Pro-Lifers See a Miscarriage of Facts

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Real Clear Investigations

Democrats have run hard on abortion this election cycle. Since the Supreme Court in June overturned the Roe v. Wade ruling finding a right to abortion in the U.S. Constitution, Democrats have spent $320 million on midterm campaign ads favoring abortion rights, 10 times the $31 million they’ve spent on ads related to inflation, which was consistently rated as voters' top concern.  

They have used those ads and public appearances to advance a legal interpretation of abortion as including miscarriages and other problem pregnancies to suggest --– misleadingly, abortion foes say --– that under Republican restrictions women would run afoul of abortion law for the care they receive for common but serious and even life-threatening prenatal complications.  

 

 

Stacey Abrams: “Women can be investigated for miscarriages and other pregnancy losses.”

AP

 

 

 

During the October 30 Georgia gubernatorial debate, Democratic challenger Stacey Abrams claimed that the LIFE Act signed by Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, which outlaws abortion after the sixth week of pregnancy, means “women can be investigated for miscarriages and other pregnancy losses.”  

While advocating for California’s Proposition 1, which would enshrine the right to abortion in the state’s constitution, Hillary Clinton also conflated abortion and miscarriage. “No matter where a person lives or how much money they have, women — not politicians — should be able to make decisions about their own lives,” she tweeted October 18. “That includes abortion care and miscarriage management.”  

And a popular liberal influencer with 464,000 followers on TikTok who goes by the moniker PoliticsGirl stated on October 27 that the election was about whether Republicans pass laws that determine “if you get to live or die during an ectopic pregnancy.”  

But no abortion law on the books in the United States regulates medical treatment for miscarriages or ectopic pregnancies. A miscarriage generally is when the fetus has already died of natural causes before the 20th week of pregnancy -- a situation distinct for legal purposes from the deliberate termination of a viable pregnancy caused by a surgical procedure or abortion drug.

 

An ectopic pregnancy occurs when the fertilized egg is implanted outside the uterus, most commonly in a fallopian tube. Not only will the fetus not survive long-term, but “eventually, it ruptures the tube and the tube doesn't have the ability to contract like the uterus does to shut off the flow of blood, and so it keeps bleeding and bleeding,” says Dr. Ingrid Skop, an OB-GYN in Texas, affiliated with the anti-abortion Charlotte Lozier Institute. “And many women have died from ruptured ectopic pregnancies. It's the number one cause of maternal death in the first half of pregnancy.”