Banning Abortion Won’t Help Contain COVID-19: We Did The Math
By Katie Lotz
Collage by Primcess
In the midst of a pandemic, lawmakers and medical professionals alike are trying to find ways to prepare our society and healthcare system for the inevitable burden approaching in the near future. Unfortunately, some states are attempting to use this health care crisis as a way to attack reproductive rights, specifically abortions.
Texas and Ohio have both required that all elective or nonessential surgeries must be postponed in the face of the COVID-19 crisis, a mandate that seems reasonable and responsible at first glance. After all, the more hospital beds, ventilators, and health care professionals that can be freed up to meet the rising demand of COVID patients the better. However, a closer look at these state’s mandates reveals a more sinister intention in the agenda of these lawmakers: abortion where the mother’s life is not in danger is included as a “nonessencial surgury”.
For people who are on the fence on the issue of abortion, this may seem like a tricky issue. However, after doing the math, it becomes clear that banning abortion in the midst of a health care crisis is not in the best interests of the American people. Not only is it a direct attack on reproductive rights, it will have a direct and negative impact on our already overloaded healthcare system.
A regular, surgical aboriton is an outpatient procedure that takes up a hospital bed for less than a quarter of a day. According to the UCSF health department, a surgical abortion takes around 3 hours for a patient who is less than 12 weeks from their last menstral cycle, and up to 6 hours for someone who is up to 14 weeks from their last period. In addition to this, regular, safely performed abortions rarely result in complications that require hospitalization. In fact, a study by the BMC Medical Journal found that only 0.11% of abortions result in complications that require emergency medical attention, accounting for roughly 0.01% of emergency room visits for women ages 15-49.
Clearly, the risk and burden on the healthcare system associated with abortion is incredibly low, and pales in comparison to the amount of medical attention required for pregnancy and labor related health care needs. Women are recommended to have regular prenatal checkups throughout their pregnancies, and American women spend an average of two days in the hospital after giving birth. In addition to the obvious medical attention required for a healthy, routine pregnancy and labor, it should be addressed that the US has among the highest rates of maternal mortality in developed countries, and that risk is significantly higher for women of color. As of 2019, according to 2016 CDC data, there are about 17 deaths per 100,000 live births in the US; this same research tells us that for every maternal death, roughly 84 women experience severe and dangerous complications related to pregnancy. Even more alarmingly, this research cannot account for the number of pregnant people who will suffer complications as a result of the COVID-19 virus; it is already known that pregnant people are considered to be a higher risk population for this disease.
When comparing these numbers, it becomes abundantly clear that banning abortions and increading the number of unwanted pregnancies in the US does not result in a lighter strain on the healthcare system in the face of a pandemic; it does the exact opposite. The risk and hospital resources allocated to an abortion procedure versus those associated with pregnancy clearly show that abortion is not a larger strain on the health care system. This simply proves what we already know: lawmakers are using a global health crisis as an excuse to push through controversial policies.
Aside from the numbers, the politics, the logistics, the bottom line is that aboriton is not nonessential. It is not elective, and it cannot be delayed. Women are not flippant in their decisions; they are not carelessly terminating pregnancies at the drop of a hat. Abortion is a personal decision between a woman and her healthcare provider, and politicians should not use a health care crisis as an excuse to strip that decision from women. Regardless of anyone's stance on abortion, the numbers don’t lie: banning abortion during a health care crisis will only worsen the strain on our health care system. We cannot afford, now more than ever, to be silent in the face of deceitful politics and the selfish and irresponsible decisions of our lawmakers.
Sources:
https://www.ucsfhealth.org/treatments/surgical-abortion-first-trimester
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6000974/
https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.1001972#