Is abortion a “safe” procedure? Is it safer than childbirth, as abortion supporters often claim? We honestly don’t know.

Cree Erwin, a 24-year-old resident of Battle Creek, was found dead by her mother on July 4. She died several days after having an abortion. It was recently confirmed that Erwin had her abortion at the Planned Parenthood facility in Kalamazoo. Planned Parenthood has yet to release a statement.

Details from Erwin’s autopsy have yet to be revealed, but given her trip to the hospital a day before her death to address severe abdominal pain, all available evidence points to complications from the abortion being the cause of her death.

Abortion has not only claimed the life of Erwin and her child, but it has left her one-year-old son without a mother, and left a gaping hole in the Erwin family. Was Erwin properly informed of the risks an abortion can pose?

Michigan law does require abortion businesses to provide women with information about potential complications, but abortion supporters frequently cite the safety of abortion in media and popular culture. The numbers used to back those claims come from the Centers for Disease Control. Are those numbers accurate?

As far as numbers from Michigan, they aren’t accurate at all. Michigan’s annual abortion statistics have absurdly low complication rates, likely because the abortionist is the one responsible for reporting complications. Before we updated our abortion clinics regulations in 2012, we know of at least one abortionist who wasn’t even reporting the abortions he performed. Even if an abortionist wanted to report complications, they are not the women’s doctors or part of their care team. There is no long-term follow-up. Their “patients” are complete strangers to them, often not even talking with them before or after the abortion.

Tamia Russell was 15 years old in 2004 when she died from taking an abortion pill. The autopsy indicated “uterine infarction with sepsis due to status second trimester abortion.” If you look up Michigan’s abortion statistics from 2004, you’ll notice only 12 reported complications and zero patient deaths. Will the death of Cree Erwin make the state’s 2016 abortion report?

Before her death Planned Parenthood said they want to sue the state of Michigan to end most oversight and inspections of abortion clinics. They want to return to the days where women like Tamia Russell and Cree Erwin aren’t given the dignity of even being mentioned as statistics in a report.