The media focus on two women who died as a result of chemically induced abortions outright ignores the law, the facts, and the situation in other nations.
The media focus on two women who died as a result of chemically induced abortions outright ignores the law, the facts, and the situation in other nations.
T he entirely predictable has happened. Two women have died from obvious and unconscionable medical malpractice. The blame was laid solely on the shoulders of Georgia’s abortion law: you know, the one that explicitly permits treatment of incomplete abortion and miscarriage, as well as abortions in cases of medical emergencies, rape, incest, and so on. The law allows abortion in medical emergencies whether or not there is a fetal heartbeat (as in this case, there almost certainly was not, meaning the procedure would not even begin to violate the law in the first place).
What exactly happened? Amber Nicole Thurman was a 28-year-old mother from Georgia, who went to North Carolina for an abortion. The clinic refused to perform her surgical abortion because she was over 15 minutes late, instead giving her abortion pills and letting her go home for a DIY abortion. For context, DIY abortions at home were banned in the Netherlands (one of the most pro-abortion countries in the world) because even the abortion clinics themselves said it was too medically risky. Back home, Thurman became septic from the abortion pills and her (in all likelihood dead) baby and went to the hospital. Instead of providing very basic emergency care (removing the baby’s body, which was causing the infection), the hospital waited 20 hours and Thurman consequently died.
As a medical doctor, a researcher on abortion law and its relationship with maternal mortality, and a pro-life advocate, I do not know any pro-life person in the world who would object to the emergency care Thurman required. It’s very obvious to anyone with the most cursory understanding of medicine that Georgia’s law permitted it. In the other high-profile recent case, Candi Miller, a 41-year-old mother of three, tragically died but with very few details known. As ProPublica explained, “a medical examiner was unable to determine the manner of death.”
There are many questions surrounding these cases, not least: If we don’t know the cause of Candi Miller’s death, how can we reasonably assign blame to anyone or anything? Or: Did the North Carolina clinic that gave Thurman her abortion pills actually take valid informed consent by informing her of the possibility of death? And if not, will those at the clinic be held legally accountable for depriving Thurman of this life-or-death information? Any method of abortion is potentially fatal to the mother, but there have been particular concerns raised by medical professionals — even pro-abortion professional bodies across Europe — about abortion pills being used at home, including the increased risks of hemorrhage.
But why do I say these cases were predictable? Two reasons. The first: We have seen it all before. In 2012, an Irish-Indian woman named Savita Halappanavar died because, in a situation that was clearly life-threatening (and hence Irish law at the time allowed abortion in her case), a devastatingly incompetent medical team failed to recognize that she had sepsis and was going to die quickly without having an emergency procedure. Even once they did recognize it, they — unconscionably ignorant of Irish law and basic medical standards — delayed until it was too late. Savita died along with her child. In the wake of the resultant media-driven firestorm, the Irish Constitution, which protected unborn children, was a sitting duck. Her death helped a country that was 37 percent pro-choice in 2013 to vote by 66 percent to legalize abortion in 2018.
Abortion advocates are willing to take advantage of women’s deaths to convince the public to allow abortion on demand. As we can all see unfolding before our eyes, it is a PR disaster for pro-lifers when these deaths occur, however unjust it is for them to be blamed. The No. 1 talking point to promote abortion to pro-life people worldwide — whether in America or in Malawi — is dead women. And it’s obvious why. If the message is that legal abortion is essential to avoid unnecessary deaths of women, anyone with an ounce of humanity would do virtually anything to prevent that.
The second reason this was predictable, therefore, is that the abortion lobby and its sycophants have orchestrated the confusion over the law. Everyone with an elementary comprehension of medicine and medical law — as all doctors should have — knows that removing the remains of an already deceased baby (whether after a miscarriage or an induced abortion) is legal, even obligatory (since it is basic medical practice), everywhere in the world. Likewise, they know that performing an abortion to save a woman’s life is legal everywhere in the world, including in Georgia (which has an explicit exception if “a physician determines, in reasonable medical judgment, that a medical emergency exists”). They know also that women who procure abortions in Georgia are not punished legally.
Despite these clear legal realities, the last two years have been filled with constant scaremongering about women going to jail, dying from untreated miscarriages, or dying from fatal pregnancy complications. There’s now a strong case that this confusion has contributed to doctors’ hesitancy in providing treatment, and hence to unnecessary deaths.
But, abortion advocates will say, aren’t these laws vague? Don’t they have a chilling effect on doctors who might be hesitant to provide emergency care? If these abortion advocates looked at the world outside America, they would know that the answer is obviously no. We know that it is possible to have clear, robust laws protecting unborn children that, at the same time, allow emergency treatment to save women. How do we know? Other countries all over the world have done it.
In the U.K., just before abortion was legalized in 1967, the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists published a report opposing the change and pointing out that “current medical practice in the United Kingdom is not seriously hampered by the present legal position.” They continued:
The present situation commends itself to most gynaecologists in that it leaves them free to act in what they consider to be the best interest of each individual patient. . . .
We are unaware of any case in which a gynaecologist has refused to terminate a pregnancy, when he considered it to be indicated on medical grounds, for fear of legal consequences.
Look also to Malta. The island nation has had no maternal deaths from any cause in twelve years, and therefore has the lowest maternal mortality ratio in the world. An incident much like Georgia’s unfolded there in 2022. A woman came to a hospital with allegedly life-threatening pregnancy complications and was denied an abortion because her condition was not, in fact, life-threatening. A media firestorm erupted, she went to Spain to get an abortion, and an enormous and impressive campaign to legalize abortion was launched — so powerful that the government initially conceded and filed a bill to legalize abortion for “health” reasons (in reality, for any reason).
The only problem was that the case was nonsense. As the subsequent court hearing showed, the patient was never in danger of dying. The public — aware of Malta’s world-leading maternal mortality record and not easily fooled by propaganda — mobilized in response. The Medical Association of Malta pointed out that — ironically — the government’s proposed bill was too vague and opposed it in favor of the current law. The government backtracked. Maltese babies are still protected to this day.
Malta is not the only example. As I’ve previously pointed out, legalizing abortion often makes maternal mortality worse, globally speaking. And the problem for abortion advocates in America is that, faced with Malta’s far superior maternal-health outcomes, they can’t publicly criticize or undermine Malta’s medics without looking stupid or racist, or both.
Why can’t the American medical authorities in 2024 figure out what U.K. obstetricians figured out in 1966 and the Maltese Association of Medicine practices to this day — with far better outcomes for women than in America? Malta has a far stricter abortion law than the State of Georgia. Virtually no women die during pregnancy in Malta today, while dozens die every year in Georgia (even taking into account Georgia’s larger population, the difference is enormous). One is almost tempted to conclude that many American medical authorities simply do not want to solve this problem and that they prefer to keep muddying the waters in service of their agenda: expanding abortion.