By Randall K. O’Bannon, Ph.D., NRL Director of Education & Research
This week the Washington Post led with a story about a woman arrested for a miscarriage under an abortion law in Nevada. Last month there was a story in the papers about a woman who is supposed to have died because doctors delayed operating after a failed chemical abortion because of Georgia’s abortion law.
You may have heard Vice President Kamala Harris pushing that misleading narrative.
In August, some women in Texas filed suit because they claimed they were denied emergency treatment for ectopic pregnancies under that state’s law. Earlier this year, ABC News featured the story of a 13-year-old girl who was raped and ended up giving birth because her family didn’t believe abortion was an option under Mississippi law.
These are stories about real women, and the circumstances they faced are terrible and not to be minimized. But the reason these situations occurred–and the role the law really played in their crises–bears serious scrutiny.
While more research on these issues is forthcoming, it is valuable to see how this latest campaign by abortion advocates is playing out at this critical juncture of the political season.
Know that things are not nearly what the news media, abortion activists, and pro-abortion politicians would have you believe.
Suspicious timing
The appearance of these stories in the last few months could easily lead one to believe that all these things just happen to be occurring in the last couple of weeks before the election. But read closely and look at the dates.
The story of the woman arrested for the miscarriage in Nevada was reported in the Washington Post October 29, 2024. That woman miscarried in 2018, four years before Dobbs overturned Roe, in a state which has generally allowed abortion on demand through at least the second trimester (and notably, still does).
Amber Thurman, the Georgia woman who died after doctors delayed lifesaving surgery? She died in August of 2022, more than two years ago. Her story was picked up by the press and the Harris campaign in September of 2024.
The Texas women who said emergency treatment for ectopic pregnancy was withheld from them? Both of those events are supposed to have occurred this year, but back in February. However, the suits weren’t filed and the story didn’t appear until August.
The thirteen year old rape victim giving birth in Mississippi featured by ABC News in March? The rape occurred in late 2022 and the birth sometime in the summer of 2023.
Though the stories are all recent, several just hitting the press in the last couple of months, the events all occurred more than six months ago, some more than a year ago, at least one took place years before Dobbs toppled Roe.
So why are they coming out now? And why are most of them coming from parts of the country that just happen to have new laws protecting unborn babies?
It is not because there is a sudden rash of such incidents in those states in the weeks leading up to the election. It is precisely because there is an election coming up and such stories are useful to the narrative being pushed by one party. They are being exploited and misrepresented to “prove” that Roe’s overturn is leading to a crisis in women’s reproductive health.
New pro-life laws not the problem
If there is any crisis, the source isn’t Dobbs or any new state abortion law.
The wording of state laws vary, but the basic legal concept and construct is the same. While many states are indeed serious about protecting unborn children and their mothers from abortion, they universally allow abortion when necessary to save the life of the mother and nearly all allow whatever treatment is necessary to preserve the woman’s health, even if it results in the untimely delivery and death of her child.
Most explicitly say that the law allows treatment for miscarriage, for stillbirth, and for ectopic pregnancy.
There is usually nothing in the law requiring a delay, an investigation, or special approval for immediate action in such circumstances. The law is clear. The physician can act immediately to remove the child if a woman comes in with a miscarriage, if a doctor detects an ectopic pregnancy, or if there is an indication that the child has already died in the womb.
The Nevada “miscarriage”
The law referred to in the case of the Nevada woman having a miscarriage was not really about an abortion law. Rather it was about a 1911 manslaughter law allowing charges to be brought when someone takes “drugs to terminate pregnancy.” Prosecutors in both red and blue states have occasionally used such laws, not as ways to enforce limits on abortion, but often as ways to address persistent illegal drug use among pregnant females.
The issue in the Nevada woman’s case was not about a miscarriage, as the Washington Post implied, but drug use that may have led to the death of her unborn child. Whatever arguments there may be over the best way to deal with drug abuse, this is not the case of a state criminalizing miscarriage or even using one of the new post-Dobbs abortion laws to put aborting women in jail.
And that is something most states and reputable pro-life groups have explicitly opposed.
Emergency treatment for ectopic pregnancy allowed in Texas and elsewhere
The women in Texas suing state hospitals over failure to give timely treatment for their ectopic or tubal pregnancies were clearly attempting to support efforts by the Biden-Harris administration to expand abortion. They have used EMTALA (the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act) to try and thwart state abortion laws.
(For more on EMTALA, see https://nrlc.org/nrlnewstoday/
Whether the doctors and hospitals involved in these case did not know the law or simply did not fully understand it, there was no legal reason for delayed treatment in these women’s cases.
Beyond saying, as many other pro-life states do, that abortion is allowed when the mother’s life is at risk, Texas’s state law goes further. Abortion is allowed whenever there is “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.”
Whether one appeals to the life of the mother or health clause, ectopic pregnancy clearly qualifies. This is where a growing child will eventually result in the rupture of the fallopian tube, bringing about the death of the child and, in many cases, the death of the mother as well.
If that were not clear enough, Texas law directly says that a physician has an affirmative defense against liability in any civil action for exercising “reasonable medical judgment providing medical treatment to a pregnant woman in response to… an ectopic pregnancy at any location” (emphasis added)
Texas is hardly unique in this regard. If women in any state are not being given emergency treatment when diagnosed with ectopic pregnancy, it is most typically not the fault of the law.
Rape Pregnancy in Mississippi
The case of the 13-year old giving birth in 2023 to a child after being raped is presented by ABC News as if it were an effect of that state’s new abortion law.
But Mississippi had an exception for rape pregnancy in its pre-Roe law, and the current law continues to allow for abortion in these circumstances.
If the teenager or her mother were unaware of the law, or were incorrectly informed by the doctors who diagnosed or oversaw her pregnancy, this was not the fault of the law or the state of Mississippi.
Admittedly, not every state has a rape exception (about half of states with pro-life laws do), perhaps feeling that the violence of abortion is no remedy for the violence of sexual assault. But abortion advocates are generally unsatisfied even with the states that do have rape exceptions, complaining that reporting requirements discourage women from coming forward.
It is always a challenge getting a young woman to come forward and talk about her assault and identify her assailant, particularly in cases of incest. But the answer provided by abortion advocates – to simply give her an abortion and send her back to her attacker – offers the woman no healing and no protection, inviting the abuse to continue and the rapist to go unpunished.
Georgia law did not prevent emergency treatment
We have addressed this elsewhere, so we will not review the details of Amber Thurman’s death here. But the story pushed by the Harris-Walz campaign and the news media don’t square with the actual legal circumstances.
Amber Thurman died when remaining tissue in her womb from an incomplete chemical abortion resulted in a severe infection. Doctors began observing her and giving her antibiotics when she came into the hospital, but didn’t begin surgery until the following day. She tragically died on the operating table.
Kamala Harris tried to blame Georgia for having a law that sent Thurman to another state for abortion pills and made her doctors hesitate to treat her for the ensuing complications. But Georgia law doesn’t prevent immediate abortion when a woman’s life is at threat (as was Thurman’s) or immediate treatment if the child is already dead (as was the case with Thurman’s twins).
Lawyers for Thurman’s family are suing the hospital and doctors for failing to act quickly enough, though they just as well might have sued the Biden-Harris administration for pushing through relaxed safety standards that, if still in place, might have assured timely followup and saved Thurman’s life.
The real aim of the stories and ads
While the public might be given the impression that the aims of the individuals and organizations bringing these stories forward was merely to make the law more precise, the fact that the law already allows for such exceptions is proof that something more than that is really being sought.
The truth is — and if you listen carefully, you can tell – what they want are not better, more explicit exceptions, but the restoration of a pre-Dobbs policy of abortion on demand, for any person of any age, for any gestation, any reason. And they’d actually like to eliminate even some of the modest guardrails that still exist in many states, such as parental involvement, informed consent, waiting periods, and funding limits.
No exception currently on the books, or even ever considered in legislative chambers, is going to be broad enough, clear enough, good enough to satisfy them beyond absolute carte blanche.
They want to be able to reopen the clinics and to give abortionists free reign to perform abortions on any woman who comes their way without any oversight by the government or second guessing by any doctors’ group as to the social reason or the medical necessity of the abortion.
And these women, these cases, are how they mean to accomplish their purposes. It is of little concern to them that there really isn’t any genuine legal conflict; that there is nothing actually standing in the way of their treating their patients; or that these women really don’t need to go through the additional trauma and agony of this unwanted publicity and court cases.
The cause is all that really matters.
False impressions, bad medicine
As real as these women’s medical circumstances and distress might be, and however appalling the bungling of their cases by doctors, lawyers, hospitals or courts, one cannot miss the curious coincidence of the timing and political spin of their stories.
The presentation of these cases, the exploitation of their experiences and this misplacement of blame has largely been towards one end, at least as far as the press and the politicians are concerned. And that is to give the false impression that any new abortion laws protecting unborn children are too extreme, too rigid, too callous towards and ignorant of the real medical challenges regularly faced by pregnant women in this country to be allowed to stand.
That’s why these stories appeared when they did in the papers. That’s why there seems to be a sudden epidemic of these cases, particularly in pro-life states. That’s why cases like these are regularly cited in political advertisements as reasons why you should vote against pro-life candidates and vote for pro-abortion politicians and their policies.
Some doctor appears on screen and advises “Don’t vote for Candidate R” because he would “investigate women for miscarriages,” or would “keep women from getting emergency treatment for ectopic pregnancy.” Some woman warns that despite whatever assurances that pro-life candidates give, they would “stop women from getting abortions even for rape and incest” and ultimately “bring back dangerous back alley abortions.” …
But that’s not what any of these pro-life politicians have said and not what any of these new state abortion laws passed since Dobbs have done. And there’s no reason to think it will be different in the future.
Pro-lifers support laws and policies which fully protect both unborn children and their mothers.
Abortion advocates want legal authorization to perform any abortion they want, for any gestation, for any reason, and they’ll use any case, any means they can, to accomplish that goal.
