John Mannion, a New York state senator, is currently running for congressional office. And in a new campaign ad, he made an incredible claim about his mother allegedly being forced to carry a stillborn baby for two months prior to Roe v. Wade.
In the ad, titled “Mother,” Mannion spoke about a tragic stillbirth his mother experienced in the 1960s. “Before she passed away, my mother shared her most painful memory,” Mannion said in the ad. “See, before I was born, she lost her pregnancy at seven months. That was before Roe v. Wade. So, she was forced to carry the fetus for another two months and deliver a stillborn baby. It was torture. And now MAGA Republicans are trying to take us back to that. That’s why I helped pass some of the strongest abortion protections in the nation and I’ll do the same in Congress.”
No law in the country disallows the treatment of miscarriage or delivery of a stillborn (deceased) baby. An induced abortion (which is what pro-life laws restrict) intentionally kills a human being in the womb; a miscarriage or stillbirth is the accidental and unintentional death of a child in the womb.
Mannion further spoke to syracuse.com about it, saying his mother suffered three miscarriages before he was born, but that the stillbirth at seven months was the most painful. “She was upset about it, and I know it had an impact on her. It was kind of surprising to me that she would talk about her miscarriage and having to carry the fetus around for two months,” he said. “She was not allowed to deliver. And the impact of spending two months carrying around a dead fetus had to be awful. She said she suffered.”
The story is uncannily similar to one shared by Rep. Frederica Wilson, who likewise claimed a pre-Roe law prevented doctors from delivering her stillborn baby. Yet this claim is a strange one to make, considering that in both cases, the preborn baby was already deceased.
Delivering the deceased baby’s body was not then (and would not be now) considered an induced abortion under the law. In an induced abortion, the intent is to kill the preborn child. As Dr. Donna Harrison, Director of Research for the American Association of Pro-Life OBGYNs (AAPLOG), previously told Live Action News, “There is no law now, nor has there ever been any law in any of the states of the United States, which prohibits the treatment of miscarriage.”
But was not inducing delivery perhaps an indication of medical malpractice?
As the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) points out, immediate delivery is not always necessary. “The method and timing of delivery after a stillbirth depend on the gestational age at which the death occurred, maternal obstetric history (eg, previous hysterotomy), and maternal preference,” their clinical guidance says. “Although most patients desire prompt delivery, the timing of delivery is not critical; coagulopathies associated with prolonged fetal retention are uncommon.”
Essentially, though it is undoubtedly emotionally painful for a mother to know her preborn baby has died, her life may not be at immediate risk. While it’s impossible to know why labor was not induced in these cases, neither of them is an argument in favor of abortion — the intentional and direct killing of a living human being in the womb.
As Dr. Harrison said, “The laws regulating abortion only regulate the intentional killing of human beings in the womb. If a woman had a baby who had died in the womb, there was never any law which prohibited caring for her.”
