my article earlier today<\/a>, I was able to find the text for three of the four studies cited\u00a0in\u00a0an article cited by an anti-abortion amicus brief\u00a0as proof that medical abortions\u00a0are ten times more dangerous than surgical abortions and fifty times more dangerous than childbirth, but I could note find the fourth study. If that sounded\u00a0confusing, it\u2019s because it is\u2014the amicus brief was extremely sloppy in citing an internet article on a pro-life website rather than citing the studies that article cited as proof of their bald claim. I found that (surprise!) the studies I had access to did not in any way support the amicus brief\u2019s assertion.<\/p>\nBut guess what! I now have access to the fourth study!<\/p>\n
No fewer than three<\/em> readers tracked down and sent\u00a0me the Gary and Harrison article, the sole article that\u00a0I was not able to access through my university\u2019s library. Thanks guys, you\u2019re awesome! Seriously. The best<\/em>. So anyway, I\u2019ve now read it, and guess what? It doesn\u2019t even pretend to compare fatality rates between medical abortions and surgical abortions or childbirth! In fact, it\u00a0only briefly mentions surgical abortions\u00a0and carrying a pregnancy to term as an aside in the conclusion (more on that in a moment). Not only are there no comparisons, the study doesn\u2019t not actually provide any analysis of the rate of either complications or death associated with mifepristone, the medical abortion drug.<\/p>\nFrom the methods section at the beginning of the study:<\/p>\n
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An absolute rate of mifepristone abortion complications in the US cannot be determined from the FDA\u2019s AERs because these voluntary and sporadically submitted reports provide neither an accurate numerator (number of adverse US events) nor an accurate denominator (number of US mifepristone abortions). However, the data allow some estimation of the types, severity, and percent frequency of reported events.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
In other words, this study only asks what sorts of complications are more or less common than other sorts of complications. There is absolutely no comparison of rate between medical\u00a0abortions\u00a0and surgical abortions and carrying a pregnancy to term, which is what this study is ostensibly used as a source for\u00a0via\u00a0the amicus brief footnote, and also no attempt to calculate a rate for medical abortions in particular. I have no idea\u2014literally no idea\u2014why this article was included in the footnotes at all, given that it has no relation to the claim it was supposed to support.<\/p>\n
Actually wait, I may know why. The study includes this statement at the end:<\/p>\n
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Although neither the manufacturer nor the FDA recognizes a causal link between the use of mifepristone and the adverse events reported, it is undeniable that these women were healthy before the use of mifepristone and became very sick or died shortly after its use. Before any medication is used, a prudent practitioner weighs carefully the risks of the medication with the potential benefits. Medications, such as chemotherapy agents, with life-threatening or potentially lethal adverse effects are acceptable in treating conditions that are themselves debilitating or lethal such as cancer, HIV, sepsis, and others. In these cases, alternative treatments are limited and, without treatment, the disease is rapidly lethal. The use of mifepristone as an abortifacient, however, is radically different.\u00a0Pregnancy in most instances is a benign, self-limited condition, with duration of approximately 8 months from diagnosis for most women. It generally occurs in otherwise healthy young women.<\/strong>\u00a0The choice of mifepristone termination over surgical termination is based mainly on patient perceptions of safety, convenience, and privacy, but these perceptions do not accurately reflect the realities of the regimen.<\/p><\/blockquote>\nFirst of all, that last sentence is not backed up by any comparison in rates between the two procedures, or any look at the rate<\/em> of complications associated with mifepristone, which makes its inclusion bizarre. But secondly and more importantly, what the blazes<\/em> happened in that bold section (my emphasis)?!<\/p>\nI\u2019ve read the above paragraph five times now, and it really does read as though the authors are arguing that using mifepristone as an abortifacient\u00a0is not medically wise\u00a0because it is administered to \u201cotherwise healthy young women\u201d with no life-threatening conditions that the mifepristone is intended to cure. And note that in the last sentence they suggest that perceptions of mifepristone as safe \u201cdo not accurately reflect the realities of the regimen.\u201d But for god\u2019s sake,\u00a0pregnancy is\u00a0at least ten\u00a0times as deadly as taking mifepristone,<\/em>\u00a0and the authors call it a \u201cbenign, self-limited condition.\u201d\u00a0What the fuck is this?!<\/em><\/p>\nOh wait. Here is what it is:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Dr. Gary and Dr. Harrison are members of the Subcommittee on Mifeprex of the American Association of Prolife Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG), the largest interest group of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. AAPLOG has filed a Citizen Petition with the Food and Drug Administration requesting withdrawal of approval for mifepristone based on safety considerations.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Gary and Harrison are anti-abortion, and, as such, they oppose the use of mifepristone (or any other drug or procedure) as an abortifacient. They pulled the FDA\u2019s adverse event report data explicitly so that they could play up the dangers of medical abortions, even though they made no effort to compare the complications they were examining with the complications from childbirth or any other medical procedure, perhaps because they knew the results wouldn\u2019t be beneficial to their argument.<\/p>\n
There is absolutely nothing I can conclude here but that the anti-abortion case for protecting women\u2019s health is statistically bankrupt.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
No fewer than three readers tracked down and sent me the Gary and Harrison article, the sole article that I was not able to access through my university’s library. Thanks guys, you’re awesome! Seriously. The best. So anyway, I’ve now read it, and guess what? It doesn’t even pretend to compare fatality rates between medical abortions and surgical abortions or childbirth!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":845,"featured_media":28662,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[104],"class_list":["post-28661","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-abortion-2"],"yoast_head":"\n
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