# just how many "life saving" abortions are there? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [September 10, 2010, 3:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-how-many-life-saving-abortions-are-there/553263 "2010-09-10T03:58:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Zoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a4c791/32.png) [@Zoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zoe)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2010, 2:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-how-many-life-saving-abortions-are-there/553263/21 "2010-09-11T02:00:13Z")
> [@](#): > > **Nava** “Risk to maternal health” is an euphemism for “high risk of maternal death”. Cos you can’t say death, you know, it’s a bad word. “Risk to maternal health” can include risk to maternal mental health. ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2010, 2:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-how-many-life-saving-abortions-are-there/553263/22 "2010-09-11T02:10:59Z")
If I hadn’t chosen to have an emergency c-section for my legally-in-most-states-not-viable fetus, then I would have had to have a lifesaving abortion\*. My placenta was infected, which required high doses of IV antibiotics. Meantime my blood pressure was going down fast and my heartrate up fast as I was bleeding out my placenta and my body was trying to compensate for the lost fluid (otherwise known as “going into shock”). The fetus had to come out, NOW, one way or t’other. We elected to try a c-section and see if they could save her. They did. \*Although, to be fair, they didn’t call it that. Because this was a \*wanted \*pregnancy, they phrased it as “We can induce a vaginal delivery, but the baby won’t survive it.” Abortion by any other name - dilate the cervix and yank out a dead fetus. ---
**Author:** ![ruadh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/d2c977/32.png) [@ruadh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ruadh)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2010, 6:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-how-many-life-saving-abortions-are-there/553263/23 "2010-09-11T06:29:29Z")
> [@Annie-Xmas](#): > > I’ve read that only 90% of people agree with an abortion to save a woman’s life. I guess the other 10% don’t care if the woman dies. To be fair, and I’m not normally in the habit of defending rabid pro-lifers, but there are some who simply don’t believe an abortion is _ever_ needed to save a woman’s life. They get around the examples posted in this thread through a rhetorical device which says that in those cases what the woman is having is a “medical intervention with the indirect result of terminating the pregnancy”, rather than an abortion per se. You know and I know that this is a fudge. But they seem to really believe it. OTOH, there probably are some who genuinely don’t care if the woman dies. I don’t think it’s as high as 10% though. ---
**Author:** ![salinqmind](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/3ec8ea/32.png) [@salinqmind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/salinqmind)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2010, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-how-many-life-saving-abortions-are-there/553263/24 "2010-09-11T22:54:22Z")
> [@dracoi](#): > > > [@Annie-Xmas](#): > > > > I’ve read that only 90% of people agree with an abortion to save a woman’s life. I guess the other 10% don’t care if the woman dies. > > The people in that 10% simply don’t see the difference between killing someone for a liver and killing someone for the health of the mother. For them, the unborn child is as much a “someone” as the mother or the liver patient and just as deserving of legal protection. > > (For the record, I’m in the 90%) THIS makes me extremely angry every time I hear about it. It’s like that fetus is fated to be, say, the next Bill Gates and is doubly precious because it’s so young n’ innocent. The mother, the whore who had sex, is garbage, a seed pod for the more superior unborn fetus. That’s your Catholics, and yes, I have heard them actually say ‘save the child! the mother should die for her child!’ Breed and/or die. ---
**Author:** ![UDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecae2f/32.png) [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2010, 2:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-how-many-life-saving-abortions-are-there/553263/25 "2010-09-13T02:04:12Z")
> [@salinqmind](#): > > THIS makes me extremely angry every time I hear about it. It’s like that fetus is fated to be, say, the next Bill Gates and is doubly precious because it’s so young n’ innocent. The mother, the whore who had sex, is garbage, a seed pod for the more superior unborn fetus. That’s your Catholics, and yes, I have heard them actually say ‘save the child! the mother should die for her child!’ Breed and/or die. In fairness to Catholics, this is a gross distortion of the Catholic position. The Catholic understanding of the significance of the unborn child has nothing to do with its youth, innocence or Gatesian qualities. It could be a moral certainty that it is destined to be the next Adolf Hitler; it would make no difference to the Catholic analysis of the issues. Similarly the Catholic position does not depend at all on the mother being a whore, garbage or a seed pod. By all means critique the Catholic position. But your critique will probably be more effective if you have some grasp of what the Catholic position is. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2010, 6:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-how-many-life-saving-abortions-are-there/553263/26 "2010-09-13T06:23:50Z")
> [@salinqmind](#): > > > [@dracoi](#): > > > > The people in that 10% simply don’t see the difference between killing someone for a liver and killing someone for the health of the mother. For them, the unborn child is as much a “someone” as the mother or the liver patient and just as deserving of legal protection. > > > > (For the record, I’m in the 90%) > > THIS makes me extremely angry every time I hear about it. It’s like that fetus is fated to be, say, the next Bill Gates and is doubly precious because it’s so young n’ innocent. The mother, the whore who had sex, is garbage, a seed pod for the more superior unborn fetus. That’s your Catholics, and yes, I have heard them actually say ‘save the child! the mother should die for her child!’ Breed and/or die. Please stop insulting my aunt, thank you. Her position was based on “I have already lived; this child has not”. They are both in fine health 30 years later, but only because she refused to have “the procedure” and strongarmed the doctors into waiting to induce until the baby was viable. And if that had meant her death, she would have been fine with that. Pro-choice means respecting ALL choices. Including the choice to use reproduction control, the choice to abort and even, _gasp_ the choice not to abort. ---
**Author:** ![AboutAsWeirdAsYouCanGet](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/22d042/32.png) [@AboutAsWeirdAsYouCanGet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AboutAsWeirdAsYouCanGet)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2010, 6:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-how-many-life-saving-abortions-are-there/553263/27 "2010-09-13T06:37:18Z")
Maggie, :smack: Forgot about etopic pregnancies!!! rudah, yes. Pro-lifers have distorted the meaning of abortion. To them it’s TEH EVIBL proceedure that KILLS BABIES! It’s simply prematurely ending a pregnancy. Abortions are done on babies that have died in utero ALL THE TIME! And most abortions are done at a time when the fetus absolutly cannot survive outside the womb at ALL! ---
**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2010, 8:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-how-many-life-saving-abortions-are-there/553263/28 "2010-09-13T08:13:07Z")
> [@AboutAsWeirdAsYouCanGet](#): > > Abortions are done on babies that have died in utero ALL THE TIME! If the fetus isn’t alive anymore, isn’t it a D&C rather than abortion? The [first definition](http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/abortion) of abortion includes killing the fetus… ---
**Author:** ![UDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecae2f/32.png) [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2010, 8:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-how-many-life-saving-abortions-are-there/553263/29 "2010-09-13T08:41:16Z")
> [@elfkin477](#): > > > [@AboutAsWeirdAsYouCanGet](#): > > > > Abortions are done on babies that have died in utero ALL THE TIME! > > If the fetus isn’t alive anymore, isn’t it a D&C rather than abortion? The [first definition](http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/abortion) of abortion includes killing the fetus… And even if you classify it as an abortion, I doubt that it is one to which pro-lifers have any objection. ---
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2010, 8:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-how-many-life-saving-abortions-are-there/553263/30 "2010-09-13T08:49:57Z")
> [@code\_grey](#): > > the issue of protecting the life of the mother comes up in discussion pretty often, but how common is something like that, in terms of numbers and percentage of the total abortions in America? The issue of how third trimester abortions are coded as “life threatening” is a contentious subject. Per the other dopers notes here pregnancy can be quite hazardous in some cases, but there are those pro lifers who think that a large majority of third trimester abortions are not due to genuine physical health hazard reasons, but are the result of a delayed decisions by desperate pregnant women, and that a variety of fig leaves are constructe to allow these non-life threatening abortion be coded as necessary for health reasons. I’m personally pro-choice, but a lot of the testimony of docs who did third trimester abortions seems to corroborate the pro-life claims that these are often not “medically necessary”, so statistics on how many were done for true “life saving” reasons might be open to question. ---
**Author:** ![salinqmind](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/3ec8ea/32.png) [@salinqmind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/salinqmind)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2010, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-how-many-life-saving-abortions-are-there/553263/31 "2010-09-13T17:26:08Z")
> [@UDS](#): > > > [@salinqmind](#): > > > > THIS makes me extremely angry every time I hear about it. It’s like that fetus is fated to be, say, the next Bill Gates and is doubly precious because it’s so young n’ innocent. The mother, the whore who had sex, is garbage, a seed pod for the more superior unborn fetus. That’s your Catholics, and yes, I have heard them actually say ‘save the child! the mother should die for her child!’ Breed and/or die. > > In fairness to Catholics, this is a gross distortion of the Catholic position. The Catholic understanding of the significance of the unborn child has nothing to do with its youth, innocence or Gatesian qualities. It could be a moral certainty that it is destined to be the next Adolf Hitler; it would make no difference to the Catholic analysis of the issues. Similarly the Catholic position does not depend at all on the mother being a whore, garbage or a seed pod. > > By all means critique the Catholic position. But your critique will probably be more effective if you have some grasp of what the Catholic position is. Feh. OK, leave OUT the ‘next Bill Gates’ and ‘the seed pod mother’, both statements I have heard from Catholics with my own ears. A religion that thinks it’s cool a real live woman, with an actual life, maybe with a husband and other children, should die in favor of the unborn fetus? Fuck that. I’m not going to argue, this is one of the MANY reasons I’m not a Catholic any more. Fuck them. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2010, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-how-many-life-saving-abortions-are-there/553263/32 "2010-09-13T17:33:53Z")
> [@astro](#): > > I’m personally pro-choice, but a lot of the testimony of docs who did third trimester abortions seems to corroborate the pro-life claims that these are often not “medically necessary”, so statistics on how many were done for true “life saving” reasons might be open to question. Testimony isn’t a survey. In every single court case where someone is arguing the pro-choice/pro-life issue, one side will have a doctor saying that he’s only ever performed an abortion when he had true fear of the mother dying. The other side will have a doctor saying that he’s rarely felt that way. If you tally up all of those responses, it’s going to seem like they’re split 50/50 because, in every court case there’s one of each. ---
**Author:** ![Kolga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/e56c9b/32.png) [@Kolga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kolga)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2010, 7:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-how-many-life-saving-abortions-are-there/553263/33 "2010-09-13T19:59:24Z")
> [@astro](#): > > I’m personally pro-choice, but a lot of the testimony of docs who did third trimester abortions seems to corroborate the pro-life claims that these are often not “medically necessary”, so statistics on how many were done for true “life saving” reasons might be open to question. There were three doctors in America that did third-trimester abortions, until George Tiller was murdered in his church. Currently, there are two. I worked for one of them. In order for our clinic to perform a third-trimester abortion, the doctor for whom I worked required a referral from the woman’s treating OB/GYN verifying, with evidence (ultrasound, genetic test results, lab tests, etc.) that the pregnancy would kill the mother, the child, or both, prior to full term. We did not take walk-in appointments for third-trimester terminations, we did not see ANY women coming in with a “oh, I thought I wanted the baby, but now that I’m going to give birth tomorrow I changed my mind so kill my baby, please,” we did not perform third-trimester abortions due to mental health reasons. They were solely and exclusively for documented and verified life-threatening reasons, or genetic abnormalities that were inimical to life. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-how-many-life-saving-abortions-are-there/553263.md?page=1)