Former reality TV star (“19 Kids And Counting”) Jessa Duggar Seewald recently announced that she had experienced a tragic miscarriage, only to be met by heartless attacks from the mainstream media who falsely claimed she had an abortion.
Seewald had initially shared the news of her family’s loss, mentioning that she received a Dilation and Curettage (D&C) procedure to clear her uterus and remove the remains of her deceased child. A mother of four other children and married to Benjamin Seewald, she has stated in the past that she is pro-life, and has compared abortion to the Holocaust.
Multiple media outlets and abortion promoters immediately jumped on the Seewald family’s tragedy and attempted to use the grieving mother as a political prop for abortion.
Writer Josie Duffy Rice in a now deleted tweet wrote, “To be clear this is a member of one of the most famous vocally anti-abortion families… … admitting she got an abortion.”
Similarly, New York University law professor Melissa Murray tweeted, “Jessa Duggar discusses her recent miscarriage, which was treated by performing a D&C–that is, an abortion.”
Feminist website Jezebel tweeted, “Jessa Duggar Seewald Had an Abortion, Even If She Won’t Say the Word,” along with an article making the same accusation. The article reads:
People magazine and other outlets accepted Duggar’s framing of the experience as a “miscarriage”—which would be fine, except that an anti-abortion celebrity literally having an abortion is probably something that’s worth discussing honestly.
Jezebel’s stance is that a woman can have a miscarriage, but if she’s pro-life it has to be considered an abortion to justify their demand for abortion access. This is clearly not based on any medical facts since, according to the Mayo Clinic, a D&C procedure to treat miscarriage acts with the intention of removing a no-longer-living child, while if used in an abortion it directly kills and removes a living child.
Seewald responded to the attacks in an Instagram story, saying that her baby’s heart had already stopped 3 weeks before she had the procedure. “There’s a world of difference between someone dying and someone being killed,” she wrote. “To equate one to the other — and to a mother grieving the loss of her baby no less — is severely distasteful.”
Yet, publication after publication published the same medically or factually inaccurate narrative. Buzzfeed News released an article titled “Jessa Duggar Seewald’s Miscarriage Treatment Was A Procedure Many Can’t Get After Abortion Bans.” Likewise, the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote that “In Arkansas, where the Seewalds live, dead fetuses can be aborted, but not living ones, regardless of risks for the baby or the person carrying it.”
After Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022, there was an outbreak of hysteria fueled by abortion supporters claiming that women with miscarriages would no longer receive care. A study by the Charlotte Lozier Institute confirmed that no states that have banned or restricted abortion have removed the ability for women to receive treatment for miscarriages or ectopic pregnancies.
Whether it is willful or just plain ignorance, nothing shows true colors more than when a movement that claims to advocate for women’s rights is so quick to exploit a mother’s tragedy to promote an agenda.
