Safety of abortion

How safe is abortion? The answer to that question depends on where in the world you live. The World Health Organisation has identified unsafe abortions as a major problem in developing countries accounting for 13% of all maternal deaths in pregnant women worldwide.

How safe is abortion in developed countries with good medical services? Very safe and approximately 10 times safer than continuing the pregnancy because of the risks associated with childbirth.

Safety also depends on the stage of pregnancy when the abortion is carried out. The earlier the safer. Here in New Zealand we could do better. Because of our complicated approval system the number of abortions carried out in the earliest stages of pregnancy is fewer than in many other countries where such statistics are collected.

When discussing the safety of abortion in New Zealand I have stated that there have been no reported maternal deaths in New Zealand directly atrributable to abortion since accurate statistics have been available from 1980 onwards.

I was therefore perplexed when a retired obstetrician and gynaecologist sent me a copy of a confidential (not for publication) Maternal Mortlaity Newsletter informing me that in the biennium 1984-1985 there had been one death from abortion.

Had I unwittingly been misleading people? Why was it not reported by the ASC? Why was there no publicity about it at the time? Was it true? How could I find out?

I wrote to the Ministry of Health and received a reply from the Perinatal and Maternity Review Committee informing me that the death was not following a termination pregnancy.

I still do not know what that figure means. But at least I can still say that there have been no maternal deaths directly attributable to abortion in the last 29 years and that is a reassuring statistic.