Barbara Boxer claims that 5,000 women will die every year if abortion is overturned.

What bodily orifice did she pull this statistic out of???
Wild, unsubstantiated numbers and fear mongering won't help women. Right now women die from legal and lethal abortion. Was Sen. Boxer equally concerned about Holly Paterson's death from RU-486?

Let's take a look at some hard facts.

Though other abortion advocates have made similar claims, one former director of a national group backing abortion has said the numbers were invented.

Dr. Bernard Nathanson, co-founder of the National Abortion Rights Action League, admits his group lied about the number of women who died from illegal abortions when testifying before the Supreme Court in 1972.

"We spoke of 5,000 - 10,000 deaths a year," he said. "I confess that I knew the figures were totally false [but] it was a useful figure, widely accepted, so why go out of our way to correct it with honest statistics?"

Official governmental numbers don't substantiate Boxer's figures.

The National Center for Heath Statistics reveals that, before 1941, in the days before penicillin became available to control infections, there were over 1,400 abortion-related deaths. Following its introduction, the number of deaths was reduced in the 1950s to about 250 per year.

By 1966, with abortion still illegal in all states, the number of deaths had dropped steadily to 120 thanks to new and better antibiotics, better surgery, and the establishment of intensive care units in hospitals.

By the time of Roe v. Wade in 1972, the death rate for illegal abortions had fallen to just twenty-four. Though abortion was legal in 1973, abortion deaths rose to 25 and they rose to 26 in 1974 and 29 in 1975.

Looks to me like the numbers started to go up once we legalized abortion.