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I know 2 OB-GYNs personally and both have aborted fetuses to protect the mothers life. Both are pro-life.

I'm not a doctor, but your mention of HELLP syndrome (which I'd never heard of, though I have heard of eclampsia) prompted me to look that up.

I found it interesting that on at least this website, the word "abortion" is not mentioned anywhere as a therapeutic measure to be taken for HELLP. Only "delivery" is recommended for worsening cases when treatment has failed. (See especially the flowchart outlining therapeutic measures about halfway down the page.)

(Obviously a child delivered before 22 weeks gestation or so would likely die. But that would not be called an abortion, would it?)

I wonder if this same website might have recommended abortion, say maybe 20 years ago. I.e., is it possible the pro-life movement has been successful enough in re-stigmatizing abortion, that now at least some mainstream websites refrain from recommending it?

Also, how likely is HELLP to occur before the third trimester, when the baby is likely to survive if delivered? (According to the site, HELLP occurs in only about 0.2 to 0.6 percent of all pregnancies.)

I cannot tell you specifically what procedure was used, only that both docs described the procedure as an abortion. I believe that one was at about the 18-19 week point and the other might have been earlier, and due to kidney damage resulting from a previous HELLP pregnancy.

The context of the discussion was that they both had serious moral concerns about the procedure. One said he would do the same in the same situation and the other said he would refer the patient to someone else. They have both been in practice for about 10 years and each has only had to handle one of these cases, so its likely your comment about it being rare is accurate.

Interesting point is that one prescribes the pill and the morning after pill without any concern and the other will only prescibe the pill for reasons other than birth control. He says that he cautions his patient to use an alternate method for BC purposes. There seems to be some conflicting ideas--even within the medical community, on how these two forms of contraception actually work.

(Obviously a child delivered before 22 weeks gestation or so would likely die. But that would not be called an abortion, would it?)

An abortion is a procedure with the direct intent of killing the child. Delivering a child prematurely is not an intent to kill it, especially if one intends this to baptise a child which might otherwise die.