ABORTION MORBIDITY AND MORTALITY
The replacement of unsafe, illegal abortions by safer, legal procedures meant that women experienced fewer serious complications. Studies performed at the national, state and local levels revealed that hospitalization of women with complications from illegal abortion decreased gradually after Roe v. Wade.17 Estimates from the National Hospital Discharge Survey between 1970 and 1977 also demonstrated a general decline in the number of women treated for complications of illegal abortions; a disproportionate decrease occurred in the year of Roe v. Wade.18 Moreover, reports from individual hospitals on the East and West Coasts documented similar declines in abortion complications.19
Roe v. Wade also stimulated research into how to perform legal abortions even more safely. The main vehicle for assessing the outcomes of different abortion procedures was a multicenter cohort study—the Joint Program for the Study of Abortion (JPSA)20—which the Population Council began in 1970 and the CDC continued in 1971. Over seven years, the CDC collected detailed clinical data on more than 160,000 abortions induced legally through a variety of procedures in more than 30 U.S. institutions.
The study represented an early effort to practice evidence-based medicine, and its findings transformed the way in which legal abortions were performed in the 1970s. The researchers concluded that use of vacuum aspiration to terminate first-trimester pregnancies was faster and safer than dilation and sharp curettage, which was until then conventionally used to perform first-trimester abortion and to treat incomplete abortions.21 Consequently, suction curettage replaced sharp curettage as the main method of abortion: In 1970, suction and sharp curettage accounted for 54% and 46% of abortions, respectively;22 by 1998, suction curettage was used for nearly all abortions (96%).23
The JPSA findings also showed that dilation and evacuation (D&E) was safer than intra-amniotic instillation of abortifacients to induce abortion at 13 weeks' gestation or later;24 hence, the strict concept of "trimester threshold" that underlay the Roe v. Wade decision became irrelevant.25*After Roe v. Wade, JPSA concluded that surgical evacuation was the safest method of abortion after 12 weeks' gestation. The proportion of second-trimester abortions that were performed by D&E subsequently rose, to more than 90% by the 1990s.26 D&E not only has made abortion safer, but also has lowered costs, minimized inconvenience and made second-trimester abortion less traumatic emotionally for women.
According to JPSA, physicians' skills also improved during the 1970s. Before Roe v. Wade, abortion methods were generally not included in obstetrics and gynecology training.27 Gynecology residents typically encountered uterine evacuation only when performing sharp curettage on a nonpregnant woman for diagnostic purposes or when removing tissue after a spontaneous abortion. Even then, surgical techniques used in these two situations differed from those used in induced abortion. Roe v. Wade allowed physicians to learn not only the appropriate methods, but also how to manage associated complications. Improved training was one factor that helped to reduce abortion-related morbidity and mortality in the first decade of legal abortion. Other factors included development of more effective methods of local and general anesthesia, use of osmotic methods of cervical dilation such as laminaria tents (seaweed sticks), physicians' greater willingness to reevacuate a uterus that might not be empty and abandonment of hysterotomy for abortion.
As the availability of legally induced abortion increased, mortality due to abortion dropped sharply: The number of abortion-related deaths per million live births fell from nearly 40 in 1970 to eight in 1976.28 The trend was caused mainly by a decline in the absolute number of deaths from illegal abortion—especially after Roe v. Wade—from 39 in 1972 to two in 1976.29 After 1975, mortality due to legally induced abortion also fell—from more than three deaths per 100,000 abortions in 1975 to about one in 1976 and even fewer thereafter.30
The main reason for the reductions in both morbidity and mortality is that legally induced abortion is markedly safer than illegally induced abortion. Moreover, legal abortion is safer than the third choice available to pregnant women—continuing a pregnancy to term.31 For example, in 2000, 23% of births were abdominal (cesarean) deliveries, whereas fewer than 1% of suction curettage procedures required intra-abdominal surgery.32 Therefore, a woman carrying a pregnancy to term has several hundred times the risk of requiring major surgery of a woman undergoing suction abortion. Furthermore, in the 1970s, the risk of death related to induced abortion at 16 weeks' gestation or earlier was one-seventh that related to pregnancy and childbirth, even after adjustment for study year, age and race.33 Today, legal abortion is less likely than an injection of penicillin to cause death.
The Public Health Impact of Legal Abortion: 30 Years Later
So I am sorry, but I am going to have to disagree with you that legal abortion is not less safe than illegal abortions.
Enough with the personal comments and baiting. This is a zero tolerance warning. Any further comments about anything other than the topic, which is not each other or each other's posting history, will bring about thread bans and possibly infractions. 
