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New study: complication rate for chemical abortions is 5.2%

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Story from Life News.

Excerpt:

The UCSF study, “Incidence of Emergency Department Visits and Complications After Abortion,” is based on a recent study of California Medicaid recipients. It appeared in the December 8, 2014, edition of the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology.

California is one of the states that pays for the abortions of women enrolled in Medicaid. The study looked at the billing data from 50,273 Medi-Cal patients who had 54,911 abortions in 2009-2010.

[…]Nearly 8% (or between one in 12 and one in 13) of women showed up at the clinic or a local Emergency Room (ER) seeking some service within six weeks of their abortions. Some of those were eliminated from further study because billing records appeared to show that they came in for some service unrelated to the abortion. (These were not specified, but this could be something like smashing a finger in the car door, coming down with the flu, etc.)

But even pulling these out and other “complications not validated,” one is left with a substantial number of women dealing with medical problems resulting from their “safe” abortions.

On the billing records of those women returning to the clinic or going to the ER, they found women hemorrhaging, dealing with infections, uterine perforations – the sort of problems we’re supposed to think were relics of the early days following the Roe v. Wade decision when abortionists were just learning their craft.

A surprising number of these were related to the new chemical or “medication” abortion method that was supposed to offer women a safer alternative to surgical abortion.

There were nearly four times as many surgical abortions (34,755 first trimester, 8,837 2nd trimester or later) tracked by the study as there were chemical abortions. (11,319). Yet there were more identified complications associated with the chemical method (588) than they were for the surgical ones (438 for first trimester, 130 for 2nd or later) combined.

The complication rate for chemical abortions was 5.2%, versus complication rates of 1.3% for first trimester suction aspiration abortions and 1.5% for second trimester or later methods. This would make chemical abortions four times riskier than early surgical ones and more than three times less safe than a second or third trimester procedure.

This is hardly the “advance” or “improvement” that women were promised when the government was asked to approve RU-486 more than a decade ago.

I didn’t really want to take Life News’ word for this, so I looked up the study.

They’re right:

RESULTS: A total of 54,911 abortions among 50,273 fee-for-service Medi-Cal beneficiaries were identified. Among all abortions, 1 of 16 (6.4%, n=3,531) was followed by an ED visit within 6 weeks but only 1 of 115 (0.87%, n=478) resulted in an ED visit for an abortion-related complication. Approximately 1 of 5,491 (0.03%, n=15) involved ambulance transfers to EDs on the day of the abortion. The major complication rate was 0.23% (n=126, 1/436): 0.31% (n=35) for medication abortion, 0.16% (n=57) for first-trimester aspiration abortion, and 0.41% (n=34) for second-trimester or later procedures. The total abortion-related complication rate including all sources of care including EDs and the original abortion facility was 2.1% (n=1,156): 5.2% (n=588) for medication abortion, 1.3% (n=438) for first-trimester aspiration abortion, and 1.5% (n=130) for second-trimester or later procedures.

In other posts, I talked about the other risks associated with abortion.

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Lots of candidates for Boehner replacement in list of Cromnibus NO-votes

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Here’s the list of people who voted against the CRomnibus trillion-dollar spending bill that Obama supports.

  1. Wittman, R. (R-VA)
  2. Williams, R. (R-TX)
  3. Webster, D. (R-FL)
  4. Weber, R. (R-TX)
  5. Stutzman, M. (R-IN)
  6. Smith, L. (R-TX)
  7. Smith, C. (R-NJ)
  8. Sensenbrenner, F. (R-WI)
  9. Scott, A. (R-GA)
  10. Schweikert, D. (R-AZ)
  11. Sanford, M. (R-SC)
  12. Salmon, M. (R-AZ)
  13. Rohrabacher, D. (R-CA)
  14. Rogers, M. (R-AL)
  15. Posey, B. (R-FL)
  16. Pompeo, M. (R-KS)
  17. Poe, T. (R-TX)
  18. Perry, S. (R-PA)
  19. Olson, P. (R-TX)
  20. Neugebauer, R. (R-TX)
  21. Mulvaney, M. (R-SC)
  22. Miller, J. (R-FL)
  23. Meadows, M. (R-NC)
  24. McKinley, D. (R-WV)
  25. McClintock, T. (R-CA)
  26. McAllister, V. (R-LA)
  27. Massie, T. (R-KY)
  28. Marchant, K. (R-TX)
  29. Lummis, C. (R-WY)
  30. Lankford, J. (R-OK)
  31. Lamborn, D. (R-CO)
  32. LaMalfa, D. (R-CA)
  33. Labrador, R. (R-ID)
  34. King, S. (R-IA)
  35. Jordan, J. (R-OH)
  36. Jones, W. (R-NC)
  37. Johnson, S. (R-TX)
  38. Hurt, R. (R-VA)
  39. Huelskamp, T. (R-KS)
  40. Griffith, H. (R-VA)
  41. Gowdy, T. (R-SC)
  42. Gosar, P. (R-AZ)
  43. Gohmert, L. (R-TX)
  44. Garrett, S. (R-NJ)
  45. Franks, T. (R-AZ)
  46. Flores, B. (R-TX)
  47. Fleming, J. (R-LA)
  48. Farenthold, B. (R-TX)
  49. Duncan, J. (R-TN)
  50. Duncan, J. (R-SC)
  51. DesJarlais, S. (R-TN)
  52. DeSantis, R. (R-FL)
  53. Crawford, R. (R-AR)
  54. Cotton, T. (R-AR)
  55. Conaway, K. (R-TX)
  56. Clawson, C. (R-FL)
  57. Rice, T. (R-SC)
  58. Burgess, M. (R-TX)
  59. Broun, P. (R-GA)
  60. Brooks, M. (R-AL)
  61. Bridenstine, J. (R-OK)
  62. Brat, D. (R-VA)
  63. Blackburn, M. (R-TN)
  64. Bentivolio, K. (R-MI)
  65. Barton, J. (R-TX)
  66. Bachmann, M. (R-MN)
  67. Amash, J. (R-MI)

The names in bold are the ones I’d like to see named as Speaker of the House instead of John Boehner. He has to go, along with Mitch McConnell. It’s just too much now. They won the election in 2014 and now it’s time to do what they were elected to do. If they can’t do that, then put in someone as Speaker who can.

A couple of stories on this from Breitbart.

First one:

Representative Louie Gohmert (R-TX) said that conservatives in the House heard “not one word” from House GOP leadership on compromises to make changes to the cromnibus in order to get conservatives to vote for it even though “we were willing to work with them to compromise” on Thursday’s “Hannity” on the Fox News Channel.
“There was no encouragement to conservatives. The Speaker and Majority Leader, these folks knew there’s money for abortion, money for the EPA to hurt states like Texas, Arizona. There’s just all kinds of money in there for things we don’t support. and, Sean, you and I know some of us had gone to our leadership and said, ‘look, we can do this very easily. Let’s do it together with conservatives. That’s the bulk of our conference, don’t make them take a wrong vote. Let’s fund everything for two months. Let us have a vote on defunding Obama’s amnesty, and we’ll even agree that the Senate can take it out if they take the hard vote to do that and let it go from there to the president.’ We were willing to work with them to compromise, and not one word, as you know, the calls went to the white house when in a time that the speaker needed votes he turned to somebody that he really identifies with, the president and liberal Democrats and got them to help him pass this vote” he stated.

Gohmert is one of my favorite congressmen – I hear him all the time on the FRC’s Washington Weekly podcast.

Second one:

Immediately following the House of Representatives’ passage of the so-called CR/omnibus spending bill, Reps. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) and Steve King (R-IA) reacted to the vote.
Bachmann told host Sean Hannity a decision had been made months ago on amnesty, despite efforts to use this bill to take on President Barack Obama’s executive amnesty effort.

“I think the reason why they did it is because the political establishment made a decision months ago this they were going to get amnesty,” she said. “And they were going to pay for amnesty. The executive amnesty is what they didn’t like — President Obama doing it alone. But they wanted amnesty. Let’s not mince words. Both Republican and Democrats, the leadership, the establishment, wanted to have amnesty”

Later in the segment, Hannity turned his attention to King and asked if House Speaker John Boehner made a deal with Obama directly.

“Yes,” King replied. “I think no good ideas outside of that deal were going to be considered unless we could have succeeded on taking the rule down. And at that point we would have had a new ball game. And I think we had a chance, but we failed by a vote to take the rule down.”

Who knew that when we elected so many Republicans to the House and Senate that Boehner would actually be taking over as Democrat leader in the House from Nancy Pelosi? Maybe next time there we can pick a Republican Speaker of the House.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t elect Republicans, I’m saying that we need to primary Republicans who vote for garbage like this so that we get the right men and women for the job. We can start with the 67 we have and keep those, and find as many replacements as possible for the others.

 

News

Good news: Venezuelan President complains that fracking is “flooding” oil markets

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Gas prices vs domestic oil production
Gas prices vs domestic oil production

(Click for larger image. Source)

Why are gas prices so low all of a sudden?

Well, let’s ask the communist President of Venezuela:

The broadcast networks may not want to give credit to hydraulic fracturing for increasing U.S. oil production and lowering global oil prices, but at least one angry world leader did just that.

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro complained that fracking in the U.S. has “flooded” the world market and contributed to lower oil prices, a connection that broadcast networks’ evening news reports barely made recently.

“The oil they’re taking from (shale deposits) and the gas. They’ve flooded the international market to batter the Russian economy …, Iran and to hurt us, Venezuela,” Maduro said in a broadcast on VTV, a state-run TV channel in Venezuela, according to Fox News Latino.

Fracking has been one cause of increased oil production in the U.S. That increased production helped lower oil prices by more than 30 percent since September 29. The decline in oil prices since June has severely impacted Venezuela, since oil exports were a major source of government income. “Some estimates put the break-even price for Venezuela to balance its budget at around $121 a barrel,” CNBC reported on December 7. That’s more than double current oil prices. Oil closed at $59.15-per-barrel on December 11.

As of January 2014, Venezuela’s state-run oil company brought in 96 percent of foreign earnings, according to The Economist. Maduro announced on December 2 that the government would cut spending by 20 percent.

[…]Venezuela was experiencing particular difficulties. That economy was on the verge of collapsing, CNBC said on Dec. 1. If low oil prices continued, Venezuela may face a “game over” situation and “barbarity and people looting.”

Do you know who else is hurt by this? Russia. I sure hope they don’t do anything aggressive to their neighbors while their economy feels the pinch of lower gas prices.

It’s a good thing when villains shake their fists at us, but it’s a better thing when consumers pay less for gas:

Thanks in part to the widespread use of technologies like hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling, global oil prices plummeted in 2014. Energy experts even predicted the U.S. could be the top oil producer in the next several years.

[…]Fracking and other advanced technologies helped the U.S. nearly double its average daily output of oil, from 5 million barrels in 2008 to an expected 9.42 million barrels in 2015. The huge supply increase was one factor sending crude oil prices down. Crude fell by more than 32 percent, from $93 to $63 just since Sept. 29. This already drove gas prices down to a national average of $2.66 for regular on Dec. 9, according to AAA.

This is great news for consumers and businesses which could save as much as $1.3 trillion worldwide because of lower oil prices, according to Julian Jessop, chief global economist at Capital Economics in London. Here in the U.S., Americans could save $230 billion if prices remain low for the next year, The Washington Post said on Dec. 1.

The only bad side to this story is that fracking is an expensive way of drilling, so as the price of oil drops, energy companies will be scaling back fracking until it becomes profitable again.

I think this story is important, because it helps to explain what the people who oppose the Keystone XL pipeline are concerned about. They know that there are two results to allowing that pipeline to be built. First, a hell of a lot of jobs will be created, reducing dependency on government. Second, the price of gas at the pump will go down further. That’s what the environmentalists (and their Democrat allies in Washington) are seeking to avoid. They want more government dependency, and higher gas prices.