Donna Harrison, M.D.

The current measuring metric and reporting methods for assessing maternal mortality are seriously flawed. Evidence-based prevention strategies require consistently reported surveillance data and validated measurement metrics.

Controversy exists regarding whether doctors who perform abortions should be required to hold hospital admitting privileges, but no research exists as to the extent to which they actually hold and use such privileges.

Earlier this month, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NAS) released a report on the safety of abortion in the United States. It examines various methods used for abortion and concludes that abortion is safe and poses minimal health risks. The report also puts a negative spin on pro-life laws, arguing that many of them have no basis in medical research, and states that some abortion-specific regulations create barriers to safe health care.

In pursuit of the possibility that abortion drugs could be distributed via pharmacies or mail order shipment for at-home use, researchers from a group called Gynuity Health Projects sought RU-486 online from 20 websites and had them tested for their potency – that is, whether they contained enough of the drugs in the two-step regimen to effectuate an abortion.

The recent systematic review published by Gabrielle Saccone and colleagues joins the long list of over 150 studies over the past four decades which extensively document that having an induced abortion increases a woman’s risk of preterm birth in subsequent pregnancies.

Separation of a mother and her unborn child is tragically sometimes necessary to save the life of the mother.  But the number of conditions which truly threaten the mother’s life, and which require a life-saving separation of the mother and her baby are vanishingly small.  A new study by Amant and colleagues, entitled “Pediatric Outcome after Maternal Cancer Diagnosed during Pregnancy,” brings tremendous hope to pregnant women who have courageously carried their unborn children to birth, despite the need for chemotherapy or radiation therapy.