In the spirit of Halloween, Planned Parenthood sent out a truly ghastly tweet: they claimed it's "statistically safer" for a black woman in the United States to have an abortion than to actually give birth to a baby.

If you're a Black woman in America, it's statistically safer to have an abortion than to carry a pregnancy to term or give birth #ScaryStats — PP Black Community (@PPBlackComm) October 31, 2017

Planned Parenthood justified this by saying that over the last decade and a half, 108 women died during abortions. Conversely, many more black women died during childbirth.

This, of course, doesn't take into account that for every abortion there's (at least) one death: the baby or babies being aborted. For these very small unborn women, abortion is definitely not the "statistically safer" option. These stats also don't consider the non-fatal complications of abortion, which include infection, infertility, and mental illness.

Plus, in places like New York City, more black babies are aborted each year than are born alive. How on earth is this "safer" than childbirth?

America does have an unusually high maternal mortality rate for a developed country, and this rate is especially pronounced among minority women. This is a problem that most certainly needs to be addressed, and some communities have seen great success in this regard. Plus, social systems should be improved to the point where having an abortion is unthinkable, and that pregnant women are able to parent and care for their babies. Obviously, these things will take time, but they are things that should be spoken about by people on all sides of the abortion debate.

But still, to say that it's "statistically safer" for a black woman to have an abortion than to have a child is horribly misleading. Abortion is never "safer" for one of the lives involved.