In the latest attempt to paint the pro-life movement as dangerous to women, the Senate Finance Committee recently held a hearing titled “Chaos and Control: How Trump Criminalized Women’s Health Care.” While the marathon of lies was meant to sway any yet undecided voters six weeks before the Presidential election, it simply revealed the Left’s commitment to abortion at the risk of women’s lives.
The hearing comes after the tragic death of a young woman in Georgia, Amber Thurman. The Left is blaming Georgia’s recently passed law which prohibits abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected, usually around five to six weeks of gestation. Democrat politicians across the country, including Vice President Kamala Harris, are using the case to claim that this and similar laws, which have saved thousands of lives since the Dobbs decision, are actually harmful and potentially deadly to women.
This disingenuous Congressional hearing was yet another way to send the message that pro-lifers are helping to harm and, in some instances, kill innocent women. Chairman Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) proved this by claiming in his opening remarks that pro-life laws do not allow women to receive emergency care, the underlying accusation in Thurman’s case.
This is false, of course. The details in Amber Thurman’s sad case prove that Georgia’s pro-life law had nothing to do with her death. What it shows, instead, is how dangerous chemical abortion pills are for women. After missing a scheduled surgical abortion appointment, the clinic instead gave Thurman abortion drugs to take on her own, unsupervised by any medical professional. The drugs failed to clear the uterus of all the fetal tissue and, after suffering for days without a doctor’s attention, Thurman developed sepsis. Her emergency medical condition would have allowed her to receive a D&C (dilation and curettage) procedure at a hospital, but for reasons still unclear, the hospital she went to did not recognize the gravity of her situation until it was too late.
Concerned Women for America (CWA), along with the pro-life community, has been warning about the dangers of abortion pills for women for decades. But the abortion industry consistently labels these drugs as safe and effective, leading both women and doctors to assume that they can be taken without any risks. Dr. Christina Francis from the American Association of Pro-Life OBGYNS (AAPLOG) pointed out in the hearing, Planned Parenthood and other abortion advocates claim that these pills are safer than “penicillin, Tylenol, and Viagra.” But the fact that 75% of hospital visits within 30 days of taking the abortion pills are coded as critical disproves the claim of safety.
As noted by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin), the very title of the hearing is far more dangerous than any of these state laws regulating abortions. Rhetoric implying that the republican candidate for President is criminalizing a woman’s ability to get necessary treatment exacerbates the idea that any of his political allies are a threat to women everywhere. It encourages women to ignore anything that pro-life advocates have to say, such as the fact that abortion drugs are extremely dangerous.
Witness Kaitlyn Joshua’s story was also based on the idea that these laws deny women critical emergency treatments. She claimed that after suffering a miscarriage, she was turned away from two ER’s in Louisiana because she was told that a D&C is considered an abortion and therefore illegal in the state. However, no pro-life law prohibits women from receiving necessary procedures in the case of miscarriages or other emergency situations. If any medical staff is unclear about that, then states must do a better job of educating hospitals. But no pro-life law demands such an outcome. The reality is that any woman can still get the critical care that she needs, regardless of what state in which she lives.
OBGYN Dr. Amelia Huntsberger practiced in Idaho, until a law protecting life was passed. Because Huntsberger felt that she could no longer provide the “medical care” her patients required, she moved to a pro-abortion state. In the hearing, she claimed that pro-life laws put “providers like me at risk for medical malpractice.” And, of course, that is part of the point of these laws – to save unborn babies. Ending the life on an innocent child is not “medical care.” Again, these laws do no ban doctors from providing actual necessary care. In no life-threatening situation – ectopic pregnancies, miscarriage complications, and on – is the proper treatment considered an abortion.
It was yet another hearing filled with false talking points from the abortion industry. We’ve had many under current Senate leadership. American women are being lied to. They are told that pro-life laws are causing “chaos,” that the Dobbs decision put their lives at risk by denying them access to critical care, that pills such as mail-order mifepristone are a perfectly safe way to end their pregnancies. All for political reasons. They hope fear will drive women to the polls to vote for them under these false pretenses.
That is why CWA is working hard every day to dispel the lies and protect every mother and her child. We want to ensure that every mother is armed with accurate information and has access to the critical care that she and her family needs.