Untested assumptions about the ‘medical benefits’ of abortion play a huge role in progressive lobbying for pro-choice policies.
“Come on over and get your vasectomy here!” a snip-happy physician yells from a Vasectomy Van parked outside the United Center in Chicago.
Progressive men — teeming with man-buns, Allbirds, and a general air of neutered wills — form lines out the door, eagerly awaiting their turn to diminish their manhood.
Across the street, an 18-foot-tall inflated IUD — named “Freeda Womb” — ushers women toward the Abortion Mobiles. Planned Parenthood staff (decidedly not doctors) hand out abortion pills like candy. As a DNC attendee tosses the abortifacients into her New Yorker tote, she smiles and says, “Thanks, Kamala!”
This is the scene I imagine surrounding the Democratic National Convention, where Planned Parenthood — with financial support from the Chicago Abortion Fund and a local hot dog joint, The Wieners Circle — is offering free vasectomies and chemical abortions for DNC attendees. The procedures are taking place in a Planned Parenthood “mobile health clinics” — i.e., a brightly painted RV, flashing the slogan “Health Care. No Matter Where.”
While there are extensive waiting lists for the free vasectomies — sorry, men — abortion pills remain in bountiful supply for the women, as providing the “medication” does not require such, err, surgical intervention.
This carnival of testicular carnage on display at the DNC is merely the logical conclusion of the progressive perversion of the term “health care.” The Left has, quite successfully, shifted the meaning of the word itself in popular discourse. While it may not be a great travesty that Democratic activists are eliminating their capacity to reproduce, the absurdity of the operation should awaken all rational actors to the horrors of leftist bioethics (or lack thereof).
While there is something deliciously comical in the high demand for vasectomies among DNC attendees (and whoever else sought the chopping block), there is something much more insidious in the Left’s treatment of abortifacients like Flintstone multivitamins.
Countless health and legal organizations — each with a progressive bent — have sought to rebrand abortion as quotidian “health care.”
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) preaches online, “Facts Are Important: Abortion Is Healthcare.” A political manifesto disguised as a peer-reviewed scientific article, accessible in the National Institutes of Health’s online library, describes abortion as “essential health care” and offers advice on how obstetrician-gynecologists can “incorporate abortion into their clinical practices.”
To drive home the assertion that “abortion is health care,” the ACLU has adopted the portmanteau of “abortion care” in press releases and formal communications. The National Health Law Program affirms on its website that “abortion is a basic, safe health care service that should be affordable and accessible for all people.” Planned Parenthood lists “Abortion Services” under its “Get Care” tab.
Tim Walz has repeated the chorus. “Abortion is health care,” he said on CNN in March. “I think old white men need to learn how to talk about this a little more. And I think the biggest thing is, listen to women, listen to what they’re saying.”
The greatest cache of abortion doublespeak is found within the “ACOG Guide to Language and Abortion.” Clothed in the rich velvet robes of self-righteousness, ACOG proclaims:
Much of the language that is colloquially used to describe abortion or discuss health policies that impact abortion has a basis in anti-choice rhetoric and is inherently biased, inaccurate, and not medically appropriate—to say the least. . . . We encourage people writing about reproductive health to use language that is medically appropriate, clinically accurate, and without bias.
Ah yes, ACOG is so totally free from bias that it backs a “2024 Commitment to Policy Action.” The memo includes calls “to support and elect candidates” who share ACOG’s views, to “support, defend, and expand access to . . . abortion” and to strengthen “the Medicaid safety net and protections guaranteed under the Affordable Care Act.” For an organization that says “pregnant and lactating people” instead of — oh, I don’t know — “women,” I’m not sure ACOG has the best grasp on what is “clinically accurate.”
ACOG’s Guide to Language and Abortion functions as a dystopian “Eat this, Not that!” chart, calling all to ditch “anti-choice” vocabulary and embrace PC language on abortion. According to the guide, “chemical abortion” is “a biased term designed to make medication abortion sound scarier than the safe, effective medical intervention it is.” Say “medication abortion” instead! And make sure you don’t use the word “womb,” because “this is a non-medical term that can be used to apply an emotional value to a human organ.” Rather, use the term “uterus,” which is linguistically unhampered by anti-choice emotions!
Progressives really do make the best word salads — and defining abortion as health care is an impressive feat.
What constitutes the definition of health care in the first place?
According to the American Medical Association (AMA), health care is that which “reduces our pain and suffering” and “helps prevent premature loss of life.” Health care, properly instituted, also “considers best available scientific data about the efficacy and safety of health care services.” The National Institutes of Health defines “standard medical care” as “treatment that is accepted by medical experts as a proper treatment for a certain type of disease and that is widely used by health care professionals.”
How, then, is abortion “health care” — or anything approaching “standard medical care”? Does it treat a disease? Reduce pain? Prevent the premature loss of life? No — abortion inhibits a natural bodily function, causes pain, and induces the premature loss of life.
Despite this grim reality, ACOG adamantly describes abortion as “evidence-based medical care.” And doctors are asking: What evidence?
An article published by Dr. Ingrid Skop and Dr. Jim Studnicki of the Charlotte Lozier Institute last month raises the question. In order for an intervention to be defined as evidence-based medical care, Dr. Studnicki told National Review:
There must be some medical necessity, as indicated by the definition of a diagnosis or a problem or a condition. There must be some specification of how effectiveness is measured, what outcome is improved. For example, if you were doing open heart surgery, do you live longer? Can you exercise better? There are specific physiological tests that will determine whether or not the surgical procedure was a success or a failure, et cetera. And then, finally, against what did you compare this intervention? Did you compare it against doing nothing at all? Did you compare it against other interventions that are available?
Untested assumptions about the “medical benefits” of abortion play a huge role in progressive lobbying for pro-choice policies. As 95 percent of abortions are performed for financial or social reasons (i.e. for reasons unrelated to the health of the mother or the baby), other medical causes for their instigation must be conjured.
Leftist organizations often say that abortions support the “well-being” or “mental health of the mother.” The problem is, there are no studies that rigorously examine these claims. Do women who receive abortions have better or worse mental-health outcomes than those who give birth to their babies? How does the gestational timeline of an abortion affect the well-being of the mother?
To address these kinds of questions, researchers would have to gather control groups of similar demographics, closely follow those who receive abortions and those who do not, and measure their health across a variety of standards — just as is required to test the safety and efficacy of any other kind of medical intervention.
“Whether we’re pro-life or pro-choice,” Dr. Skop said, “we should desire to have studies performed to find out what is really best for women.”
As DNC candidates gather under the shadow of Freeda Womb — and emasculated men stagger through the streets of Chicago with a penguin’s lilt — hopefully Americans will begin to question the Democrats’ brave new world of “health care.”