Catholic Health Care Leadership Alliance video screengrabs / YouTube
CV NEWS FEED // Many people have claimed that abortion restrictions will prevent women from receiving necessary health care. In a recent webinar, Catholic doctors explained why abortion is never medically justified.
In the webinar, which was posted on Catholic Health Care Leadership Alliance’s website, doctors noted that “abortion” does not describe the procedures required when miscarriages or ectopic pregnancies occur.
Dr. Christina Frances, an OB-GYN and the CEO of the American Association of Pro-life OB-GYNs, summarized the legal definition of abortion as “something that is done with intent to cause the death of an unborn child of a woman known to be pregnant.”
Frances cited Texas law as an example of how legal abortion restrictions do not prevent access to health care. Texas law states that any treatment that removes a deceased unborn child from its mother is not considered an abortion. Nor is removing an ectopic pregnancy considered abortion. Thus, Frances argues, Texas’s legal restrictions on abortion do not prevent access to these necessary health care procedures.
Frances also clarified that abortion restrictions do not change how doctors treat miscarriages or prevent doctors from using particular procedures in miscarriage care. In a miscarriage, the unborn child has already passed away. Abortion restrictions only prevent procedures that have the intent of killing the unborn child.
She also explained that abortion restrictions do not prevent care in ectopic pregnancies, as all 50 states allow doctors to treat these pregnancies. In ectopic pregnancies, the zygote implants outside of the uterus, typically the fallopian tube, in which case, if left untreated, both the mother and baby will die.
Frances explained that in most ectopic pregnancy diagnoses, the unborn child has already died. However, if the unborn child is still alive, it is not morally permissible to abort the unborn child, though it is legally permissible in the United States.
Instead, Catholic teaching permits the doctor to remove the section of the fallopian tube that contains the zygote, with the intention of saving the mother’s life. This procedure has the foreseen but unintended consequence of ending the unborn child’s life, indirectly.
The video also includes a link to a USCCB fact sheet about abortion.
“Abortion restrictions never prevent women from receiving life-saving treatment,” the document states.
