Wow.
Via HuffPo:
When we talk about procedures and treatments that prevent heart attacks, we call it cardiac care. Children receive pediatric care, and anyone who takes ibuprofen is dealing with pain care.
So why would anyone object to calling a legal medical procedure that one in three women will utilize in their lifetime abortion care?
After all, that’s what it is — essential, effective medical care. Let’s take a break from the political side of the discussion about choice and look at it from a different point of view. How do birth control and abortion care improve the public health?
Each year, about one million infants die on the same day they’re born. This includes about 11,300 infants in the United States. That’s 30 infant deaths each and every day! If that sounds like a lot, it’s because it is.
According to Save the Children, the U.S. has the highest first-day infant mortality rate of any country in the industrialized world. This is 50 percent more first-day deaths than all the other industrialized countries combined.
We have a premature birth crisis in this country that can be directly linked to our failure to provide adequate contraception and abortion care. About half of pregnancies in the U.S. each year are unintended, and for those women who carry their pregnancies to term (more than half do), the prognosis is anything but great. They not only experience higher rates of premature birth, but also are more likely to have inadequate prenatal care, low birth weight and small size infants, maternal depression and anxiety.
From a public health point of view, abortion care, no less than contraception, is an essential measure to prevent the heartbreak of infant mortality, and to prevent another tragedy as well — maternal death.