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I’m a Pro-Life Doctor. Here’s How We Win the Abortion Debate.
Daily Signal ^ | 02/22/2023 | Dr. Kathryn Carnahan, M.D.

Posted on 02/22/2023 7:33:08 PM PST by SeekAndFind

In last June’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. In response, pro-choice activists and lawmakers, aided and abetted by their media allies, began a campaign of misinformation.

Americans are now hearing that without access to abortion, women are at risk of injury or death due to pregnancy complications that have nothing to do with abortion. 

For instance, women are led to believe that they could be denied care for an ectopic pregnancy, miscarriage, or pregnancy beset by a life-threatening infection. But that has never been true, and never will be. 

At the same time, in the latter half of 2022, conservatives in several states encountered setbacks in the form of new pro-abortion legislation, voter referendums, and legal challenges to pro-life laws. 

As a practicing obstetrician-gynecologist, I’m dismayed to see that happening. We have good science and good medicine on our side, but many Americans don’t know that.

The pro-life community cannot afford to let lies take hold in the debate over life. We should explain what we do and don’t stand for, and define clearly what abortion is, and what it isn’t.

In making the case against abortion, legislators need to be armed with earnest, compassionate, and medically accurate arguments.

First, Americans must clearly define what abortion is, and what it isn’t:

In all of medicine, the ethics of a medical intervention depends on its use. For example, a doctor may remove a woman’s fallopian tubes to treat cancer. Or the doctor could do the same to sterilize her against her will. The same procedure is good and lifesaving in the former case, but abhorrent in the latter.

The intervention itself does not define its morality.

A simple way to figure out whether an act is an abortion is to look at the diagnosis justifying the act. If there is no diagnosis of the mother other than “viable intrauterine pregnancy” or “undesired pregnancy,” then the intent is to end the pregnancy. That’s an abortion.

If there is a maternal medical diagnosis, such as miscarriage, ectopic pregnancy, or infection, there is no such intent, and thus no abortion.

In fact, in circumstances requiring emergency delivery, delaying to perform procedures or administer drugs with the intent of ending the child’s life could harm the mother. If a mother’s life is at risk due to pregnancy beyond viability, a doctor should induce labor or perform a Cesarean section, depending on the scenario. Both result in the birth of a living child, unlike abortion. 

A thorough review of American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists guidelines makes this clear. Life-threatening conditions include sepsis due to pre-labor preterm rupture of membranes; hemorrhage due to placental abruption, placenta previa, placenta accreta syndrome; and countless others. In their guidance on management of these complications, never does the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists cite abortion prior to delivery as necessary intervention.

What We’re For

Second, the pro-life movement and lawmakers can embrace a few universal, noncontroversial basics.

  1. Laws limiting abortion should include clear definitions and exclusions so that there’s no excuse for a doctor to deny a patient standard medical care. There should be no confusion. In settings where abortion has never been condoned, such as faith-based health care systems, physicians have always provided appropriate treatment for life-threatening pregnancies. No matter the geographic location or health care setting, it should be obvious to women, their doctors, and the public that no law would limit lifesaving care.
  2. Laws limiting abortion should clearly state that medications or procedures used for non-abortion purposes will still be available. Doctors will always be free to treat pregnancy complications, ectopic pregnancy, and miscarriage.
  3. After viability, doctors should proceed with induction of labor or perform a C-section if they must end a pregnancy to protect the mother. There’s virtually no circumstance after viability where a doctor must intentionally end the life of the unborn child to save a mother’s life. Thus, laws can and should protect the lives of viable fetuses.

This advice is grounded in the medical literature and consistent with standard practice of obstetrics and gynecology. Science is on the side of life, and most of the public will be as well, once armed with the facts.

Because of intentional confusion, it will take a lot of work to help the public again understand what abortion is and isn’t, but by doing so, pro-life candidates and lawmakers can do far more to protect unborn human beings in law. 

The Daily Signal publishes a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Heritage Foundation.


Kathryn Nix Carnahan, M.D., is a practicing, board-certified obstetrician-gynecologist in Milwaukee. She is a current associate scholar with the Charlotte Lozier Institute and a former health policy analyst and graduate fellow of The Heritage Foundation


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: abortion; donatetofreerepublic; prolife

1 posted on 02/22/2023 7:33:08 PM PST by SeekAndFind
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To: SeekAndFind
Laws limiting abortion should include clear definitions and exclusions

They want no laws limiting abortion. Nothing else matters

2 posted on 02/22/2023 7:45:52 PM PST by FatherofFive (I support Trump. Not the GOP)
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To: SeekAndFind

Rational argument about abortion is like running full speed into a brick wall. The doctor is well intentioned, and right about the facts, but for the true believing pro-abort, facts are irrelevant. Literally.


3 posted on 02/22/2023 8:13:52 PM PST by hinckley buzzard ( Resist the narrative.)
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To: hinckley buzzard

We’re so past trying to have a logical debate about abortion with hysterical ideologues. I think it’s much more effective to make fun of them. For example, ask pro-choicers where the videos are of all the bodies of Texas women who were denied abortions. Shouldn’t they be piled up in the streets by now? Force them to acknowledge that it was just more propaganda from the left, because otherwise they look particularly stupid.


4 posted on 02/22/2023 8:56:50 PM PST by Prince of Space (Let’s Go, Brandon! )
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To: SeekAndFind

Interesting. We need “legislators armed with medically accurate arguments.” Sad. Legislators lack medical arguments. Proof: legislators pushed the covid problem as if it was the end of the world.


5 posted on 02/22/2023 9:04:47 PM PST by Falconspeed ("Keep your fears to yourself, but share your courage with others." Robert Louis Stevenson.)
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To: SeekAndFind

Recent events just reinforced the democRATS as the Party of Death. While India saves MILLIONS with Ivermectin, the Party of Death does as much as possible to make sure very few Americans could access it.

The very few times I have discussed abortion, the person could not refute that it is murder. Just take a photo of a young child, and ask if we should abort her. Then use a photo of the same child at 1 year old, and ask if we should abort her. To continue, use a photo of the same child a week old, and ask if we should abort her. Put the date of that child, at 1 week old, on a large wall calendar. Keep her picture on the calendar. Start counting backwards from 7 days old, 6 days old, 5 days old, and more. At each day, ask if we should GET RID OF THAT LIFE. If the person(s) you are talking with still want to support killing, get them out of your life.


6 posted on 02/22/2023 11:21:51 PM PST by Ronaldus Magnus III (Do, or do not, there is no try)
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To: Prince of Space
I just tell people that Planned Parenthood gets billions of dollars in funding because it was established for the purpose of controlling the population of black people.

Then I tell them I fully support the most radical, permissive abortion laws — in any place dominated by Democrats … sort of like I’d support mass suicides among Nazis.

The days of presenting logical arguments to people with the emotional stability of baboons on crack are over for me.

7 posted on 02/23/2023 2:25:29 AM PST by Alberta's Child
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To: SeekAndFind

Viability has and will always be a losing argument. I volunteered in a crisis pregnancy center.
Most of the women come there after have at least one abortion. They talk about their past. It is heartbreaking. That was 15 years ago.
Now the demonics do not have that same feeling of guilt. In fact it is to spirituality slap Jesus in the face. They are proud of killing.
We are post Christian and viability will never be an acceptable truth for people who can’t tell the difference between boys and girls.


8 posted on 02/23/2023 4:23:58 AM PST by momincombatboots (QEphesians 6... who you are really at war with)
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To: SeekAndFind

A plan that addresses baby killer “concerns” is a waste of time. What they want is dead babies and nothing they say can be taken at face value.


9 posted on 02/23/2023 7:22:24 AM PST by Salman (It's not a slippery slope if it was part of the program all along. )
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