In an article for The Washington Post, Caroline Kitchener and Dan Diamond expose the real reason women have been denied valid medical treatment while suffering pregnancy complications since Roe v. Wade fell — and it isn’t because of newly enacted pro-life laws. It’s due to the failure of hospitals, which are not sufficiently offering guidance on the laws to their medical staff.
Pro-abortion news stories
Abortion advocates claimed that if Roe v. Wade were to be overturned, women would die from pregnancy complications. After Roe was finally overturned in June 2022, emotional stories that appeared to fit that narrative suddenly flooded major media news outlets. Yet, induced abortion is not the standard of care in response to any pregnancy complication. These medical complications can always be treated without induced abortion — which is the intentional killing of a preborn child prior to delivery.
If a pregnancy must end, the baby can be delivered without first killing the child. In cases in which a baby is too young to survive, such as an ectopic pregnancy, the surgery required to save the mother’s life is not an induced abortion. The baby dies as a tragic effect of the surgery as opposed to being intentionally killed by an abortion procedure.
Media outlets have claimed that “ambiguous language” in the laws left doctors confused about when abortions could or could not be carried out. The stories they shared bring to mind images of frustrated doctors who were being prevented from carrying out life-saving abortions out of fear for their own careers. Supposedly because of pro-life laws, they had no choice — the news stories made it appear — but to send their sick patients home to get sicker until they were nearing death and an abortion could be carried out. Some reportedly traveled to far-off states for abortions.
But such depictions are not entirely accurate.
Confused doctors
Dr. Ingrid Skop, vice president and director of medical affairs at Charlotte Lozier Institute, explained that during a congressional hearing in July 2022, Dr. Nisha Verma of Physicians for Reproductive Health “testified that ‘it is often unclear to us as the doctors that are actually taking care of these patients how to interpret the medical emergency exceptions.'” Lozier notes, “Unfortunately, and despite her state’s law noting that a physician ‘determines, in reasonable medical judgment, that a medical emergency exists,’ [Verma’s] testimony mischaracterizes that the law is the source of confusion.”
The treatments these women needed were not induced abortions and were not prohibited by pro-life laws. And the doctors should have known this. But having become doctors during the reign of Roe, many of them simply may not understand that there’s a difference between induced abortion and other methods of ending a pregnancy — which do not involve intentionally and deliberately killing the baby.
In denying standard care to these women, the doctors may be guilty of medical negligence. And it seems as though the hospitals are to blame, not the laws.
Hospitals have failed to issue guidance
The Washington Post states, “But behind that public controversy is a little-known struggle between doctors making life-or-death decisions at great personal risk and hospital administrators navigating untested legal terrain, political pressure from antiabortion lawmakers, and fears of lost funding, a Washington Post investigation found. In staff meetings, phone calls and tense, months-long email exchanges, many doctors have repeatedly sought guidance on how to interpret the medical exceptions in their states’ abortion bans, only to be given directives from hospital officials that are as vague as the laws themselves.”
But these laws are not necessarily “vague.” Pro-life laws regarding miscarriage and ectopic pregnancies clearly state that treatment is allowed. In addition, the laws often state that if the woman’s life or health is in danger, the doctor can use reasonable judgment to end the pregnancy — just not by intentionally killing the baby. If doctors are confused about their own ability to make reasonable medical judgments, then they have serious problems, as do all of their patients.
In Texas, for example, the law states that abortion is prohibited except:
in the exercise of reasonable medical judgment, the pregnant female on whom the abortion is performed, induced, or attempted has a life-threatening physical condition aggravated by, caused by, or arising from a pregnancy that places the female at risk of death or poses a serious risk of substantial impairment of a major bodily function unless the abortion is performed or induced; and
…the person performs, induces, or attempts the abortion in a manner that, in the exercise of reasonable medical judgment, provides the best opportunity for the unborn child to survive unless, in the reasonable medical judgment, that manner would create:
(A) a greater risk of the pregnant female’s death; or
(B) a serious risk of substantial impairment of a major bodily function of the pregnant female.
In addition, the law includes this section: “Medical treatment provided to the pregnant female by a licensed physician that results in the accidental or unintentional injury or death of the unborn child does not constitute a violation of this section.”
If a doctor must carry out a preterm delivery or emergency C-section and the child does not survive due to complications of prematurity, the doctor will not be at fault.
Using interviews with 26 doctors, attorneys, and hospital administrators in pro-life states, as well as documents from public record requests made to 50 of the largest public hospitals in pro-life states, The Post found that many hospitals have failed to provide specific guidance or policies that would ensure doctors understand the pro-life laws. While a small number of hospitals have written clear guidelines and policies for doctors to adhere to, most have failed to provide clarity.
“Of the 37 hospitals that responded to The Post’s requests, documents provided by 28 institutions revealed they offered guidance that was virtually identical to the language of the abortion ban, or no guidance at all,” said The Post. Nine of them did offer clear guidance.
Skop explained that “it is unfortunately the silence of hospitals and other medical authorities that could provide guidance based on the clear language of laws, that has contributed to patients’ suffering.” She argued that it is actually “pro-abortion bias” that has caused harm to women.
The line between abortion and preterm delivery, for example, has become so muddled that there are doctors who carry a bias in favor of abortion as if it is the solution to any complication that may arise during pregnancy. Hospitals have failed to advise these doctors properly and this has had devastating effects.
Real-life consequences
One example of a pregnancy complication that requires medical attention is the premature rupture of membranes (PPROM) which is essentially when the water breaks before the baby is full term. Skop said that doctors at Southwestern Medical School in Dallas published a peer-reviewed study in the summer of 2022 that looked at 26 women who were denied the option of induction of labor or abortion for PPROM, which is a very serious and sometimes deadly condition during pregnancy.
“Most of these women developed serious complications: 43 percent experienced uterine infection and hemorrhage; 32 percent required intensive care unit admission, surgery or hospital readmission; and only one of the babies remained alive at the time of publication,” she wrote, noting (emphasis added):
The journal article itself stated that although the ‘current national standard of care [in this situation] allows… immediate delivery,’ three physicians decided to deny these women the standard of care and then published the predictably poor outcomes. The authors misunderstood or misrepresented the Texas law, as they stated that it would punish a doctor with a felony for ending a pregnancy if the fetus had a heartbeat, ‘even in the setting of a maternal medical emergency,’ and reported that they could not intervene until there was an ‘immediate threat’ to the mother’s life…
This directly contradicts Texas law. Did they obtain legal or hospital administrative consultation before deciding not to intervene, or did they fearfully make the decision not to provide the standard of care on their own accord?
According to ABC News, two of the women taking part in an active lawsuit against Texas each say they were denied care for PPROM. But they each wrongly believe that care was abortion, because that is what the doctors led them to believe. Kiersten Hogan and Elizabeth Weller both said they were told they had to wait until they were sick enough — which could mean sepsis — to undergo an “abortion.” But premature delivery to save the mother is not an abortion.
Dr. Christina Francis, CEO of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG), previously explained in a statement to Live Action News, “There are signs of developing intrauterine infection that any physician who is well-trained in obstetrics can identify long before sepsis develops. This is why these patients are monitored very closely and often as inpatients, at least for a few days.” She added that even pre-Dobbs in the United States, doctors did and should still “offer expectant management with close observation in this circumstance…”
Likewise, Skop shared her own experiences, including that for 30 years she has managed PPROM with the same standard of care regardless of abortion laws, to offer either immediate delivery to the mother or “watchful waiting” if the mother doesn’t want to deliver yet. Either way, the patient would be immediately admitted to the hospital. This, she said, is the “more appropriate method of separation than intentional dismemberment [of the baby in the womb] by dilation and evacuation abortion and shows greater respect for the human dignity of the fetus, even if she is too young or sick to survive.”
Hospitals must ensure that their doctors know the difference between an induced abortion — the intentional and direct killing of a preborn child — and all other procedures that end a pregnancy without intentionally killing the baby, like emergency C-section, preterm delivery, and ectopic pregnancy surgery.
There is a very clear line between homicide and unintended or accidental death, but the abortion industry has done a solid job of sowing confusion.
