Thursday, January 6, 2011

African study finds cheapest way to kill unborn babies

The following is a Jan. 6, 2011, news release from MCCL GO.

The Daily Independent newspaper in Lagos, Nigeria, yesterday reported on a study released in the African Journal of Reproductive Health stating that Manual Vacuum Aspiration (MVA) abortions are the "most cost-effective (abortion) option in Nigeria."

Numerous abortion advocates took part in the research including Delphine Hu of the Center for Health Decision Science, Harvard School of Public Health, and Daniel Grossman of Ibis Reproductive Health, Oakland, Calif.

"This new 'study' is simply the latest in a never-ending series of 'research' stories being planted in African newspapers to encourage the legalization of abortion," said Scott Fischbach, Executive Director of Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life Global Outreach (MCCL GO). "If the so-called 'researchers' would start helping women instead of pushing their abortion agenda, all Nigerians would be better off."

The news story repeats many factual inaccuracies about "unsafe abortions" in Africa and advocates the use of MVA abortions as the cheapest method, using a hand-held vacuum pump like those found here.

This "research" from Nigeria is in contrast to an earlier "finding" from Ghana that concluded that the use of the chemical misoprostol was the most cost-effective way to end an unborn child's life. The report goes on to state that both misoprostol and MVA are "ahead of dilation and curettage (D&C), which has been linked to many incidences of complications." The fact of the matter is that no abortion is safe for a woman. MVA, misoprostol and D&C abortions all have killed women.

"The provision of medical abortion with misoprostol in the place of unsafe abortion would save $1 million per 100,000 procedures. This is, however, a lower cost saving compared to the $2.5 million the researchers claim could be saved per 100,000 procedures using MVA," according to the Daily Independent. The entire text can be found here.

The agenda-driven study reduces the killing of unborn African children to a mere dollars-and-cents issue, and dismisses the genuine need of African women for greater access to good medical care.

"Nigeria, like all African nations, needs more and better health care, including improved obstetric care, more health care workers, better infrastructure, more readily available medicines and clean water — not abortion," Fischbach noted. "It's very sad that any funds were spent on such awful research. Clearly the last thing to benefit the health of Africans is to find the cheapest way to kill their unborn babies."

MCCL GO is a pro-life global outreach program of the Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life Education Fund with one goal: to save as many innocent lives as possible from the destruction of abortion. Learn more at www.mccl-go.org.