Nearly three million children die every year during labor and delivery or in the weeks just before birth, more than all deaths by HIV/AIDS. The UN does not even count them. A new study in the prestigious medical journal Lancet says abortion politics is one reason why.
About 98% of the 2.6 million yearly stillbirths occur in low- and middle-income countries, mostly due to complications during delivery. One of the reasons stillbirth remains “in the shadows,” is because of pro-abortion sentiments, the report says. The World Health Organization (WHO) does not count unborn children who die before 28 weeks as stillborn, even though stillbirth of viable 22-week babies is common in the developed world. Shoring the data gap could lead to a 40% increase in the number of recorded stillbirths.
Lancet’s editor, Richard Horton, says not counting these children denies parents “the gravitas their grief demanded,” but “when one considers that in many countries abortion is allowed up to and sometimes beyond 24 weeks, one can begin to understand authorities’ reluctance to pursue the point.” Horton nevertheless finds no dilemma: “Every woman has the right to a safe abortion…but she also has the right to have the death of her [wanted] baby counted.”
One of Horton’s strongest adversaries in his quest to advance better data has been the pro-abortion lobby. They opposed him last year when he published an independent study challenging WHO data and methodology on maternal health statistics they had been using to promote abortion.
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