The abortion industry often recycles several claims — one: abortion is health care, and two: late-term abortions rarely, if ever, happen. Both claims are false, and abortion advocates will only admit to that if absolutely forced to. An exchange between Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Planned Parenthood abortionist Colleen McNicholas in November of 2019 showed just how out of touch the abortion industry is with the general public, and how reticent they are to admit the truth of what they’re doing.
McNicholas, the chief medical officer for Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region and Southwest Missouri (PPSLR), was called last year to testify before the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reforms proceedings, where she was questioned by Massie. At every turn, she avoided giving a direct answer. Massie began by asking what the medical consensus for the age of viability is. “So, viability is a complicated medical construct,” McNicholas said. “There is no particular gestational age. There are some pregnancies in which a fetus will never be viable. There are a number of different factors that we think about when we’re considering if a pregnancy is or isn’t viable.”
Despite McNicholas’s claim, the current medical consensus is that a preborn child is considered to be viable at approximately 24 weeks, though with medical advancements, premature infants are surviving at younger and younger ages. Babies born as young as 21 weeks have a chance of surviving if given proper medical care.
McNicholas then refused to give an estimate of how many abortions she has committed but said her facility commits roughly 3,000 abortions annually. When questioned on how late in gestation her Planned Parenthood facility commits abortions, McNicholas gave another non-answer.
“So, my practice includes the provision of abortion up until the point of viability, and again, we already had a discussion about viability not being… ” she said, drifting off as Massie then asked her to give a number in weeks, to which she said she didn’t know and didn’t recall what age limit her facility sets for abortions, or the size of the largest baby she’s aborted. Considering McNicholas is the chief medical officer for the facility, the idea that she is unaware of such things is highly unlikely, yet she stated, “I’m not sure how I would even quantify that.”
“You have no idea the age or gestation period of the fetuses you’re aborting?” Massie asked incredulously, but McNicholas continued to evade the question.
“So again, as I said, my practice includes abortion care through the point of viability, and as we previously discussed, that could be at any point,” she said. Yet according to the PPLSR website, Missouri only permits abortions up until 21 weeks and six days after a woman’s last menstrual period, so the answer should, theoretically, be easy — unless McNicholas’s facility is breaking the law. On a wider scale, Planned Parenthood does commit abortions past viability at facilities across the country, where laws do not prohibit them from doing so.
Massie then asked if there was any point in pregnancy at which McNicholas would personally refuse to commit an abortion, and McNicholas again avoided a direct answer. “Medicine is not black and white. I recognize in my 10 years of practice informs this opinion, that pregnancy can be really complicated, and given that there are pregnancies for which a fetus may never be viable, I think it’s really important that we allow physicians and patients to have every medical resource to make decisions that are appropriate to them and their health,” she said, then continued on to claim that women don’t need a reason for an abortion. “Every patient is different… I think you’re forgetting that there are a number of reasons that go into patients’ choice. At my clinic, I trust that women have a valid reason; every reason that they have is valid.”
She concluded, “Mr. Massie, abortion is moral, it is important, it is health care, and I support people being the experts in their own lives and making decisions for themselves.”
Though McNicholas believes taking the life of a human being is moral, the majority of Americans disagree with her, according to Gallup polling. Abortion is also not health care as she claims, because deliberately taking human life cannot, under any definition, be reasonably considered “health care” and is also never medically necessary. Polling has also found that few Americans support Planned Parenthood’s views about abortion; only 12% of Americans support abortion with no restrictions, and the majority of Americans favor heavy restrictions on abortion.
READ: Dangerous Missouri Planned Parenthood just injured its 75th patient
McNicholas also left out important details about the quality of the so-called “health care” she provides at her facility. Since 2009, at least 75 women have been injured there, including one woman who was almost killed. There is a woman sent to the hospital by ambulance every six weeks on average from the facility. There have also been numerous health and safety violations found, including not washing hands between glove changes and violating infection protocol.
McNicholas is thought to be splitting her time between the facility in St. Louis and a new mega-facility in Fairview Heights, Illinois, right across the state border where a woman was injured within a week of the facility’s opening.
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