know.

SOURCES:

A video Tiller made around 2001. This video is entitled, "Philosophies and techniques of late term abortion services at Women's Health Care Services". This video is handed to women as they arrive in Wichita for their abortion.

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Tiller's Claims

Tiller has given the follow speech three times.

This speech was listed on Tiller's website for months. Tiller has since updated his website and removed the reference to this speech. The archived webpage from Tiller's website can still be viewed on the "Way Back Machine" by clicking the image above.

Following is the partial transcript of a 1996 video that Tiller made to advertise his late-term abortions. He makes several claims about the safety of his late-term abortion.

(http://www.repro-activist.org)

We have to compare our results with the results that you get at full-term delivery. The good news for you is that we havent lost anybody. The bad news is that labor and delivery is hazardous for womens health. In our 1000 fetal indications termination of pregnancy patients from 1989 to the present, between 24 and 36 or 37 weeks of pregnancy, we have a 98% uncomplicated success rate. That means that 98% of our patients leave Wichita without a an obstetrical hospitalization. That means that about 2% of our patients have some sort of obstetrical complication. Now, earlier in the in our program we had maybe a 3 or 4 percent hospital admission rate and in the past three or four years we have had less than a 2 percent hospital admission rate. But in general its a two percent hospital admission rate. And what is that hospital admission rate composed of? Its composed of three things. First, half to three-quarters of one percent is hemorrhage, necessitating transfusion. Cervical laceration or obstetrical trauma is about half to three quarters of one percent and that is a normal routine obstetrical type of trauma but of such a magnitude that we are unable to provide repair usually on an anesthetic basis here in our facility. And the last hospital admission category is infection and between half to three-quarters of one percent of our patients are admitted to the hospital for problems of infection.

We have had no cesarean sections in our 1000 fetal abnormality termination of pregnancy patients. Now lets move over and look at the full term delivery. At full term delivery we would probably expect that 30-40% of our patients, if they carried the pregnancy to full term, since this is an abnormal pregnancy, would have a cesarean section. That means that in our series of 1000 patients we would have had maybe 3 to 4 hundred cesarean sections. And please recall that we have had no cesarean sections in our practice. Infection? Infection occurs at about a four percent rate at full term delivery and hemorrhage occurs between one and two percent at full term delivery. So when you look at the our results compared to side by side comparison with full term delivery, ours look safer than full term delivery, but we dont approach it that way. What the way we approach it is that hemorrhage, infection, transfusion, blood clots, and death, the medical complications associated with the condition of pregnancy in the second and the third trimester occur at about the same rate now as they occur at the end of the pregnancy. Cesarean section and stitches occur at a much smaller rate.