Larry Little’s June 14 letter, “Religious doctrine has much leeway,” about Catholic hospitals and abortion, stated: “If abortions won’t be performed at Catholic hospitals to save the life of the mother, that would include and threaten a huge population that aren’t Catholic.” I submit the following from the Centers for Disease Control website.
“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Pregnancy Mortality Surveillance System reported a higher number for pregnancy-related deaths for 2006-2007, the most recent statistics. It found that 1,294 deaths that occurred within a year of pregnancy termination (including births) were pregnancy-related.” Please note that this number includes all deaths pregnancy-related but there are no numbers referencing how many may have been prevented by an abortion.
As a point of reference, 83,957 people died of auto accidents during the same period, the point being that Little’s “huge population” statement is grossly inaccurate, even if abortion would have saved all of those pregnancy-related deaths.
The impact on hospital accessibility and related deaths if Catholic-affiliated hospitals are forced to close due to intrusion into the constitutional rights of these hospitals would result in truly “huge” numbers of deaths following those closures.
