Oppressed women of America! Woe is you! For now that the oligarchs of the Supreme Court have spoken, you will be subjugated to a life of forced pregnancy unto even death! The Christofascists theocrats will force our women to die from ectopic pregnancies, throw our non-binary birthing persons into labor camps for miscarriages — er, at least that’s what they would have you think.
Back here in reality, the pro-life movement (and the law) addressed these issues decades ago, long before many of these doomsayers were born. How ectopic pregnancies and miscarriages are handled with the abolition of abortion has been out in the open for anyone honestly interested in the answers. In short: the procedures to deal with miscarriages, ectopic pregnancies, and other such tragic situations aren’t elective abortions and therefore not prohibited by the abolition of elective abortion. No exceptions are needed (as we explain in our article here.)
The pro-abortion fanatics have a long and sordid history of misrepresenting the facts regarding biology, the law, when life begins, and pro-life views. It shouldn’t be any shocker that they’d either be grossly ignorant of or deliberately deceptive when it comes to this issue. Let’s face it, if a significant portion of your supporters are willing to murder babies and set cities on fire, we’re not going to expect a silly thing like the truth get in your way. We digress. We address each of these issues in detail below.
Ectopic pregnancies
An ectopic pregnancy is when a human embryo implants outside the main cavity of the uterus (usually in the fallopian tubes). In almost all circumstances, there are no currently known medical procedures which can save the life of the baby. The baby cannot develop to term and to attempt to allow the baby to develop to term will almost certainly result in serious injury or death to the mother.
Personally, the author of this article knew a pro-life Christian couple who went through this a Christian couple who went through this catastrophe. They were rocked to their very core and even as an outsider, it was heart-wrenching to witness. Every effort was made to save their twin babies, but neither could be saved and the pregnancy couldn’t continue.
To reiterate: the pro-life position is the banning of elective abortions. The procedure needed to treat an ectopic pregnancy is not an elective abortion. This means there is no need for exceptions for the life of the mother, as Live Action explains. Needless exceptions are exploited by abortion proponents to justify legal baby murder. Procedures to save the life of a mother in legitimate life threatening circumstances, like ectopic pregnancies, have always been covered in laws prohibiting abortion. Again, because these aren’t elective abortions.
The law and intentions under it
Let’s step into their argument for a moment and assume abortion is banned, and, they are right. Someone decides to take a woman and her doctor to court for the death of her baby caused as a result of a procedure to save her life. Under the legislative framework we propose, the preborn child is to be given equal protection under the law. This means their death would be treated like the death of any other person.
First, you need a prosecutor willing to press charges. To press charges and take anyone into custody you have to get a warrant, have collected evidence, built up a case, and part of that case is convincing a judge there is reasonable evidence to suspect a crime has been committed. Next, in pressing charges and trying the case, you have demonstrate the intention was to end the life of the child. Obviously, ignorance over whether the child is living or refusal to accept their right to live isn’t a legal defense. That’s not what we’re talking about. Rather, what is the intention of the mother in consenting to the treatment and what is the intention of the doctor in providing the treatment? In the case of treating ectopic pregnancies, the intention is to save the life of the mother, not to kill the baby and end the pregnancy. That may be the end result, but it is not the intention of either participant.
The American Association for Pro-Life Obstetricians has made this statement in regards to treating ectopic pregnancy:
Regrettably, in each of these clinical situations the child cannot be saved. In either case, the intent for the pro-life physician is not to kill the unborn child, but to preserve the life of the mother in a situation where the life of the child cannot be saved by current medical technology. For these reasons the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians recognizes the unavoidable loss of human life that occurs in an ectopic pregnancy, but does not consider treatment of ectopic pregnancy by standard surgical or medical procedures to be the moral equivalent of elective abortion, or to be the wrongful taking of human life.
AAPLOG, 2010
Referring back to our quote, “In either case, the intent for the pro-life physician is not to kill the unborn child.” While unavoidable, the intention of treating an ectopic pregnancy is not to kill the baby but to save the mother and whenever possible, the baby as well. Therefore, even in this make-believe world where women are taken to court for ectopic pregnancies, several more steps of irrational hurdles must be overcome before anything comes of it.
But it won’t, because these various treatments are not elective abortions.
Analogy: Tragedy, not murder
Consider this analogy: A mother is trapped in a burning building along with her baby. The baby is trapped behind immovable burning rubble. The firefighters can save the woman, but the woman must leave her baby behind and the firefighters can’t save the baby. While the firefighters, and even the mother, should and will exert every effort to save the baby, unfortunately, the baby dies. Is the firefighter guilty of murder because he or she saved the mother? Is the mother guilty of murder because she left the burning building? This is a matter of making a life-or-death choice in a crisis and we already have laws in place which protect people thrust into these situations.
On the other hand, the abortion fanatics want us to think them throwing their babies into the burning building is equivalent to this very tragic circumstance. Yet, we know one is an unavoidable tragedy deserving compassion, and the other is wicked child murder deserving the full weight of justice.
Miscarriage
Our hearts go out to every woman and every couple who have experienced the heartbreak of a miscarriage. We convey our deepest compassion to you. We deeply regret your suffering is being exploited for political purposes.
Miscarriages are a tragedy we must face in this broken world. It is a horrible . To add insult to injury, women who have had a miscarriage often struggle with feelings of guilt and shame. It is these feelings of guilt and shame the baby murderers are targeting: “Did you hear? Those pro-lifers want to throw you in jail for your miscarriage!”
This is a gross exploitation and abuse of women to garner support for further killing of children.
A miscarriage is also known as a “spontaneous abortion.” It has no relation whatsoever to an elective abortion. Abortion simply means “the termination of a pregnancy.” The spontaneous part means it happened without apparent cause or planning. This is in contrast to elective abortions where you go into a surgical room with the intention of killing your child.
It has happened, but…
While we found a few incidents where district attorneys charged women with manslaughter for miscarriages, these were rare cases where the DA believed they were a result of illicit drug use. That said, we were unable to find any law, past, present, or proposed which takes this position. It should be noted that a woman intentionally causing her baby to die would not be the same as a miscarriage, which is an unintentional loss of life.
Nullify Abortion rejects the criminalization of miscarriages
It has been the standing position of Nullify Abortion to criminalize abortion as a capital crime (not post facto) as premeditated murder with malice aforethought. It has never even crossed our minds to consider miscarriage as anything other than a very sad, very unfortunate tragedy.
In all of our collective decades of experience in the pro-life movement, we have never heard a single pro-life supporter even hint at miscarriages being criminalized. The only people this has ever been uttered by are pro-abortion fanatics building strawmen. As is often the case, those arguing for baby murder either fail to understand foundational aspects of what we believe, are intentionally misrepresenting us, or as is most often the case, choose to be ignorant.
- Updated 6/28/2022
- Edited by Carol Lynne
- Featured image by shan sheehan / flickr / CC BY 2.0
