Facts are Important: Abortion is Healthcare

With approximately 57,000 members, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) upholds the highest standards of clinical practice and continuing education for women's health doctors in the United States. Medical school, clinical practice, and continuing medical education all involve abortion treatment.

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Through its Council on Resident Education in Obstetrics and Gynecology, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists is dedicated to advancing education and training for ob-gyn residents, which includes abortion as one of the educational objectives in the Core Curriculum in Obstetrics and Gynecology, 10th Edition, which helps define competency in graduate medical education. Abortion is also included in the 2015 Bulletin for the Oral Examination for Basic Certification in Onset

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The ACOG's Guidelines for Women's Health Care, A Resource Manual, 4th Edition, which covers the complete range of clinical and managerial concerns linked to women's health care, includes abortion among the Gynecologic Care services. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (ACOG) has released various evidence-based clinical practice recommendations and official statements regarding abortion. The following is an excerpt from ACOG's November 2017 Statement of Policy:

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Abortion via induction is an important part of women's health care. Abortion decisions, like other medical decisions, should be made by patients in collaboration with their health care professionals and without excessive outside influence. Women seeking abortions, like other patients, are entitled to privacy, decency, respect, and support. A woman's decision to undergo an abortion is influenced or necessitated by a number of reasons. Contraceptive failure, hurdles to contraceptive usage and availability, rape, incest, intimate partner abuse, fetal deformities, sickness during pregnancy, and exposure to teratogenic drugs are only a few of them.

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Pregnancy issues such as placental abruption, placenta previa hemorrhage, preeclampsia or eclampsia, and cardiac or renal disorders might be so severe that abortion is the only way to save a woman's life or maintain her health.

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Where abortion is illegal or severely restricted, women turn to dangerous methods to end unwanted pregnancies, such as self-inflicted abdominal and bodily trauma, ingestion of dangerous chemicals, self-medication with a variety of drugs, and reliance on unqualified abortion providers. Today, approximately 21 million women obtain unsafe, illegal abortions each year, and complications from these unsafe procedures account for approximately 13% of all maternal deaths. Nearly 50,000 maternal fatalities occur each year.

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Scientific reality and evidence-based medicine are the finest foundations for sound health policy. In the patient-physician interaction, the finest health care is offered without political involvement. Political ideology should not take the place of women and their doctors making personal decisions.