Digital Commons@ Loyola Marymount University and Loyola Law School Philosophy Faculty Works Philosophy 10-1-2014 Philosophy and Theology: Is Giving Birth More Dangerous than Aborting? Christopher Kaczor Loyola Marymount University,
[email protected] Repository Citation Kaczor, Christopher, "Philosophy and Theology: Is Giving Birth More Dangerous than Aborting?" (2014). Philosophy Faculty Works. 99. http://digitalcommons.lmu.edu/phil_fac/99 Recommended Citation Christopher Kaczor, “Philosophy and Theology” Is Giving Birth More Dangerous than Aborting? National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 14.3 (Autumn 2014): 561-566. This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Philosophy at Digital Commons @ Loyola Marymount University and Loyola Law School. It has been accepted for inclusion in Philosophy Faculty Works by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons@Loyola Marymount University and Loyola Law School. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY In the debates about the ethics and laws governing abortion, it is sometimes claimed that the risk of death is higher in giving birth than in aborting. Three recent works take up this claim and provide powerful evidence that it is not justified. The first work is Clarke Forsythe’sAbuse of Discretion: The Inside Story of Roe v. Wade.1 A full review of this work appeared in the Summer issue of the National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly, but it is worth noting here that Forsythe focuses par- ticular attention on the question about the risks of abortion just prior to the infamous Roe decision. He carefully traces the articles and research supporting the claim that women risk death more in giving birth than getting an abortion, and finds that none of them were peer-reviewed, none of them were statistically reliable, and none of them provided sound evidence for the claim.