Posted on 07/21/2022 4:40:31 PM PDT by Morgana
We are now living in a post-Roe v. Wade America, and women are already being bombarded by heavy-handed pro-abortion messages suggesting that abortion bans will block access to authentic medical care and treatments. Women in states that enact legislation protecting life, fear-mongering pro-abortion voices shout, won’t be able to receive treatment for pregnancy complications that thousands face every year—from ectopic pregnancy to miscarriage. Recent news articles predict rising maternal mortality rates, describing a world in which doctors, hands tied by austere abortion restrictions, have no choice but to look away while their patients die of sepsis or hemorrhage.
Fortunately for American women, these narratives reflect, at best, a misunderstanding of the facts, and at worst, a deliberate distortion of the truth. In reality, a post-Roe world is much brighter for women and their children—it is one where the dignity of both their lives is respected and where they can receive real health care, not the band-aid of abortion.
The main problem for the pro-abortion narrative is that abortion is, in fact, not necessary to treat pregnancy complications. According to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, an induced abortion is a procedure intended to terminate a pregnancy so that it does not result in a live birth. In other words, the specific purpose of an induced abortion is to end the life of a preborn child. From a medical standpoint, this is never necessary. This fact is clear in the case of miscarriage management, which in no way involves ending a life, only the removal of an embryo or fetus who is already deceased.
Other difficult pregnancy conditions may require doctors to separate a mother from her preborn child to save her life—but this is not the same as an abortion. For example, even Planned Parenthood acknowledges that managing an ectopic pregnancy—in which the embryo implants outside of the uterus, often causing life-threatening hemorrhage—is not an abortion. Other pregnancy complications, such as chorioamnionitis—an infection of the fetal membranes potentially leading to sepsis—must be treated by separating the mother and preborn child via premature delivery. These treatments are done with the explicit intent of saving the woman’s life. They allow doctors to attempt to preserve the child’s life—or, if that’s not possible, to treat them with the dignity they deserve. Abortion offers preborn children no such respect.
Laws in even the most pro-life states recognize this difference between abortion and procedures treating pregnancy complications. None of the dozen or more conditional laws that have gone into effect to enact abortion restrictions since Roe v. Wade‘s reversal prevent necessary care for a woman in a life-threatening emergency—even when the methods or tools used for them are the same as those used in abortion.
Abortion laws hinge on the intent. If the action is not done with the primary intention of ending the child’s life, then it is not an abortion. That is why state laws clearly exclude life-saving treatment, including for ectopic pregnancy, from their definitions of abortion. If a statute does not explicitly include a definition, it is pulled from elsewhere in the state code, like Texas’ SB 8, which references a different section of the state’s health and safety code for a definition of abortion that excludes ectopic pregnancy treatment.
As abortion activists are eager to recount, in 2019 a handful of Ohio legislators did introduce an anti-abortion bill requiring doctors to reimplant ectopic pregnancies into the uterus or potentially face charges. However, this bill died in committee after experts pointed out that current technology does not allow doctors to do that. Most pro-life lawmakers understand what an abortion is and isn’t, and we can expect future pro-life bills to reflect this understanding.
As practitioners of medicine and law, our respective experiences underscore the fact that abortion is not necessary to save women’s lives.
From the medical perspective, as a pro-life obstetrician who has served patients facing a wide range of complications, I (Christina Francis) have never once had to perform an induced abortion to save a patient’s life. Neither have I ever been restricted in my ability to treat life-threatening conditions. The pro-life Catholic hospital where I completed my residency allowed me to receive comprehensive training in reproductive health care—so I can equally serve both mothers and preborn children as my patients. Induced abortion has no place in this approach to care, because it deliberately ends the lives of our most vulnerable patients. Killing one’s patients isn’t health care.
From a legal perspective, in my practice, I (Catherine Glenn Foster) learn from doctors how lawmakers can support both mother and child from the earliest moments. We draft life-affirming laws based on the biological reality of human development and the ethical principle that no child ever needs to be intentionally killed.
Some abortion activists are attempting to spark fear about what is actually a positive development in our society. They obscure the fact that reproductive health care can and will thrive without abortion.
In a world where obstetricians serve their pregnant and preborn patients with equal care, we will see improvements in health care quality and maternal outcomes. It is telling that opponents of such a future must lie to stop Americans from embracing it.
LifeNews Note: Dr. Christina Francis, MD, is a board member and CEO-elect of the American Association of Prolife OB/GYNs. Catherine Glenn Foster, J.D., is president and CEO of Americans United for Life.
Thats because they are not abortions. No kidding.
Treating a miscarriage may be the same procedure as an abortion, but it’s not an abortion. I know, I’ve had two D&C’s after miscarriages. I knew my babies were gone. There was no heartbeats on the sono and I had been passing them for days before the procedures. I never felt like I was killing my babies.
Recently we saw that the assault and resultant stabbing death (in self-defense) in a New York Bodega was instigated by a woman pissed off because she was getting charged for a bag of chips. She joined the assault - stabbing the Bodega worker as he was defending himself from her boyfriend.
Now we have significant numbers of women whose number one issue is their right to kill a child in their womb. They claim reproductive rights, but they already have the right not to reproduce. It's called birth control, or abstinence.
The point is that the whole concept of women as morally superior, more compassionate human beings is currently a joke. I don't know what's happened to our female brethren, but it's nothing to be proud of.
The pro-lifers are intentionally misunderstanding the ruling knowing Doctors can treat ectopic pregnancies and other health issues.
It’s not the pro lifers that misunderstand it’s the media spreading fake news.
Why is this even a question?
Doctors: 'Chilling Effect' of Abortion Laws Imperils Women's Lives
“In Texas and another 22 states that have outlawed abortion or expect to soon, doctors are finding themselves in situations that are equally ambiguous and fraught. Early reports from doctors on the frontlines suggest that confusion over the legality of medical procedures is widespread among OB-GYNs, but it doesn't end there. Clinicians who may have to perform procedures on pregnant women are wondering about their legal liability, too. The uncertainty extends to pharmacies, classrooms and the social media pages of medical professionals, many of whom worry what they are legally allowed to say or post. Even if some of that confusion eventually subsides, it puts many pregnant women in immediate peril.”
How The End Of Roe Will Affect Gynecological Care
”But as many activists and physicians have noted since a draft of Justice Samuel Alito’s majority opinion in Dobbs leaked on May 2, the end of Roe has implications beyond abortion. What does it mean for embryos produced in IVF but not used? What will it mean for miscarriage and stillbirth care? Will these state laws, many of which impose severe penalties on OB-GYNs for providing abortions, lead to doctors making medical decisions that are in conflict with their training and not in the best interest of the patient? What aspect of basic gynecological and obstetrical care will new abortion restrictions disrupt that no one has realized yet?”
”The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) has been blunt about the way the ruling and trigger laws will impact both doctors and patients. “State legislators are taking it upon themselves to define complex medical concepts without reference to medical evidence,” the organization said in an explanation of its May update to its policy on abortion. “It is unacceptable for doctors and health care professionals to be punished, fined, or sued and face imprisonment for delivering evidence-based care.”
”We'll see an increase in complications of pregnancy and maternal mortality simply because more people — and more people with serious health conditions — will be forced to continue their pregnancies to term,” says Dr. Daniel Grossman, M.D., a clinician and director of the Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH) research program at the University of California San Francisco.”
Indeed.
This is indeed all the Left wants to focus on - making up stupid things that aren’t abortions that supposedly the pro-life movement was about - because otherwise it exposes the reality that abortion industry was about making cash on a purely elective ending of a child’s life.
Because the Left lies.
Since when have facts and actual science mattered to leftscum? They’re running non-stop “abortion bans will kill women and that’s what Republicans want” type ads where I live.
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