CNN recently shared the story of a woman who is allegedly one of the last to legally undergo an abortion in Arizona, following the enactment of a law that protects most preborn children from abortion. The woman is said to have feared for her life due to a previous pregnancy that had complications. At the time of her abortion, abortion was legal in Arizona, but it is currently restricted unless the mother’s life is at risk, meaning it may still have been legal for her, if her life was truly at risk.
Pro-abortion doctors failed her — and then CNN exploited her heartbreak to promote abortion on demand.
An unwanted abortion
The news outlet kept the woman’s identity private, but noted that she didn’t actually want to have an abortion. She said her preborn baby was her “baby.” But following two difficult pregnancies, she didn’t think she could survive another one. Believing the pregnancy would end in either her death or her baby’s death, she chose to take matters into her own hands, and aborted the baby.
CNN wrote that she asked for an ultrasound picture “of the baby growing inside of her — one she will never hold,” and then noted that “the image is unmistakable.” Even CNN isn’t denying that this particular preborn child was a human being. But the fact is, every preborn child is a human being — and all have an inherent right to life.
“You can see the head and the little nose,” the mother said, while looking at the ultrasound image of her baby. “I want the picture because although I am deciding and taking this option, I still wanted to see my little baby.”
Twenty-four hours later, it is believed that she underwent that abortion, ending her child’s life. She is 23 years old, and has two other young sons with her partner. Her first pregnancy took a physical toll, but it was her second that she says nearly killed her.
READ: Baby Willow, so tiny she only fit in doll clothes, shows abortion isn’t medically necessary
“I was screaming in pain,” she explained. “They weren’t sure if my placenta was abrupting. I had IVs hooked up to me, breathing machines.” Though she said the doctors ran multiple tests, they never figured out why she was bleeding or having contractions at five months along. At one point, she spent 23 days in the hospital alone, due to the COVID-19 restrictions in place at the time. She told CNN that there was one particular moment of that hospital stay that has stayed with her.
“Paperwork to sign to decide whether I save my life or my son’s life,” she said. “At 37 weeks, I’m in the hospital, bleeding, scared and alone, without my mother, without my family because of Covid. I’m getting ready to have a premature baby. He makes it. He comes out alive, thank God.”
She said if it weren’t for the fear of complications like these, she would keep her third baby. “If this baby didn’t come with all the complications and everything that it does, then yes,” she said. But she’s afraid she would be told to choose between herself and her baby again — so she’s choosing herself before someone else tells her to make that decision.
“What then? I keep this baby and I lose my life?” she said. “And I can’t be there for my other two sons?”
When Arizona’s law restricting abortion unless the life of the mother is at risk was put into effect, she said she panicked.
“I am running around crazy, feeling like I’m alone,” she recalled to CNN. “I’m, I’m … just lost. I don’t know who to talk to, what to do. I am scared, terrified that something’s going to happen – that I’m going to have to go through another painful pregnancy where they cannot tell me what’s wrong.”
She began looking to other states for an abortion, but at nine weeks pregnant, she felt pain in her abdomen. She wasn’t able to keep food down, and was taken by ambulance to a hospital, where doctors were unable to find anything wrong with her or the baby. When Planned Parenthood in Tucson began to commit abortions again while legal cases played out, she scheduled an appointment, though she said, “It really does hurt my soul.”
Doctors’ failure
It’s impossible to understand the exact medical situation the woman is facing without medical records, or even a diagnosis, from the doctors. She herself is in the dark about the complications she endured. But two things are for certain: 1) doctors have repeatedly failed her to the point that she felt she had no other choice than to abort her baby, and 2) if her life were to be in danger at any point during pregnancy, an abortion would have been completely legal in Arizona.
Yet if the doctors who examined her couldn’t explain what was causing her pain, they should have sought out medical experts who could. She and her baby should have been treated as two patients who both needed help.
Though it would have been, and still is, legal for her to have an induced abortion to save her life, induced abortion would not be necessary to save her life, or the life of any woman. Induced pre-term labor, surgery for an ectopic pregnancy, or an emergency c-section may be necessary when a woman is experiencing life-threatening health concerns during pregnancy. But killing her preborn child prior to delivery through an induced abortion never is.
Ending a pregnancy never has to include intentionally killing the baby.
“What women deserve to know… even in the most high risk pregnancies, there is no medical reason why the life of the child must be directly intentionally ended with an abortion procedure,” explained neonatologist Dr. Kendra Kolb.
“In situations where the mother’s life is truly in jeopardy, her pregnancy must end, and the baby must be delivered. These situations occur in cases of mothers who develop dangerously high blood pressure, have decompensating heart disease, life-threatening diabetes, cancer, or a number of other very serious medical conditions,” she continued. “Some babies do need to be delivered before they are able to survive outside of the womb, which occurs around 22 to 24 weeks of life. These situations are considered a preterm delivery and not an abortion.”
OB/GYN and former abortionist Dr. Anthony Levatino has also explained why abortion is never medically necessary, and even used a real-world example.
“In cases where a pregnancy places a woman in danger of death or grave physical injury, a doctor more often than not doesn’t have 36 hours, much less 72 hours, to resolve the problem,” he said. “Let me illustrate with a real-life case that I managed while at the Albany Medical Center. A patient arrived one night at 28 weeks gestation with severe pre-eclampsia, or toxemia. Her blood pressure on admission was 220/160. A normal blood pressure is approximately 120/80. This patient’s pregnancy was a threat to her life and the life of her unborn child. She could very well be minutes or hours away from a major stroke.”
He continued, “This case was managed successfully by rapidly stabilizing the patient’s blood pressure and “terminating” her pregnancy by Cesarean section. She and her baby did well.”
During his time at Albany Medical Center, Dr. Levatino said he managed hundreds of cases in which the mother’s life was in jeopardy, and never once had to kill her preborn child to save the mother’s life. The woman featured by CNN said she was asked to sign paperwork declaring whether to save her life or her baby’s, but if her life were on the line, not delivering her baby and instead letting the woman die would also mean letting her baby die. A preborn child can’t survive inside of her deceased mother.
What this woman deserved, and what her third baby deserved, was a proper diagnosis and a chance to overcome it. But the doctors failed them… and then the media exploited that failure to promote legal abortion, not just in “difficult” cases, but for all.
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