Abortion Facilities Are Less Regulated Than Tattoo Parlors

An 18-year-old woman died this year after complications from her 22-week abortion at a Planned Parenthood in Fort Collins, Colorado. A recent testimony given to the state’s Health and Human Services committee noted she lost a significant amount of blood — a known risk of later abortions — and that she was transported too late for the emergency care she needed. She deserved prompt diagnosis and critical care in her moment of need.

But blue-state legislators, instead of showing concern and protecting women from preventable complications and deaths, are more interested in pushing abortion access than they are in ensuring women’s safety.

Shamefully, Colorado legislators not only rejected recent legislation that would have implemented common-sense public health and safety standards for facilities performing second and third-trimester abortions, they also shockingly claimed the woman would have died of similar complications in childbirth.

As a board-certified OB-GYN, I can attest that this “medical” conclusion is doubtful since amniotic fluid embolus (AFE), the condition they speculated about, is a unique occurrence in a specific clinical situation. Furthermore, their refusal to truly understand the facts surrounding this young woman’s death distracts from the disastrous risks of unregulated, uninspected, unlicensed dangerous second and third-trimester abortions enshrined into Colorado law.

Tragically, media reaction to this case has been virtually non-existent. When women die in states with any abortion limits on the books, the media is quick to highlight their stories, but when women die where there is unrestricted abortion with no safety protections whatsoever, we hear crickets. The media’s complicity and silence leave many unanswered questions about what more could be done to spare lives and whether there are safety inadequacies that need to be corrected.

This failure to investigate and report the facts puts women across the country in harm’s way, like the woman who recently filed suit against an abortionist who botched her abortion in Illinois, leaving more than half her baby inside her. Her case is yet another example of the life-threatening risks of abortions under insufficient regulation.

As both an OB-GYN and a former abortionist, I know firsthand how complicated and risky second and third-trimester abortions are. Abortion advocates frequently cite statistics to reassure women of the safety of the procedure, but they are primarily based on first-trimester abortions that are completed in a matter of minutes. Once a woman is past the 12 to 13-week window, however, abortion risks increase exponentially as the baby and the uterus grow.

In the second trimester, abortionists have little room for error. They must delicately balance completing these complex procedures quickly to minimize the loss of blood and performing them precisely to minimize the risk of perforating the woman’s uterus, bowels, or bladder. In the third trimester, abortions are multi-day labor inductions with at least the risks of preterm births, which are only performed in regulated hospitals.

Hospital labor and delivery units are subject to even more rigorous regulation and inspection, including inspections by the Joint Commission and Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services. These measures are commonsense and exactly what anyone would expect from safe healthcare providers.

Even tattoo parlors are required to prove basic first-aid capabilities and sterilization procedures; yet abortion facilities aren’t even held to these standards.

Although we cannot rewrite the past, we can save future lives. Colorado must investigate this tragic death to prevent further women from suffering a similar fate, just as hospitals, ambulatory surgery centers, and free-standing birthing centers do in keeping with maternal mortality standards when they sadly lose patient lives. And we must introduce regulation and oversight of abortion facilities to provide women with the basic safeguards that exist for them in all other maternity care.

Women should never have to put their lives in danger in an unregulated, Wild West landscape of abortion facilities, especially facilities that offer inherently risky second and third-trimester abortions. We must not waste another moment in working for a safer and healthier future for American women.

Dr. Catherine Wheeler is a board-certified OB/GYN and president of the Colorado chapter of the American Association of Pro-life Obstetricians and Gynecologists.