A new peer-reviewed study by the US-based Charlotte Lozier Institute (CLI) has claimed there are dangers posed by mischaracterising abortion-related complications as resulting from miscarriage.

A previous CLI study had established that 60.9% of abortion-related emergency room visits following pill-induced terminations are miscoded as miscarriage-related. “[C]oncern that this misinformation … might result in sub-optimal care and, subsequently, an increased likelihood of hospital admission” provoked the most recently-published analysis.

The latest study, a 17-year longitudinal analysis of 423,000 confirmed abortions and 121,283 confirmed subsequent visits to an emergency room, found women whose abortions were miscoded as miscarriages in the ER were more likely to be hospitalised for any reason than women whose abortions were accurately reported. Women whose chemical abortions were miscoded further exhibited a pattern of multiple hospitalisations in the 30 days following their abortions – an average of 3.2 per patient compared to 1.8 for those not miscoded. In other words, the number of hospital admissions per patient was 78% higher in the miscoded group.