Abortion Complications? Who would have thought?

[tzor]

Mentioning abortion issues on this board is a lot like throwing a grenade into a packed crowd; even if it doesn’t go off, the panic is going to cause a mess on its own. I realize that there are a number of people here who firmly believe in the sacredness of all abortion types and those who believe “Planned Parenthood; we love it and will blindly defend it.”

But when I saw this email that cites a study from Finland, I couldn’t help but lob the grenade. It’s from the evil (is my sarcasm showing) National Right to Life, Study Finds High Rate of RU486 Abortion Complications.

Researchers found that 15.6 % percent of those undergoing chemical abortions hemorrhaged, 1.7% encountered infection, and 6.7% had incomplete abortions.

…

It was not that surgical abortion was safe, however. About 5.5% of Finnish women having surgical abortions reported at least one adverse event. The rate of hemorrhage was significantly lower (2.1%), as was the rate of incomplete abortion (1.6%), but infection rates were about the same (1.7%). As might be expected, injury rates from surgical abortion were about 20 times higher than those found with chemical abortions, though not high as an overall percentage of adverse events (0.6%).

Surprising from these figures is that there were a substantial number of surgical abortions that were somehow "incomplete," with a number of women returning for "surgical (re)evacuations."

Now I’ll just sit back while I watch the typical knee-jerk reactions and name calling. I love being a right wing-nut!

[Orion]

Tzor,

What percentage of pregnancies result in at least one "adverse event"?

Also, the article acts as though it's debunking the claim that RU486 is 92-95% effective, but later admits that incomplete abortion happens only 6% of the time.

Finally, the article emphasizes that RU486 is safer the sooner you get it, meaning pro-life interference with its prescription and sale are actively hurting women.

In conclusion, fuck you.

[Username17]

I don't understand Tzor, what's your point? People bleed when you stab them. Why is this surprising?

-Username17

[violence in the media]

Because complications can arise in abortion procedures, we shouldn't have abortions at all? Is that what you're trying to get at?

[Username17]

Because complications can arise in abortion procedures, we shouldn't have abortions at all? Is that what you're trying to get at?

I think that what Tzor is getting at is that because the do-it-yourself chemical options has a higher rate of hemorrhaging than the one where it is don by trained professionals, that the "Pro Life" campaign against abortion doctors is morally equivalent to stabbing teenage girls in the stomach. But it's Tzor, so I can't tell.

-Username17

[tzor]

You mean I’m supposed to have a point?

Actually I think I have several.

I was, IIRC, recently chastised for being so primitive even I could use the GEICO web pages, with my insistence that because complications do arise from abortions that such facilities need to be within proper distances of hospitals in case such complications do develop. Surgical abortions are simple procedures, you all chanted; complications never develop.

If surgical abortions are out patient procedures, what would you consider RU486, at home procedures? In other words 15.6% of the people taking RU486 could start to experience hemorrhaging while at home after receiving the pill.

But I suppose, if proper instructions are given, if the proper precautions are met, it shouldn’t be that much of a problem right? Right? (But what if they aren’t?) Even so, what happens if everything is done to the letter and someone dies?

RU 486 Has Killed Thirteen Women … that’s documented cases here.

5. Rebecca Tell Berg, a sixteen-year- old Swedish girl, died June 3, 2003 from an RU 486 abortion. In this case, she apparently received good medical care. She was seven weeks pregnant. One week after being examined by a gynecologist, she returned to the hospital and was given three RU 486 abortion pills, a full dose. Two days later she returned and was given two Cytotec pills. After a few hours, she was in severe pain, bleeding heavily and was given pain medication. After being kept in the hospital for eight hours, she passed a “big blob” and was sent home. Days later, still bleeding and in pain, her boyfriend encouraged her to go to the hospital. However, hospital officials told her she could bleed for as long as two weeks, so she stayed home. During this time, a medical professional, inquiring about her condition, made at least one phone call. Eight days after the abortion she was found dead in the shower. A coroner’s report confirmed that Rebecca bled to death. It noted, however, that the doctors had given an appropriate dosage, followed proper procedure and “followed all the rules.”

Short of death, the most serious concern is bleeding. Women who take RU 486 usually bleed for one or two weeks, with 10% bleeding more than one month. This leaves women exposed to infection for an extended period of time. The average woman loses four times the average blood from a standard surgical abortion. In European trials, at least one in every hundred women had to be hospitalized due to blood loss and needed a transfusion. One case illustrating this occurred during the official trials of RU 486 in the United States. A woman in Iowa almost died from hemorrhage from an incomplete RU 486 abortion. Multiple emergency blood transfusions saved her life. (This according to Dr. M. Loviere, Waterloo Courier, 9-24-95.)

Now, let’s see the original quote NRTL got from PP "Our monitoring shows that mifepristone medication abortion continues to be a safe abortion option."

Yes indeed, so simple, even a cavewoman can die from it.

Now what was my point again? Something about how pro-life people want to kill women? They want to put them in situations of extreme risk and life threatening conditions. Oh wait, that’s the RU 486 pill makers and Planned Parenthood.

[PhoneLobster]

I think Tzors master plan is...

1) Look abortion procedures can go wrong!

2) ??????

3) Tzor forces teen age girls to use rusty coat hangers to avoid abortion complications

[tzor]

I have a master plan?

(Checks his degree … Yes I am the Master and you will obey me … wrong “Master.”)

1) Abortion procedures can go wrong; they are not the magical, mystical, anyone can do them anywhere sort of thing (and it’s the PP clinics that are using the non sterile equipment by the way) but real medical operating procedures that should not be excluded from real world medical requirements and reporting laws. (As well as patient right to know laws; how many of those women going for those pills are actually told in advance of all the possible side effects and complications. Go for any simple procedure and you have to sign your life away in triplicates with all the informational warnings you have to read and sign.)

2) This is even more obvious with UR 486, a drug which has even less supervision and which has a significant risk of complications and hospitalization as a result. But we should pay no attention to the man behind the curtain; such information shouldn’t be revealed to the common folk.

3) I stand with Mrs. Clinton; we need to take a serious look at how to prevent the need of abortions in the first place, not promote them as the perfect fail safe to a wild and crazy sex life. This “pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, you’ve got a right to privacy” as an excuse to hide the problems of the man behind the curtain is bullshit.

Anyway, where did I put my tissue compression eliminator?

Roger Delgado is still my most favorite Master - The original and the best!

[Crissa]

Gosh, the complications of 486 are less than not taking it. Kinda like vaccines.

Why does this thread exist?

-Crissa

[Heath Robinson]

3) I stand with Mrs. Clinton; we need to take a serious look at how to prevent the need of abortions in the first place, not promote them as the perfect fail safe to a wild and crazy sex life.

That's a major point that you and I differ on. You believe that people in the real world are actually advertising abortion, saying "Guys, Abortions are AWESOME!"

Why do you believe such utter tripe?

[CatharzGodfoot]

3) I stand with Mrs. Clinton; we need to take a serious look at how to prevent the need of abortions in the first place, not promote them as the perfect fail safe to a wild and crazy sex life.

That's a major point that you and I differ on. You believe that people in the real world are actually advertising abortion, saying "Guys, Abortions are AWESOME!"

Why do you believe such utter tripe?

Well ya see, when I went to Planned Parenthood with my wife (then girlfriend) that one time to get the "morning after pill", Planned Parenthood said "Why not wait and have a abortion later? We love giving abortions so much, if you wait and have one later instead of taking the pill, your next abortion is free!". When she inquired about getting birth control, Planned Parenthood said "Sure, we can do that for cheap. But we'd rather just give you an abortion every week. We're Planned Parenthood, and we just love to give abortions!". So my wife has had about 100 abortions at Planned Parenthood in the past 11 years. 100 little babies in Purgatory! We just love them to death! Good times!

[tzor]

Why does this thread exist?

Because, when one day your granddaughter (and or grandneice) asks you "What did you do during the American Holocaust" you can still give a bald faced lie but at least you will feel guilty about it because Tzor told you the truth back in 2009.

I'm like Al Gore, I just have a different "inconvenient truth."

[Username17]

I thought the American Holocaust was the one where lack of health insurance kills more than 45 thousand people a year and has done so basically the whole century. Even if you only count it from the time Truman failed to push healthcare reform through congress, we're looking at 3 million dead in order to line the pockets of insurance corporations.

Meanwhile, the "pro-life" movement and the teabaggers keep agitating to prevent people from getting covered by the government even though that would save lives and be cheaper. So yeah, as far as I can tell, when people ask about actions during the American Holocaust, Tzor is going to answer "I guarded the gates and wouldn't let those girls out of the camps!"

-Username17

[CatharzGodfoot]

I thought that the 'American Holocaust' was when the United States genocided almost every American Indian in its currently held territory. Sticking them in concentration camps, making them go on forced marches, forcing them to work, starving them, making false promises, rounding up and shooting large groups of civilians. You know, like the Holocaust.

[Zherog]

Researchers found that 15.6 % percent of those undergoing chemical abortions hemorrhaged, 1.7% encountered infection, and 6.7% had incomplete abortions.

…

It was not that surgical abortion was safe, however. About 5.5% of Finnish women having surgical abortions reported at least one adverse event. The rate of hemorrhage was significantly lower (2.1%), as was the rate of incomplete abortion (1.6%), but infection rates were about the same (1.7%). As might be expected, injury rates from surgical abortion were about 20 times higher than those found with chemical abortions, though not high as an overall percentage of adverse events (0.6%).

Surprising from these figures is that there were a substantial number of surgical abortions that were somehow "incomplete," with a number of women returning for "surgical (re)evacuations."

I'm too lazy to go look it up, and even if I wasn't lazy I wouldn't know what was a good source. However, I suspect folks such as Frank either know the answer or know where to go for good information, so...

What's the rate of infection on other procedures? Is it more or less in line with the 1.7% cited here? I'd be curious to see the rate of infection for stuff like Lasik eye surgery, appendix removal, tonsillectomy, arthroscopic knee surgery, and so on.

My hunch? 1.7% is within the norm for any procedure.

[Heath Robinson]

Why does this thread exist?

Because, when one day your granddaughter (and or grandneice) asks you "What did you do during the American Holocaust" you can still give a bald faced lie but at least you will feel guilty about it because Tzor told you the truth back in 2009.

I'm like Al Gore, I just have a different "inconvenient truth."

You've yet to answer my very reasonable question, tzor.

That's a major point that you and I differ on. You believe that people in the real world are actually advertising abortion, saying "Guys, Abortions are AWESOME!"

Why do you believe such utter tripe?

[tzor]

What's the rate of infection on other procedures?

Not just any procedure, you need to know the rate of infection on procedures routinely performed in non hospital settings as is the case with abortions.

[Zherog]

What's the rate of infection on other procedures?

Not just any procedure, you need to know the rate of infection on procedures routinely performed in non hospital settings as is the case with abortions.

And I specifically mentioned Lasik eye surgery for a reason.

[Username17]

The weird thing about that description is that it classifies side effects by type, not by severity. There's hemorrhaging where you end up with a mouth full of blood a few times (as in almost 100% of tonsillectomies) and there's hemorrhaging where you lose substantial enough blood that you are at serious risk (almost never). There's infection where you have redness and swelling at the site (almost all belly button piercings, for example), and then there's life threatening sepsis. Not the same thing. One of them is "meh" and the other is a big deal.

As it happens, serious complications from surgical abortions are less than 1%. Which largely puts them in the anecdotes category. Mifepristone generates bleeding for 30 days in almost 8% of people who take it, which in turn is substantially less than the rate for miscarriages, so I'm not sure what the big deal is.

I mean let's be honest: most of us are guys, so talking about long term bleeding from the genitals sounds like a really big deal. But women really do deal with that on a regular basis. 30 days of heavy bleeding is not really that unusual as far as gynecological warning signs go. It's bad, but it's not weird. People get that from pregnancy all the time. Postpartum bleeding (lochia) normally lasts for 2 weeks, and six weeks isn't even a pathological finding.

But let's assume for the moment that when they talk about "hemorrhaging" that they actually mean the loss of more than 500 mL of blood as defined for postpartum hemorrhaging (which frankly I doubt, because they are being deliberately obfuscatory with their numbers). That happens in up to 10% of all live births in the US anyway, so again I'm not super sure where or how there's any data there that's supposed to alarm me.

Take home message: women bleed from the vagina. All the time. And also at the end of every pregnancy whether it ends in birth or abortion. It's gross. Deal with it.

-Username17

[Kaelik]

What's the rate of infection on other procedures?

Not just any procedure, you need to know the rate of infection on procedures routinely performed in non hospital settings as is the case with abortions.

Actually, if you know the rate of infection in sterile hospital procedures, and it's the same as in those evil non hospital settings, all you are actually saying is that abortion procedures are just as strictly managed as hospital procedures.

Of course, you could just let them be performed in hospitals, but you don't want that, because if abortions were made safer and more effective, you wouldn't get to complain about them.

Also, Answer Heath's question.


And Tzor, stop with all this bullshit "Mother's safety" crap. You are complaining that abortions are made of evil bad. If it were conclusively proved that 100% of all abortions resulted in no harm to the mother of any kind, even psychological, and in fact, cured cancer, you'd still be against it right?

So stop blabbing about the "American Holocaust" in relation to some minor (in line with other medical procedures) complications that occur in abortions.

It's not the women that are jews in your fictional holocaust, you think the women are the nazis and the babies are the jews.

Don't try to hide your right to life stupidity behind the health of the women involved.

[Zherog]

Tzor -- I can totally respect your right to be vehemently opposed to abortion. Hell, my own personal feelings are that it should only be done in cases of rape, incest, or severe risk to the mother's health. But that's my personal viewpoint; politically, I'm pro-choice. As in, I choose not to, but recognize that it's not my place to make the choice for somebody else.

I liken it to drinking alcohol. Some people choose to abstain. Cool for them, regardless of why. (my brother just doesn't like the taste; my uncle is recovering alcoholic, just to toss out two reasons.) That's their choice; my choice is to occasionally enjoy a beer while I watch a baseball game or play World or Warcraft or whatever. As long as my consumption of alcohol remains legal -- I don't drive while drunk, I don't endanger my children by being in a drunken stupor, etc -- you have no say in whether or not I choose to drink. Same thing.

[Koumei]

Take home message: women bleed from the vagina.

This is a hilarious "moral of the story". It's also true. Gross, annoying, a fact of life. So if an abortion, or a normal birth, or eating carrots*, causes it? We really don't care, we're pretty much used to it. It's only the bit where people are actually at risk of bleeding to death. Which happens with regular birth-giving.

*That I know of, this one doesn't. I'm just throwing it there as a random extra thing.

[RobbyPants]

Tzor -- I can totally respect your right to be vehemently opposed to abortion. Hell, my own personal feelings are that it should only be done in cases of rape, incest, or severe risk to the mother's health. But that's my personal viewpoint; politically, I'm pro-choice. As in, I choose not to, but recognize that it's not my place to make the choice for somebody else.

+1

[CryptoSolipsist]

Tzor -- I can totally respect your right to be vehemently opposed to abortion. Hell, my own personal feelings are that it should only be done in cases of rape, incest, or severe risk to the mother's health. But that's my personal viewpoint; politically, I'm pro-choice. As in, I choose not to, but recognize that it's not my place to make the choice for somebody else.

I liken it to drinking alcohol. Some people choose to abstain. Cool for them, regardless of why. (my brother just doesn't like the taste; my uncle is recovering alcoholic, just to toss out two reasons.) That's their choice; my choice is to occasionally enjoy a beer while I watch a baseball game or play World or Warcraft or whatever. As long as my consumption of alcohol remains legal -- I don't drive while drunk, I don't endanger my children by being in a drunken stupor, etc -- you have no say in whether or not I choose to drink. Same thing.

While I do actually completely agree with your conclusions on this point, I feel that you're leaving out a crucial piece of the argument. If the issue was over something as simple as the choice to drink alcohol, or to wear red on Thursdays, they we could all agree that the right-to-lifers were being unreasonable in their attempt to subvert your freedoms. Hell, seeing as many of the right-to-lifers overlap with the libertarian demographic, probably a lot of them would agree that infringing on someone else's freedoms is wrong. But this is not a simple question of choice; this is a question of morality. Right-to-lifers believe that life begins at conception, and that to terminate a life under those conditions is murder. Equate it to, in your analogy, every time you drink a beer, somewhere a puppy dies.

I believe we can all agree that murdering innocent children is morally wrong and utterly reprehensible. It's just a question of definitions - I personally believe that life starts at birth, or at least viability (which, if accepted, means that I will have to readjust my belief system as medical technology advances. Hmm. May need to think that one through sometime), and Tzor evidently believes that it starts before that. While I don't agree with it, I can still respect it. We both want to protect the innocent - I just don't think a zygote qualifies. In the long run, it essentially becomes a question of philosophy, no less complicated or difficult to answer than "do we possess a mortal soul?"

And, for the record, Delgado was fantastic, but Ainsley had a much better evil laugh.

[Username17]

Equate it to, in your analogy, every time you drink a beer, somewhere a puppy dies.

Or how every time I eat chicken fingers, a chicken dies. Or how every time I drink a beer, millions upon millions of yeasts die.

Never understood that argument. Life is death. Always has been.

-Username17