Induced Abortion and the Increased Risk of Maternal Mortality.

After years of failure to obtain accurate statistics on maternal mortality, the United States noted a sharp increase in its maternal mortality rate with widening racial and ethnic disparities. The 2016 report shocked the nation by documenting a 26 percent increase in maternal mortality from 18.8/100,000 live births in 2000 to 23.8 in 2014. Suggested etiologies of this increase included artifact as a result of improved maternal death surveillance, incorrect use of SUMMARY: In Finland, where epidemiologic record linkage has been validated, the risk of death from legal induced abortion is reported to be almost four times greater than the risk of death from childbirth. It is difficult to do this comparison in the United States not only because prior induced abortion history is often not recorded for a pregnancy-related death but also because less than one-quarter of the states require health care providers to report abortion deaths for investigation. These omissions are important because mortality risk in pregnancies subsequent to abortion is increased due to abortion-induced morbidities such as preterm birth and abnormal placentation. Legal induced abortion is a root cause of the racial and ethnic disparity noted in maternal mortality. In the United States, the death rate from legal induced abortion performed at 18 weeks gestation is more than double that observed for women experiencing vaginal delivery.