Four pro-life legislators are asking members of Congress not to meet with the pro-abortion American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), after the organization prohibited pro-life doctors from participating in a conference they had attended in previous years.
Reps. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.), Chip Roy (R-Texas), and Diana Harshbarger (R-Tenn.) sent a letter to ACOG after they learned that doctors associated with the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG) were banned from attending a conference geared towards educating medical students. AAPLOG, which has 7,000 members, had previously attended the conference for 15 years, and did not find out that ACOG had canceled its booth until members had already arrived in town for the event. Even then, the group did not hear of the cancellation directly from ACOG, but from a third-party vendor.
The legislators wrote, “The reported decision by ACOG — an organization purporting to represent all obstetrician-gynecologists — to exclude qualified health care professionals of maternal and child care from presenting at an annual conference because of their pro-life positions is hypocritical and outrageous.”
The letter continued, “ACOG makes no secret of its extreme abortion agenda. Its detailed pro-abortion lobbying instructions to ACOG members, its ‘language guide’ touting euphemisms that hide the realities of abortion, and its stated intent to ‘increase the availability of trained abortion providers’ are just a few examples of its active and deliberate work to promote abortion on demand and spread misinformation about the pro-life movement.”
The House representatives said ACOG must end the discrimination against pro-life doctors, and threatened to refuse meetings with the group until they change course.
In a video posted to Twitter, Dr. Christina Francis, a practicing OB-GYN and CEO-elect of AAPLOG, said participation in the conference is “a big deal,” because it involves those who “are responsible, largely, for the education of the next generation of OB/GYNs in this country.”
She continued, “Certainly in the past, we have received comments from people attending the conference who don’t agree with our position, but never any hostility on the part of the organizers. We’ve always been allowed to exhibit just like anyone else, and not face any pushback. Definitely there have been people who quietly agreed with us, and have thanked us for being there. They feel very vulnerable, to be vocal about their pro-life position at that conference, or at any ACOG conference, so oftentimes, people would go by and give a quiet thumbs-up, things like that, to express their support without being able to do so very publicly.”
