10 common pieces of abortion misinformation — debunked by a retired gynecologist

• Five states have abortion measures on the ballot in the midterm elections on November 8.
• A retired gynecologist debunked common misinformation abortion opponents spread about the procedure.

Overturning Roe v. Wade put many women's health at risk — some fatally, Debbie McNabb, a retired gynecologist, said.

"Women are going to die, no doubt about it," McNabb told Insider before the Supreme Court overturned the landmark case in June. "Women will always have abortions in the United States. The only question is, will they be safe and legal?"

Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe by a 5-4 majority in June, over 65 abortion clinics have closed in 15 states. About 29% of all American women of reproductive age have no abortion options in their state.

On November 8, voters in California, Michigan, and Vermont will decide whether to establish a state right to abortion, while voters in Kentucky will decide whether the state constitution should not protect the right. Voters in Montana will consider whether to establish a Born Alive Act, though the state already has protections against infanticide.

While abortion has been a top issue among voters, McNabb said there is still a wealth of misinformation about the procedure.

McNabb, who is receiving her Ph.D. in bioethics and health humanities at the University of Texas, fact-checked some of the most common pieces of misinformation abortion opponents spread.

1. Abortion causes breast cancer.

"Abortion does not cause breast cancer," McNabb said, noting that abortion opponents often base that argument on discredited studies.

Women who menstruate earlier but don't have children are at a slightly higher risk of getting breast cancer, as are women who don't have children until age 35, McNabb said. Meanwhile, women who have one or more children by age 20 are at a slightly lower risk.

"There are a couple of outlier studies, but the overwhelming number of large, well-documented studies show no increased risk of breast cancer from abortions. Because of this evidence, every single professional medical organization worldwide states that there is no increased risk of breast cancer associated with abortion," McNabb said.

2. Abortion causes infertility.

"Oh, no way. No way," McNabb said. "I guess perhaps what they're talking about is when you do an aggressive D&C," referring to dilation and curettage — a medical procedure that removes tissue from inside the uterus. "If you're overly aggressive, you can scrape the inside of the uterus. And that can cause scar tissue, which is a terrible thing."

The claims could also be referencing "cervical insufficiency," McNabb said.

"If you have to dilate the cervix real wide, and then the cervix doesn't work as well the next time. Again, exceedingly rare," McNabb said, adding that there's "nearly zero risk of infertility" from an abortion.

"I've never even heard of a case. Never even heard of a case of scar tissue in the endometrium causing infertility. It would be so rare. It would make a journal article," she said.

3. The abortion pill isn't safe for women.

Another common claim is that medical abortions, which utilize Mifepristone and Misoprostol pills, are not safe for women.

"That's not true. You can take medication for abortion up to — some people say 10 weeks, some people say 11 weeks — gestation," she said, noting that knowing the dates of your last menstrual period is important.

"So typically if a woman goes to a clinic, she gets a pelvic exam. But if women are sure about their dates, it's very safe to do medication abortions. It's extremely safe and highly effective up to 10 to 11 weeks," she said.

She also noted that oftentimes it's not just potential patients who misinformation affects, but also doctors.

"That megaphone through society, churches, and sometimes even healthcare providers — repeating these lies purely because of their religious beliefs — is very loud," McNabb said. "Doctors in practice, and even in academic centers, are terrified of speaking out in this dangerous legal and social environment, so lies spread easily."

4. Women who have had abortions risk preterm deliveries in future pregnancies.

Another hard no, McNabb said.

"You compare abortion complications to complications encountered if a woman goes to full term and delivers a baby," McNabb said. "So yeah, abortion complications are not zero, but if a woman goes to full term and has a baby, she's at between 10 and 14 times the risk of serious illness or death. So it has no meaning to just look at abortion. You have to look at it in terms of the alternative."

She added that the risk of a full-term pregnancy will "still far outweigh an abortion up to 20 or even 22 weeks," noting that in many conservative states, there are very high maternal-mortality rates, especially among Black women.

"The risk of abortions go up from first trimester up to the limit of when someone would perform an abortion," McNabb said. "But they're always still less than the risk of a full-term pregnancy."

5. Abortion is psychologically damaging, increasing a woman's risk of mental illness and suicide.

McNabb said these claims are "absolutely false," adding that previous litigation made claims about the psychological damages "without any evidence."

"So Planned Parenthood v. Casey talked about abortion regret," she said, referring to the 1992 Supreme Court decision which again reaffirmed Roe. "We have excellent studies that show that women who have abortions have no more mental distress than women who have full-term pregnancies and deliveries."

According to a 2009 journal article by the American Psychological Association, "the majority of adult women who terminate a pregnancy do not experience mental-health problems. Across studies, the prevalence of disorders among women who terminated a pregnancy was low, and most women reported being satisfied with their decision to abort both one month and two years post-abortion."

6. Most women regret their abortions.

"No, abortion does not cause regret to any significant extent. And when it does, it's the same as if you've had a full-term pregnancy and delivery," she said.

She added that modern studies disagree with conclusions about unique regret among women with abortions.

"Back when Casey was decided, they leaned so heavily on abortion regret without any evidence," McNabb said. "Well, now we have very strong evidence that it's not a thing."

She added that misinformation about abortion is "extremely pervasive" in some conservative states. She said many "crisis-pregnancy centers," in these states, which often receive private and public funds, try to convince those seeking abortions to raise the child or place the child for adoption.

"The name is misleading because their sole mission is to persuade women not to have abortions, though most women who walk in, think that they're going into an abortion clinic," McNabb said, noting that the centers may do a pregnancy test, an ultrasound, and provide adoption resources, but "otherwise, the entire time is spent on convincing the woman that abortion is murder."

7. Women will have abortions up to the moment of birth.

In this claim, McNabb said abortion opponents target New York's Reproductive Health Act, which codified Roe into state law in 2019 and permits abortion in certain circumstances after 24 weeks.

"In New York state, you can perform an abortion to remove the uterine contents, but it's not the same as abortion that's allowed up to the moment of birth," McNabb said.

In 2015, CDC data showed that two-thirds of all abortions were performed at or before eight weeks' gestation, and over 90% were performed at or before 13 weeks' gestation. Only 1.3% of abortions were performed at or beyond 21 weeks' gestation.

"An abortion at term is a desired pregnancy in the context of an extremely dire emergency without sufficient time for a safe C-section, when a woman would otherwise die. This is a rare medical situation that no amount of medical information could inform a law-making body sufficiently for them to draft a specific law," McNabb said.

8. Doctors will perform 'partial-birth abortions.'

McNabb said the phrase "partial-birth abortion," which those lobbying against abortion access commonly used, is not "in any obstetrics textbook. It is not medical lingo."

"So they say 'partial-birth' like this is a baby being delivered. But what it is, it's a second-trimester abortion where some gynecologists realize that the safest thing for a woman was to do the procedure this way," McNabb said. She added that "if things are going really south and a woman is in distress for some reason because of the pregnancy," the doctor will perform an emergency C-section.

"Any fetus that is post-viability, the physicians will do everything within their power to care for that fetus and to ensure a good outcome," McNabb said, noting that viability tends to be around 23 to 24 weeks, but doctors also consider survivability and impairments to the fetus.

"If you can get the baby out in a C-section, that's what you do. If, for example, a woman is septic and hemorrhaging and you can't do a C-section, or you can't do it fast enough because you don't have things available, yes, in New York state, you can perform an abortion to remove the uterine contents."

9. An unborn fetus experiences pain.

"The other thing they always say is fetal pain," McNabb said. "So pain is only experienced if you have a brain that's developed enough to experience it. And that process doesn't even start until about 24 weeks gestation. And in addition to the brain, you have to have a mature connection from the brain to the body. Mature spinal cord with mature neural pathways."

"So pre-viability abortions, there is no such thing as fetal pain," she said.

10. Abortion is never medically necessary to save a woman's life.

According to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, as well as Physicians for Reproductive Health, this claim is untrue.

"Determining the appropriate medical intervention depends on a patient's specific condition. There are situations where pregnancy termination in the form of an abortion is the only medical intervention that can preserve a patient's health or save their life," both organizations said in a 2019 joint statement.

Many doctors have stories of medically necessary abortions they've performed. McNabb recalled a case of a patient pregnant with conjoined twins who shared a heart at 18 weeks.

"If she carried to term, not only would she have had 10 to 14 times the risk of morbidity and mortality, but those babies would not survive and would require a C-section, and even that would be extremely difficult with potential damage to nearby organs or hemorrhage requiring a hysterectomy. Shouldn't she be allowed to weigh those risks for herself?" McNabb said. "It's up to the woman to decide either way, and the OB will follow her wishes."

Ultimately, McNabb said, people typically find abortion acceptable in cases of rape, incest, risk to the mother's life, fetal malformations, or — most notably — when "it's me or my family."

"We can say what we think we would do, but all of these women I've ever spoken to, they would say, 'I never thought I would have an abortion, but I have this situation. And that's why I made this decision,'" McNabb said. "So it's absurd for anybody else to suggest that they can tell somebody else what to do if they haven't been in that spot."