Fact Checks ProPublica’s long-planned agenda is clear: Whatever the problem, blame pro-life laws

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Posted on 12/23/2024 5:40:42 AM PST by Morgana

ProPublica has ramped up its biased attack on pro-life states in no less than four new articles this week, published in rapid succession, and pointed largely at the maternal mortality review committees of pro-life states, which it alleges are turning a blind eye to how pro-life laws are risking women’s lives. The outlet is now even taking a swipe at hospital attorneys, along with advising women on the questions to ask when seeking an OB/GYN.

These overlapping topics require a response, because ProPublica is unfortunately still misleading readers on many counts. At a Glance:

* ProPublica’s experts predicted that maternal deaths would increase after the reversal of Roe, and though experts told the outlet that it would be nearly impossible to definitively blame an individual woman’s death on a state’s pro-life law, that’s exactly what they set out to do in 2024.

* ProPublica is now accusing maternal mortality review committees in pro-life states of deliberately hiding evidence that women are dying because of restrictive abortion laws in various states, and is misleading readers about the rules of these committees.

* ProPublica complains that the CDC should give more guidance to state maternal mortality review committees, otherwise, it will be “harder to study deaths related to restrictions….” But currently, even the reporting of abortion statistics and complications by states to the CDC is voluntary and not required by federal law.

* Abortion advocates don’t want to know if women are being harmed because of abortion in states with fewer restrictions. But they do want to know if a lack of unrestricted abortion is harming them. (Case in point: Arizona’s governor just stated that she wants to repeal the state’s law requiring the reporting of abortion statistics annually because it invades “privacy.”)

* Despite having no solid evidence, the media is still claiming that women are dying because of pro-life laws.

* ProPublica blames hospital attorneys for leaving doctors and hospitals in the dark about how to handle pro-life state laws, but in reality, the medical organizations who normally provide guidance on such issues have remained suspiciously silent.

* ProPublica repeats the claim that pro-life state laws are “vague” and “unclear” while in reality, the state laws are quite clear; if medical professionals are still in the dark, it’s not pro-life laws that are to blame.

* Abortion is an intentional act of killing; state laws make this clear. No doctor has been prosecuted for an abortion in any pro-life state since Dobbs, and no pro-life law allows for the prosecution of a woman for obtaining an abortion.

Abortion and maternal mortality

In 2023, ProPublica’s experts ‘predicted‘ that maternal deaths would rise following the fall of Roe v. Wade and the enactments of state pro-life laws. Fast forward to 2024, and now the outlet is seeking out such deaths in pro-life states only — despite the fact that for years, maternal mortality rates had been rising, even in pro-abortion states, under Roe.

ProPublica didn’t seem to care about these maternal deaths prior to the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision. But now, these deaths are all it wants to talk about — as long as the conversation only relates to pro-life states. It highlights tragic and preventable deaths in states with pro-life protections, while ignoring similar and preventable deaths in pro-abortion states.

The agenda: Whatever the problem, blame pro-life laws

Back in 2023, ProPublica appeared to be in agreement with maternal mortality review committees, reporting that “experts say, at least in the short term, it may be difficult or impossible to track the number of lives lost due to limits on abortion access.” Those experts also noted in 2023 that knowing if abortion access itself played a role in a death would also be “very difficult.”

Regardless, ProPublica hinted back then at its agenda: to convince Americans that maternal deaths are rising because of the restriction of abortion in certain states after Dobbs, whether from lack of abortion during medical emergencies or “substance abuse, unstable housing, suicide or mental health problems” in connection to “continuing an undesired pregnancy.” Essentially, the idea was to create propaganda, blaming as many negative events as possible on one thing: a lack of abortion access.

Now it needs that prediction to come true.

To that end, it has sought out and manipulated the tragic and negligent deaths of pregnant women in pro-life states. In 2024, it bombarded the internet with stories of women in Georgia, Texas, and Louisiana who had, it claimed, died because of pro-life laws.

Except… they hadn’t.

Sometime between 2023 and 2024, ProPublica changed its tune on maternal mortality review committees, once calling them “uniquely well-positioned to examine the impacts of abortion bans on maternal health” despite claiming the exact opposite a year ago.

Now, it complains that such “panels in states that have recently imposed strict bans on abortion have done little to uncover whether the laws are contributing to maternal deaths, including tracking delays in care for pregnancy complications and making these problems known…” Yet just a year ago it reported that, according to experts, this would be a nearly impossible task.

Accusing pro-lifers of hiding evidence

ProPublica is now pivoting to yet another attack: claiming that pro-life political state leaders want to hide any evidence of women dying from a lack of abortion access.

It reported last week, “Texas has gone as far as to legally prohibit its committee from reviewing deaths that are considered abortion-related. This could include some miscarriage care, health officials told ProPublica.”

“The committee does not review cases that involve [misprostol] because it’s also used for abortions, said committee chair Dr. Carla Ortique. “If they received medication, if they received any procedure, we will not get those records.”

But what ProPublica neglected to tell its readers is that this is not a new development, nor is it recent.

It was in 2013 — 11 years ago! — when state legislators created the Texas Maternal Mortality Review Committee (TXMMRC), and it was first determined that the committee would not review cases related to abortion. In 2013, abortion was legal through 20 weeks post-fertilization in Texas, or 22 weeks LMP, an age at which some preborn children can be delivered prematurely and still survive, or at least have the chance to live.

The bipartisan bill that created the Maternal Mortality Review Committee in 2013 stated that abortion information may not be collected by the TXMMRC:

Sec.A34.013.AA INAPPLICABILITY OF CHAPTER. This chapter does not apply to disclosure of records pertaining to voluntary or therapeutic termination of pregnancy, and those records may not be collected, maintained, or disclosed under this chapter.

So while ProPublica attempted to present Texas’ MMRC as if it is suddenly attempting to hide certain maternal deaths, this is — just as much of its reporting in these matters — misleading.

Taking aim at the CDC

ProPublica also complained this week that the “CDC has not pushed state committees that review maternal deaths to examine the role these new [pro-life] laws have played.”

It states, “The CDC leads the nation’s work to track and reduce maternal mortality, spending nearly $90 million over the last five years to fund state panels made up of health experts who analyze fatalities to spot trends and recommend reforms. While it cannot require states to collect or report certain data, the CDC gives committees detailed guidance for assessing whether deaths were preventable and which factors contributed to them….”

It complains that the CDC’s current guidance does not give committees a standard to follow to examine how abortion laws affect maternal deaths, “which makes it harder to study deaths related to restrictions and create an evidence base to inform recommendations.”

Maeve Wallace, an epidemiologist at the University of Arizona, said, “It’s pushing it under the rug in a way — like we don’t want to count it, we don’t want to know what’s happening.”

Let’s look at the facts.

The CDC’s limits, and what abortion advocates don’t want

Pro-lifers have, for decades, complained about the lack of any federal requirements to report abortion numbers or count abortion-related complications and deaths. States determine their own reporting on these things, and not all states report information to the CDC each year. Those states that typically refrain from reporting are states like California and Maryland; in other words, the states with the most liberal abortion laws often don’t report data to the CDC.

Without data showing how safe or unsafe abortion procedures are for women, there’s no realistic way for abortion to be called “safe.” Yet, abortion advocates like ProPublica want the CDC to monitor only states passing pro-life laws, ostensibly in an attempt to gather and manipulate data to make abortion seem like a necessary, lifesaving act.

Abortion advocates don’t want to know if women are being harmed because of abortion in states with fewer restrictions. But they do want to know if a lack of unrestricted abortion is harming them.

Case in point: this week, after Arizona released its annual abortion report as required by state law, Gov. Katie Hobbs called for the repeal of that law, calling it “an attack on our freedom” and an infringement on “our right to privacy.” She even went so far as to claim that “The government has no place in surveilling Arizonans’ medical decision-making or tracking their health history” — despite the fact that this is what most Departments of Health do.

In other words, abortion advocates like Hobbs believe injuries, deaths, and any and all statistics related to abortion should be kept hidden in the name of privacy — but deaths related to a so-called lack of abortion should be well-documented.

It’s complete hypocrisy.

‘They’re definitely dying from pro-life laws… but we can’t prove it’?

With no proof, the claim is still being made that women are dying from pro-life laws.

Nancy L. Cohen, president of the Gender Equity Policy Institute, claimed, “Our analysis of the evidence and other factors strongly indicates that the bans are driving this increase [in maternal mortality], but,” she admits, “there is no way currently to determine from publicly available data if abortion restrictions contributed to a particular death” (emphasis added).

There’s also no way to determine from publicly available data if abortion itself contributed to a particular woman’s death — but ProPublica doesn’t care about those deaths, anyway. It only cares that there isn’t “a single reference to abortion access” in an update to the “maternal mortality crisis” that had been sent to Congress in July. (Perhaps that’s because according to long-term data from other countries, it appears prohibiting doctors from actively killing babies in the womb doesn’t increase maternal mortality.)

Look at California, where abortion has been legal since 1962, and where in 2002 the state passed a law guaranteeing women the “right” to an abortion before fetal viability (or when necessary to protect a woman’s life or health). Yet, the maternal mortality rate in the state climbed after this.

According to its Spring 2018 Pregnancy-Associated Mortality Review, “California observed its maternal mortality rate rise sharply from 8.0 deaths per 100,000 live births in 1999 to 16.9 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2006.” Forty-one percent (41%) of those deaths were reported to have “had a good-to-strong chance of preventability.”

By 2013, the maternal mortality rate in California had dropped to 7.3, and “the collective impact of public health investments in maternal health programs and enhanced surveillance coupled with the strong engagement and leadership among California maternity care hospitals, providers, insurers and advocacy organizations” were credited with that turnaround — not abortion laws.

New York also has a high maternal mortality rate despite its pro-abortion laws. According to its most recent report, the State Health Department said there were 18.5 deaths per 100,000 live births in New York from 2018 to 2020. Nearly three-quarters of those were deemed to be preventable.

Maternal mortality review committees should examine the reasons a pregnant or newly parenting woman has died, and whether her death was preventable. But these reviews must be even-handed, without a pointed attempt to blame abortion restrictions in pro-life states while turning a blind eye to possible harms of unrestricted abortion in other states.

The alleged abandonment of doctors and hospital leaders

ProPublica also complained this week that hospital leaders and attorneys in pro-life states have essentially abandoned health care workers to fend for themselves amid supposedly dangerous pro-life laws.

“As doctors navigate risks of criminal prosecution in states with abortion bans, hospital leaders and lawyers have left them to fend for themselves with minimal guidance and, at times, have remained ‘conspicuously and deliberately silent’,” according to a 29-page report released Thursday by Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden,” said ProPublica. “The poor direction is leading to delays in emergency care for patients facing pregnancy complications…”

ProPublica concludes that doctors don’t know how to handle “life or death” scenarios without intentional killing, and without the advice of attorneys. In addition, it said the the Biden administration told hospitals that they have to follow the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Law (EMTALA), and that it dictates that induced abortion is a stabilizing treatment in some emergencies.

However, induced abortion — the direct and intentional killing of a preborn child — is not the standard of care for pregnancy emergencies. Not for PPROM, not for preeclampsia, not for placenta accreta, not for placenta percreta, not for placenta increta, not for placenta previa, and so on (see more information at links provided). While some of these conditions may require the early delivery of the baby, this is not the same as intentionally killing the preborn child. Nowhere is induced abortion listed as a treatment for any of these conditions.

Therefore, if induced abortion is not the standard of care for pregnancy complications or conditions, then why would a medical provider need to commit one?

ProPublica then cited three cases in which it claimed women were “denied care” because of pro-life laws. In each of its brief recaps of these stories, ProPublica never once mentions that an abortion was carried out — because an induced abortion was not medically necessary for any of the women. And yet, pro-life states allow induced abortions in the case of medical emergencies — and those emergencies are typically left to the physician’s ‘reasonable medical judgment’ as stated in law — like Idaho’s Defense of Life Act, which says that if a doctor determines “in his good faith medical judgment and based on facts known… at the time, that the abortion was necessary to prevent the death of the pregnant woman,” then this is not considered a criminal abortion. It’s also not considered a criminal abortion if the doctor attempts to “provide[] the best opportunity for the unborn child to survive, unless, in his good faith medical judgment, termination of the pregnancy in that manner would [pose] a greater risk of the death of the pregnant woman.”

Labor induction at any point in pregnancy during an emergency is not an abortion. Signs of miscarriage are not reasons to intentionally kill a preborn child, and preterm delivery with the intent to save the mother is also not an abortion. Stabilizing a pregnant woman with a “massive hemorrhage” does not require killing the child through dismemberment — and yet, many pro-life state laws will still allow it under “reasonable medical judgment.”

Is it really the attorneys’ fault?

ProPublica claims these women’s tragic situations could have been prevented if lawyers had advised doctors on the laws. But the buck doesn’t stop with hospital attorneys. The pro-abortion American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists typically offers guidance to OB/GYNs — yet in regard to pro-life laws, it hasn’t offered a single piece of insight.

Dr. Ingrid Skop, Texas OB/GYN and VP of Medical Affairs for the Charlotte Lozier Institute, noted in a Facebook video that typically, medical organizations give their members guidance on how to navigate new regulations. It failed to do so when pro-life laws were passed after Dobbs.

Skop stated:

Doctors are not attorneys. We have always relied on our professional medical associations to explain new laws that impact the practice of medicine, and this happens commonly. The Affordable Care Act, the HIPAA privacy regulations, even the opioid prescribing changes… do have also significant punishments involved. So this is not the first time that doctors have seen a significant concern from the law that they need to obey the law.

But every time what has happened is our medical organizations have explained the law to us. In fact, nearly every year, I am required to take mandatory CME [continuing medical education] to make sure I still remember how to prescribe opioids. So this is how it works in medicine.

But this time it did not work this way. None of the medical organizations voluntarily helped the doctors understand the law, and in fact, sometimes they were stirring up the confusion and fear themselves… and then when doctors did become confused and provide sub-quality care… then that’s being pointed at as demonstration that the laws are confusing….

It’s possible that this was intentional on the part of medical organizations like the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, which is beholden to pro-abortion ideology — to the point of even denying long-accepted scientific fact when it comes to prenatal human development.

It’s as if the very people who have long advised doctors on protocols and laws have suddenly and purposefully become very quiet. Advice for women

In a separate article published this week, ProPublica did offer at least a small amount of sound advice to pregnant women on how to prepare themselves for a medical emergency. However, there were failures as well.

For some strange and unknown reason, ProPublica described a D&E second trimester abortion… without actually describing it.

“A D&E, or dilation and evacuation, is a procedure used in the second trimester to empty the uterus,” it said. “The doctor uses suction and tools like forceps. The patient is sedated or asleep in an operating room. It takes less time than an induction, allows the patient to avoid a labor experience and generally is associated with less blood loss and infection risk than other options. For patients with heavy bleeding or infections in the second trimester, a D&E could be lifesaving, doctors told us.”

WARNING: Image of abortion victim below.

What it didn’t say was that in the process of a D&E, the baby is dismembered — her arms and legs torn from her body — and she is likely still alive when the dismembering begins. This is a barbaric and unnecessary act. The woman, if not dilated, would have to be forcibly dilated, which typically takes at least a day, though abortionists have been known to rush things along. (If already dilating, labor could be stimulated under the supervision of doctors.) In a true emergency, a C-section would be fastest and might allow the baby, depending on her age, a chance at life. If she does not survive, the parents and family would at least have the opportunity to hold her and take photos — which is impossible when she’s been dismembered and is quite literally left in pieces. Justice for the Five

Baby Holly was dismembered by a D&E abortion in a Washington DC abortion facility. Photo courtesy of Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising. (on link)

ProPublica also advised women to ask the following questions of doctors:

* If I think I’m miscarrying, can I receive care at your office, or do I need to go to the ER?

* Do you do D&Cs and D&Es? How often and where?

* If my water breaks in the second trimester, do you offer the option of abortion care or do you wait until there are signs of infection?

* Which hospital do you recommend if I need emergency care?”

While asking questions is wise, the question regarding the preterm premature rupture of membranes (PPROM or water breaking before term) is a leading one. It implies that induced abortion is a standard treatment for PPROM. It’s not.

Other options exist within the standard of care, such as working to delay labor while watching for signs of infection, and delivering the baby early if it appears there are problems. If the baby doesn’t survive her premature birth, this is not the same as intentionally killing her prior to delivering her.

Yet, abortion enthusiasts like ProPublica avoid discussing this; they seem to be attempting to prove two lies: that women need induced abortion and that induced abortion is “health care.”

If you intentionally ignore something, does that make it “vague” and “unclear”?

ProPublica claims exceptions under pro-life laws are “unclear” and “inherently vague,” and therefore “create confusion and fear around the procedures.” The laws are actually very clear and very accessible.

In Texas, for example, the law defines abortion as “the act of using or prescribing an instrument, a drug, a medicine, or any other substance, device, or means with the intent to cause the death of an unborn child of a woman known to be pregnant.” The law clearly states that an act is “not an abortion if the act is done with the intent to: (A) save the life or preserve the health of an unborn child; (B) remove a dead, unborn child whose death was caused by spontaneous abortion [miscarriage]; or (C) remove an ectopic pregnancy.”

It also states, “If an abortion is performed or induced on a pregnant woman because of a medical emergency, the physician who performs or induces the abortion shall execute a written document that certifies the abortion is necessary due to a medical emergency and specifies the woman’s medical condition requiring the abortion.”

No doctor has been prosecuted for an abortion in any pro-life state since Dobbs, and no pro-life law allows for the prosecution of a woman for obtaining an abortion.

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1 posted on 12/23/2024 5:40:42 AM PST by Morgana

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