Abortions performed in clinic offices are as safe as those performed at hospitals or in ambulatory surgical centers, according to a Tuesday report.
Published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), the study found no significant difference in abortion-related deaths or complications based on setting. The researchers obtained their results by examining reports from 50,311 induced abortions among 49,287 women and comparing the performance of ambulatory surgery center (ASC) abortions to office abortions.
Among the 49,287 women who had abortions, 3.33 percent had adverse complications. Only 11 percent of the study’s total number of women had abortions in ambulatory surgical centers, while 89 percent had abortions in office-based settings.
Sarah Roberts, one of the study’s authors, wrote a USA Today Tuesday op-ed positing that the study shows “laws requiring women to have abortions (including second-trimester abortions) at ASCs do not actually protect their safety.” She adds that “these laws are not based on research evidence.” (RELATED: Health Providers Sue Because Indiana Insists Only Doctors Can Perform Abortions)
“We found that abortion is safe in both ASCs and office-based settings and that there is no significant difference in the safety of abortions in the two settings,” she wrote.
Abortions that have occurred in abortion clinics rather than hospitals have more than once resulted in disaster, however. New York doctor Robert Rho let a patient bleed to death after a botched abortion in 2016. Obstetrician David Benjamin was convicted of murder after letting a patient bleed to death in 1995. Former Philadelphia abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell was also charged with three counts of first-degree murder and sentenced with life in prison in 2013 after years of medical malpractice and the murder of born-alive babies, according to The New York Times.
Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers have been pushing back against abortion restrictions, filing lawsuits in a number of states. Two health care providers and an abortion provider sued the state of Indiana on June 22 in an attempt to strike down its law, which states that all abortions after the first trimester be performed in a hospital or licensed surgical center.
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