Dr. Bela Ganatra:

In terms of maternal mortality one thing to realise is that measuring the proportion of abortion deaths as a part of maternal deaths is not necessarily the best way to think about abortion safety, because it is relative to other causes of maternal deaths and abortion can be particularly unsafe but not contribute to a large proportion of maternal mortality or vice versa. We do look at case fatality rates and we have seen that case fatality rates, that is, the number of abortions that lead to death, are the highest in contexts where they have been most unsafe.

One also has to know that complications from unsafe abortion can occur but where health systems are good and treatment for complications is available death might be prevented so that one does not see that as a death but then again one has masked a problem that occurred. We have to be careful with the focus on deaths but that is why our focus is now shifting to the standards of care and the morbidity aspect, and not just focusing on the outcome of death for all health issues, not just for this one.