Dr. Ronald Johnson:

Okay, we will both give a quick response to that. Abortion is a very safe procedure. It is safe at any gestational limit but it is safest very early. There is some excellent data from the USA - Centre for Disease Control, CDC, data collected over a ten year period - which shows that the mortality rate is about 0.6 per 100,000 abortions at 21 weeks or more. All of that needs to be put into the perspective of the fact that abortion is still safer than carrying a pregnancy to term. The average abortion is about fourteen times safer than carrying a pregnancy to term. That helps to put it into perspective. Abortion is a very safe procedure. However, risk increases exponentially for every week, even though the numbers are very low. It makes sense, from an evidence point of view, to do it as soon as possible.