Maternal Deaths Dropped 70% After Abortion Banned in Chile

A Chilean medical researcher published a landmark study on the connection between the availability of abortion and maternal health. He found legal abortion does not contribute to maternal health and showed this using voluminous data from the extensive medical history of Chile.

The Alan Guttmacher Institute, founded by Planned Parenthood, attempted to debunk the study and some say has harmed its own credibility in the process.

Guttmacher asserts that the Chilean paper was not consistent with most of the literature published in peer-reviewed medical journals. The researcher, Dr. Elard Koch, an epidemiologist on the faculty of the University of Chile, countered that the peer-reviewed studies are themselves flawed since they rely largely on unscientific data such as surveys. In contrast, Koch said his own study relies exclusively on scientific methods and exceptionally high quality country data.
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