In 2011, the US mortality rate from legal abortion was about 0.0003 percent, making it perhaps the safest surgical procedure in existence. Meanwhile, in 2012, about .016 percent of pregnant women who delivered live babies died as a result of their pregnancy. In other words, childbearing is more than 50 TIMES more dangerous than abortion, a figure that itself is understated because it does not take into account women who die from pregnancies ending in miscarriage or stillbirth.

Those who wish to maintain onerous and unnecessary government regulations on abortion clinics are cynically using rules intended to protect people as a weapon to force women to stay pregnant when they do not want to, even though this might kill them. It's long past time to end this unjustifiable state intrusion into individuals' private lives.