Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics
An Update: Bogus Mexican Abortion Deaths
The March/April 1991 Population Research Institute Review ‘s POPCORN column reported a controversy between the Institute and author Alan Riding, his publisher Alfred A. Knopf, and Hippocrates magazine. The dispute centers on Riding’s claim in his book Distant Neighbors, that “140,000 Mexican women die yearly from illegal abortions.” PRI formally announced a “$10,000 challenge” to the trio to “prove their claim.”
The first reply to that challenge has now arrived, a letter from Alan Riding, who started the whole affair. Unfortunately, Riding has no intention whatever of retracting his claim.
Riding cites the alleged “impossibility of obtaining reliable statistics” in Latin America to justify his abortion death numbers. Apparently, Riding feels that if such statistics are lacking he is free to report any number he wishes.
But statistics don’t occur in a vacuum-they have definite relationships to other matters. For instance, even abortion proponents have never claimed that abortion deaths in any country ever exceed 50% of the maternal deaths in the country. To accommodate “140,000 abortion deaths” yearly in Mexico, there must also be 140,000 non-abortive maternal deaths. But that’s only half the story: there is also no country in the world in which total maternal deaths, including abortion, have exceeded 50% of all deaths of women of reproductive age (15-44).
Thus, to postulate “140,000” Mexican abortion deaths each year actually equates into a grand total of some 560,000 deaths among Mexican women of reproductive age! That’s more than Mexico’s yearly death toll—male and female, just born through age 75+. (According to WHO’s 1989 World Health Statistics Annual, there are some 410,000 deaths yearly in Mexico.)
Furthermore, abortion proponents have long claimed that the world’s yearly abortion death toll is some 200,000. But Riding would have us believe that 140,000 of them occur in Mexico. If Riding is correct, then Mexico, all by itself, would account for 70% of all the illegal abortion deaths in the entire world! Is that plausible? Only an utter fool could possibly believe it.
But, as previously indicated, one needn’t rely solely on logical arguments. The UN and WHO do provide official statistics in this area. Although Riding dismisses them out of hand, the fact remains that both organizations accept Mexico’s death records as at least 90% complete. Those records indicate that the total number of deaths yearly of Mexican women of reproductive age is but 14% of the number Riding claims die – from abortion alone.
Also, Riding’s 140,000 deaths would represent some 80% of the total number of Mexican women who die yearly from all causes. Could that be true? To accommodate such a bulge in female deaths between ages 15-44, Riding’s alleged abortion death under-reportings would have to extend to women of all ages. Under Riding’s scenario Mexico necessarily would also be undercounting hundreds of thousands of other female deaths.
Then there’s the relationship with male deaths. The UN and WHO report some 50,000 Mexican men aged 15-44 die yearly. Are Mexican women’s abortion deaths really some 2.8 times greater, a situation unknown anywhere else in the world? Male deaths at all ages are invariably higher than female until the last years of life. That’s also the case in Mexico, where, only at age 75+ do female deaths (55,000+) exceed male deaths (48,000+).
To illustrate “the impossibility of obtaining reliable statistics” — in Latin America, Riding said “No one has accurate unemployment figures for Brazil.” While the exact number of jobless may be unknown, there are limits on how far one can reasonably go in speculating what the real number might be.
Rationally, one cannot claim that there are 100,000,000 Brazilian unemployed, a number clearly impossible as it exceeds the country’s total work force. Similarly, Riding is not intellectually free to claim 140,000 abortion deaths, a number unjustifiable.
Riding asserts that lacking accurate statistics, one must “depend on the estimates of experts.” That’s a logical starting point in most cases, but guess who the so-called experts are regarding illegal abortion. Usually, it’s the abortionists themselves or abortion promoters such as Planned Parenthood.
Riding says “Mexican health officials … admit that the statistics they provide to the WHO … [regarding abortion] are gross underestimates.” But the UN, WHO, and Pan-American Health Organization are not fools. They are well aware of the deliberate undercounting which can occur in this area and are alert for it.
Although they question many countries’ statistics and flag them as unreliable, they accept Mexico’s numbers as substantially correct. If there were a coverup of the magnitude Riding claims, one wonders why he hasn’t tried to expose it. After all, Riding was a N.Y. Times reporter in Mexico for a number of years.
In his reply Riding included a clipping from a Mexican newspaper which made the thoroughly preposterous claim that at least “300,000” Mexican women die yearly from illegal abortions! Try running that one through some of the counter arguments given above. Indeed, the article indicated that the toll could be as high as “450,000!”
Enough is enough. Population Research Institute (PRI) reiterates its original “$10,000 challenge” to Riding and company, and initiates a new challenge in the amount of $50,000. PRI will pay to Alan Riding, or the Mexican paper (EI Nacional ), or the individual quoted there (Roberto Alarcon O’Farril) the sum of $50,000 for proof of “300,000 Mexican women dying yearly in illegal abortions.” Letters of this offer are being sent to the threesome and the offer will be fully publicized in the U.S. and Mexico.
