Doctors dispute claim raised at Senate hearing that pro-life laws are killing women
A sign at the entrance to a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing room in Washington, D.C. / Credit: Katherine Welles/Shutterstock Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Sep 26, 2024 / 17:36 pm (CNA).
At a hearing held by U.S. Senate Democrats this week doctors, experts, and Republicans disputed claims that former president Donald Trump and state pro-life laws enacted after the overturn of Roe v. Wade are causing the deaths of women across the country.
Dr. Christina Francis, an OB-GYN, along with several doctors from the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists, testified that pro-abortion misinformation, not pro-life laws, is responsible for “dangerous” delays in women receiving emergency care.
Francis said the hearing, titled “Chaos and Control: How Trump Criminalized Women’s Health Care,” was “an attempt to redirect the public’s attention away from the true danger to women’s health, unregulated and dangerous abortions.”
Speaking with CNA after the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Thursday, Francis said that “one major takeaway from this hearing is that misinformation about abortion laws has real impacts on both physicians and patients.”
“Even though state-level pro-life laws offer clear exceptions allowing physicians to intervene in pregnancy in medical emergencies, and even though these laws do not prosecute women for seeking induced abortions, false narratives to the contrary are sowing fear and confusion among physicians,” she said. “It’s misinformation about these laws that may have cost these women their lives.”
Republicans on the committee meanwhile called out Democrats for holding an overtly political hearing during a heated election cycle. Minnesota Republican Sen. Ron Johnson said that “the title of this hearing is more dangerous and threatens more lives than the [pro-life] laws.”
What did Democrats claim?
Several Democratic senators asserted that many of the pro-life laws enacted since the overturn of Roe v. Wade violate the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act — also known as EMTALA — which requires all federally funded hospitals with emergency departments to provide care to patients in need.
“As a result of Republicans’ yearslong crusade on women’s reproductive freedoms, women in America are facing the prospect of losing yet another pillar of reproductive care, the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act,” said committee chair Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon.
Wyden pointed to the case of Amber Thurman, a 28-year-old mother in Georgia who died from sepsis in 2022 due to complications after taking abortion pills. Thurman was nine weeks pregnant with twins when she consumed the abortion drugs mifepristone and misoprostol, according to the Washington Examiner. The drugs killed the babies but failed to expel the children from Thurman’s womb leading to her developing an infection.
The left-leaning news source ProPublica claimed in a report published last week that doctors at the suburban Piedmont Henry Hospital delayed performing a dilation and curettage procedure because they were afraid it would violate the state law protecting unborn life after six weeks of pregnancy.
Several experts have expressed skepticism about the ProPublica report, which blames Georgia’s pro-life law for Thurman’s death. Though abortion after six weeks is illegal under Georgia law, the state makes exceptions if the child is conceived due to rape or incest, or if the life of the mother is at risk.
Georgia state Rep. Mark Newton, a Republican, told Fox News that “unless someone had a complete misunderstanding or just failed to be aware of what Georgia’s law was, [the pro-life law] has nothing to do with the timing of the decision-making.”
According to Newton, who is also an emergency physician, Thurman’s situation was “clearly a medical or a life-threatening emergency” in which Georgia law explicitly allows an exception for abortion.
Since the publication of ProPublica’s report, Democrats, including presidential candidate Kamala Harris, have attempted to blame Trump and Republicans for Thurman’s death.
“Amber’s story,” Harris said in a town hall with Oprah Winfrey, “highlights the fact that among everything that is wrong with these bans and what has happened in terms of the overturning of Roe v. Wade is a health care crisis.”
Pro-life advocates respond
There was significant disagreement among the senators and those testifying in the hearing on whether Thurman’s and other women’s deaths had been caused by pro-life laws or misinformation spread about what those laws do.
Heather Hacker, a Texas-based attorney who has represented the state and Texas Right to Life in several cases and is deeply familiar with state-level pro-life laws, testified during the hearing that “regardless of the state, laws restricting abortion do not prevent physicians from treating ectopic pregnancies, miscarriages, or women suffering life-threatening complications, including complications from abortion.”
“There is a lot of misinformation and confusion surrounding the law regarding the medical treatment of pregnant women and abortion restrictions. But the confusion is not because of the law, which is clear,” Hacker said.
“To the extent that this has been reported by the media, it is incorrect. To the extent that doctors have claimed that their hands are tied in treating patients in these circumstances, they are mistaken. And to the extent that women believe that any law will prevent them from receiving lifesaving care, they are sadly misinformed.”
Louis Brown, executive director of the Catholic health care advocacy group the Christ Medicus Foundation, told CNA that the true danger lies with chemical abortion drugs that he said “so imperil the health of women that it is shocking that these drugs are available.”
“The abortion industry is engaging in lies and deception because its dangerous chemical abortion drugs and largely unregulated abortion procedures are harming the health and safety of pregnant moms,” he said. “The Catholic and pro-life community need to continue to reject the abortion industry’s immoral lying that is confusing and potentially causing harm to pregnant moms.”
