By Paul Tuns

Operation Rescue released a video documenting 67 abortion related emergencies and one maternal death in 2020, which they say “is just the tip of a very nasty iceberg when it comes to the number of women who suffer serious complications from abortions.”

The new video, released Feb. 16, reports that 67 medical emergencies took place at American abortion facilities in 2020, including one case in which a woman died. That number is lower than the 100 medical emergencies Operation Rescue documented in 2019, but the decrease might reflect the impact COVID-19 had on abortion practices, including temporary abortion closures as part of mandatory shutdowns but also stay-at-home orders that prevented pro-lifers from witnessing and reporting incidents.

Of the 67 medical emergencies documented in 2020, 30 involved Planned Parenthood abortion facilities.

Operation Rescue obtained information about the cases through 911 records and eye-witness accounts. In 40 per cent of cases, the complication was unknown. In 20 cases there was hemorrhaging while in six cases there was uterine perforation or internal injuries. Other serious complications included three cases of possible heart attack or stroke, three cases of severe pain, two cases involved sedation overdoses, two cases of unconsciousness, and one life-threatening complication from the abortion pill. There were six cases of sickness or vomiting and two seizures.

There was one confirmed maternal death and one incomplete abortion.

Operation Rescue president Troy Newman said the report “is just the tip of a very nasty iceberg when it comes to the number of women who suffer serious complications from abortions.” Newman explained that “what our data does show is that abortion is not safe, that women suffer horribly on a regular basis from life-threatening abortion injuries, and that sometimes women even die from botched abortions.” He continued: “This is the ugly truth about abortion that Planned Parenthood and the rest of the Abortion Cartel do not want the public to know about.”

Operation Rescue hasfull reports of abortion-related emergencies at Abortion911.com.

The full extent of abortion-related complications is not known because of chronic under-reporting. Only 28 states require abortion facilities to report abortion-related complications.

The website AfterAbortion.org reports, “National statistics on abortion show that 10 percent of women undergoing induced abortion suffer from immediate complications, of which one-fifth (2 per cent) were considered major.” The website lists the major complications as “infection, excessive bleeding, embolism, ripping or perforation of the uterus, anesthesia complications, convulsions, hemorrhage, cervical injury, and endotoxic shock.” It also highlights a study that followed nearly 1200 hospital abortions closely, which found that more than a quarter of women developed infections afterward.

Joyce Arthur of the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada (ARCC) claims that “complication risk” is less than one per cent. However, a 2020 ARCC report says that among the 19,019 reported hospital abortions (not including Quebec), the complication rate is more than double that. But even that is under-reporting abortion-related complications in Canada.

In 2012, pro-life blogger Patricia Maloney reported at Run with Life that statistics from Echo, a government-run women’s health initiative in Ontario, illustrate that among the 95,859 hospital abortions reported in Ontario from 2002/03-2008/09, 6.95 per cent of “same-day” abortions had complications including nearly re-admission, same-day surgery, and, the majority, to the emergency department. Furthermore, of 1,624 women who had “in-patient” hospital abortions over that same time, 7.7 per cent had complications that required re-admission, same-day surgery, or a trip to the emergency department.