Just How Big A Discrepancy Is There In The “Official Figures” For Complications Following Abortion...?

The British Pregnancy Advisory Service and Marie Stopes International are not the only groups in this country who seem to ignore the facts regarding possible sequelae following abortion. The Department of Health and the Royal College of Obstetricians & Gynaecologists are even worse, considering they have a duty to protect the health of the nation including women.

Nonetheless, it is not all bad news – as we can see from the Abortion Statistics for 2010. Thankfully, these indicate that an increasing number of young gynaecologists continue to refuse to perform abortions. This is very encouraging.

It began at around the Millennium when the Young Doctors Division of the BMA revolted. They were led by a young atheist and they put forward a Motion at the BMA Annual Conference requiring that hospitals should respect the conscience clause in the Abortion Act. The common situation at that time was that consultant gynaecologists would agree to abortions virtually on demand – and then require their juniors to carry out the operations! Our young atheist doctor had witnessed all too often the pressure brought to bear on colleagues with a conscientious objection to abortions being forced to do them; if they refused their careers in obstetrics and gynaecology ended.

However, the Motion at the BMA Annual Conference was passed with a huge majority. As a result, BMA officers who were anything but pro-life were compelled to demand that the Department of Health (DoH) should circulate all NHS hospitals telling them that they had to implement the conscience clause in the Abortion Act. Consultants either had to carry out the abortions themselves or make alternative arrangements.

This resulted in NHS-funded abortions being carried out in the private sector (or Independent Sector as classified by the DoH). It was followed by a gradual increase of young men and women entering obstetrics and gynaecology who had a conscientious objection to abortion. It also led to an increase in NHS-funded abortions being carried out by the BPAS and Marie Stopes Clinics. In the year 2000, only 29% of NHS abortions were done in Independent Clinics. By 2005, this had increased to 44% and in 2010, it had gone up to 59%. Only 37% were being done in NHS hospitals.

Tragically, this is not good news for the unborn baby: s/he can still be killed on demand. However, it is otherwise good news in that gradually we have very much more caring doctors serving our women and their babies. Muslim women – I am glad to say – are far more forthright in demanding to be cared for by a doctor of their own faith or by a Christian. The ones who are very slow in coming forward are the Christians. We should do everything we can to encourage Christian women (and others who are pro-life) to demand that they and their babies should be cared for by doctors who do not do abortions. This is possible under NHS Patients’ Rights.

Come to that, I know a considerable number of agnostic women who would not want to be manhandled by some gynaecologist who has just killed a few infants – albeit that they were unborn. You don’t have to be a believer to object.

Moreover, it is not all that easy for Marie Stopes and BPAS to hire doctors to operate their surgical programmes. That is why they are so keen on medical abortions such as RU486.

Marie Stopes’ witnesses actually had the nerve to complain to one Parliamentary Select Committee about the refusal of young doctors to do abortions and the problems it created. It also explains the drive at European and world-level to get Motions passed denying the right of nurses and doctors to conscientious objections in being involved in abortions.

One can also see quite clearly why we are faced with the drive to have abortions carried out in General Practitioners’ surgeries on the approval of only one doctor. And they are not sticking at doctors being in charge. They are playing safe and trying to get the law changed so that nurses can carry out the medical abortion procedure.

The claim that they are doing this for the sake of speed and the care of women is utter bunkum. Even the inadequate figures provided in the NHS abortion statistics show that medical abortions are more dangerous than surgical abortions. The NHS claims that total complications from abortions in 2010 amounted to 287 with 122 from surgical abortions and 165 from medical abortions. This, despite the fact, that only 43% (81,512) are medical procedures  as compared with 57% (108,062) of surgical cases.

Moreover, this is by no means the least of the DoH sins against women. In “Abortion Statistics for 2010”, at the bottom of the page showing complication rates by procedure and gestation, there is a footnote telling us “complications include: haemorrhage, uterine perforation and/or sepsis and are those reported up to the time of discharge from the place of termination”.

This is ludicrous. To my mind it amounts to criminal negligence in view of the fact that an increasing number of patients are discharged on the day of termination and a majority of others remain in the hospital/clinic for only two or three days at the most.

The Abortion Act requires notification forms (which includes complications) to be returned within seven days of the abortion taking place. However, when the law first came into force patients stayed in hospital for at least two or three days. Even then, responsible gynaecologists thought this was far too short a period to allow for the discovery of complications.

Quite often infections are not evident for days or even a week or more after termination; haemorrhages may not occur until a week or so (one doctor told me that a patient was admitted to his hospital haemorrhaging a full month after she had been aborted in a “charity clinic”).  Only last week, a woman contacted me saying that she was finally admitted to hospital for corrective surgery six months after her abortion in an “independent place” and, again, two months later for a further minor procedure.

Uterine perforation may consist of only a tiny “track” (like a “pin prick”) which does not become evident for some time – and may not be discovered until the woman’s womb ruptures during a further pregnancy. This also applies to weakening of the cervix which may not become evident until in a further pregnancy it is found that the neck of the womb is unable to contain the pregnancy to full term.

Furthermore, although all hospitals are supposed to check for Chlamydia in abortion patients, only 84% report having “offered” it to patients. The spread of Chlamydia in the body caused by abortion can result in horrendous complications leaving a woman infertile and suffering intense pain at periods throughout her life unless she has a complete hysterectomy. (I have known personally several women who were so afflicted. One of the girls to whom I was very close had started on a series of affairs following sexual abuse by her father from the age of 7).

When I look at the so-called number of complications following abortions I cannot help but recall that when the House of Lords Select Committee on the Assisted Dying For the Terminally Ill Bill visited Oregon they were informed repeatedly by medical witnesses that with more than 200 assisted suicide deaths there had been no complications. Professor The Lord McColl of Dulwich (Professor of Surgery, Guy’s Hospital, London) commented that if any surgeon or physician had said he did 200 procedures without any complications he would know there was something amiss.

“We come here and I am told there are no complications. There is something strange going on here.” [House of Lord Select Committee on the Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill Bill {HL}.Volume II: Evidence. Apr 4, 2005. p.334, Q.956.]

Looking at the DoH Abortion Statistics for 2010 the figures show a total of 287 complications from 189,574 abortions. That makes one complication for every 660 procedures, well over three times the number queried by Professor Lord McColl.

I reckon there is something even stranger going on in our neck of the woods, with the DoH and the rest of the pro-abortion lobby. However, it is no good us thinking that we will leave the protesting to the women who have suffered. Every one of us can do something. At the least we should protest to our MPs (and in letters to newspapers) about the total lack of care shown by the DoH in reporting only complications resulting from abortion up to the time of discharge from the place of termination. And I think we can also safely query – without looking foolish – just how many complications are overlooked at the time of discharge!

As I have already said, it is criminal negligence. No wonder they can claim such a low rate of complications.

Why Did 'Tibet Truth' Have To Blow The Whistle On Marie Stopes International?

So we come to the work of Marie Stopes International (MSI).

One of the most horrifying things to me is that MSI receives a grant from the Department of International Development (British tax payers’ money) for their overseas programme. Despite parliamentary questions in the Lords and the Commons, as well as Motions tabled by MPs and Peers in both Houses, nobody has ever denied (least of all, Marie Stopes) that the money from the British Taxpayer enables them to operate in China where the Government policy allows couples only one child. It is a policy which is imposed ruthlessly to the point that women are dragged from their homes to be forcibly aborted... and the men forcibly sterilised.

On the contrary, MSI arranged for a Parliamentary delegation of MPs and Peers to visit their work in China to show how well British Government money was being spent!

Even worse, MSI gave the red carpet treatment to Ms. Li Bin (see left), the Minister of China’s National Population and Family Planning Commission, when they invited her to this country as a Guest of Honour in April 2010. An Early Day Motion (EDM) tabled in the Commons by Labour MP, Jim Dobbin, drew attention to the visit (noting that MSI claimed to disapprove of force and to discourage it). The MPs called for Government grants to be withdrawn from the group and stated:

“… the one-child policy has caused untold suffering and misery to millions, including forced abortions and sterilisation with imprisonment for those fighting against the law... notes... a 20-day campaign in April in Puning County, where 9,559 adults were required for compulsory sterilisation with doctors working 20 hours a day to achieve the numbers... (and) some 1,300 people were confined by force because their relatives refused to submit to the surgery...”

A number of lawyers and civil rights workers have been imprisoned for seeking to defend women from compulsory abortion. In Shandong Province, in eastern China, Chen Guangcheng (see right), a blind legal expert who had spoken out against local abuses of population control policies was imprisoned for four years and three months. His lawyers complained that local officials had barred important defence witnesses as well as members of his family from the trial. When he finally emerged from prison he was kept under house arrest where he remains. Throughout the whole of his ordeal he and his wife have been subjected to violence from police and guards as is anybody who tries to visit him.

Ms. Li Bin’s red-carpet visit to Britain occurred at about the time Marie Stopes achieved huge publicity for its advertising campaign on prime time television deliberately aimed to reach the young (including under-age children). Yet, As the EDM noted, they were strangely and totally silent about their Honoured Guest. None of us would have known about the visit but for Tibet Truth, a human rights organisation protesting about the barbarities inflicted on the people of China and Tibet. You can read their report here. Moreover, MSI still remained silent – albeit that the bloodiness and cruelty of the Chinese policy might have seemed just a bit over the top even for Mrs. Marie Stopes (see left), their founder.

She was a dreadful woman. She was a racist and elitist. Marie Stopes and Margaret Sanger (see below, who set up International Planned Parenthood) loathed blacks, browns, Jews, Gypsies, the Irish, to name a few. Anglo-Saxons were, of course, acceptable... but only so long as they were not poor. They – that is the poor – were apt to be described as feckless, and it was made abundantly clear that everything possible should be done to stop them from breeding. 

Dear old Marie and Margaret actually visualised sort-of-benign concentration camps where all those groups (as mentioned above) they considered undesirable could be harboured if they insisted upon having children. Not surprisingly, they were both great admirers of Hitler and actually visited Germany to meet him and to show that they were great supporters of his fan club.

Like Hitler, they were both up to their eyes in eugenics and were utterly self-righteous about the elimination of the disabled – both before and after birth – with no questions allowed, let alone asked!

I am not suggesting that to-day Marie Stopes International workers drag women from their homes in China to forcibly abort them. Nonetheless they act in accordance with the Chinese Government’s Family Planning Programme to ensure couples do not have more than one child – unless of course they are among the elite in the Communist Party (“all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others”). I have no doubt whatsoever that Marie Stopes workers are very polite about it. Nonetheless it is coercive abortion and sterilisation to ensure that couples do not have more than one child.

One thing we do not know is to what extent Marie Stopes is involved in Gendercide in China (or come to that in India) where there is a huge demand to destroy girl babies. In both countries there is no state old-age-pension and traditionally boys stay with their parents when they marry bringing their brides home. Thus parents are assured of being cared for in old age. If they wish to ensure that they do not die of starvation, couples (having to contend with the One-Child Policy) do all they can to have a boy. Girls are aborted, abandoned or put to death at birth. If they survived, by tradition, they would simply go to the home of the husband’s parents where they would be expected to care for them as they became more frail. It is not simply because the Chinese (and Hindu-Indians) are besotted with the idea of having boys – as we claim in the West. It is for the sake of survival that parents opt for boy children.

However the destruction of women will be disastrous for the future of the Chinese nation – which would be in keeping with the ideas of racists and elitists. In my young days, the Chinese were referred to as the “yellow peril” and exaggerated propaganda of couples “breeding” was continually peddled, terrifying some people. The fact is that the men now outnumber women by about 37 million. According to a paper in the British Medical Journal (add link) the overall sex ratio for China is 126 boys for every 100 girls. Nine provinces have ratios of 160 boys for every 100 girls.

In a speech to the House of Lords (June 9, 2010) on the issue, Lord David Alton of Liverpool said:

“The Economist described this as ‘Gendercide’. This gender imbalance is a major force driving sexual trafficking of women and girls in Asia.”

There is no hope of the Chinese building up their society for at least the next few generations or so. At the risk of being accused of regarding women as breeding machines, we have to face reality: you can have a hundred men – but if you have only one woman you will have only one baby each year. You need women to have babies – and if you have destroyed your women, you will have no babies to replace the generation.

Moreover, you would think that those who really care about women would consider the multiplicity of effects the Chinese one-child policy is having on individuals, quite apart from sex trafficking. It is a widely known fact (accepted by most people, excepting the pro-abortion lobby) that women who have had abortions are at a higher risk of self harm and committing suicide. To be subjected to coercive or even forced abortion must be absolutely devastating for the women involved. Suicides in China are extremely high and, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO), China is the only country in the world where the rate of women committing suicide is higher than the rate for men. Wikipedia states when discussing the subject that:

“Suicide in the People's Republic of China is unique among countries of the world in that more women than men commit suicide each year: according to official government statistics, in 1999 the rate per 100,000 people was 13.0 for men and 14.8 for women... According to official government statistics the male rate (13.0 per 100,000 men per year) is lower than in many other countries, including some Western countries...”

The most recent World Health Organisation suicide table (giving the latest year available for different states as of 2009) gives the same rates for China per 100,000: 13.0 for men and 14.8 for women. Still the only country in the world with more women than men committing suicide.  The figures work out at approximately 500 women a day who end their lives.

As David Alton stated:

“This extraordinary suicide rate may well be related to the campaign of forced sterilisation and compulsory abortion.”

But nobody – least of all BPAS and MSI – seems minded to check.