By CatholicVote | Created at 2024-11-06 00:41:38 | Updated at 2024-11-06 03:39:39
2 hours ago
CV NEWS FEED // Texas Alliance for Life has countered false information of pro-abortion advocates regarding the Lone Star State’s pro-life laws.
The pro-life organization issued a press release on November 1, calling out ProPublica for publishing “misleading articles falsely attributing the tragic deaths of Josseli Barnica in 2021 and Nevaeh Crain in 2023 to Texas’ pro-life laws.” Texas Alliance for Life argued such claims “promote fear and misinformation rather than the truth, undermining women’s health and safety.”
Countering ProPublica’s narrative, Texas Alliance for Life pointed to the latest “Induced Termination of Pregnancy” (ITOP) report from Texas Health and Human Services. The report shows that doctors performed 119 abortions under Texas’ medical necessity exception clause to save pregnant women’s lives or health during the first two years after the Dobbs decision.
In a public statement on the issue, Texas Alliance for Life Communications Director Amy O’Donnell denounced ProPublica for “attempting to place blame where it doesn’t belong,” arguing that “Josseli’s and Nevaeh’s deaths were preventable,” and that Texas law allows medical interventions to save the life of the mother, even if this results in the death of the unborn child.
“Abortion advocates and certain media outlets like ProPublica continue to stoke fear with false claims,” O’Donnell said. “This fear-mongering only creates dangerous confusion for patients and providers, despite the clarity of what Texas laws allow, and women’s lives, fertility, and future well-being are unnecessarily put at risk.”
Texas Alliance for Life called on ProPublica to correct its inaccuracies and false reporting.
CatholicVote reached out by phone to clarify Texas Alliance for Life position on what are called “medically necessary abortions.”
Joe Pojman, Ph.D., executive director of Texas Alliance for Life, replied in an email statement to CatholicVote, clarifying that the pro-life group’s reporting reflects the terminology used in Texas law.
Pojman wrote:
When Texas Alliance for Life reports that doctors are performing medically necessary abortions under Texas’s pro-life laws, what does that mean? First, we make a distinction between “elective abortions” and “medically necessary abortions.” Medically necessary means those abortions, that in the “reasonable medical judgment” of a physician, are needed to prevent the loss of life or health of the pregnant woman, which are carefully and narrowly defined in Texas’ Human Life Protection Act. These are very rare cases, occurring about 60 times a year compared to more than 360,000 births annually in Texas. During the first 24 months after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, only 119 have been reported in Texas.
These are not abortions when the baby is conceived in rape or incest, when the baby received a life-limiting or fatal diagnosis, or in other circumstances. The intent is not for the baby to die, but rather the death of a child in these scenarios is a tragic consequence of a medical procedure performed to save the mother’s life. An example is the induction of labor to prevent the death of the mother from sepsis in cases of premature rupture of membranes before the baby is viable. The doctor causes the baby’s birth knowing that he or she is too young to survive. While some practitioners are reluctant to use the word abortion in these cases, they are reported as abortions by the Texas Health and Humans Services Commission, and our reporting reflects that terminology.
Dr. John Bruchalski, founder of the pro-life medical practice Tepeyac OB/GYN and Divine Mercy Care — who performed abortions during his medical residency before experiencing a profound conversion — has argued that in no instance is an elective abortion necessary to save the life or health of the mother.
In a February 2023 article for the Federalist, titled “The Pro-Abortion ‘Life Of The Mother’ Argument Is A False Flag Operation,” Dr. Bruchalski argued that “one of the greatest lies spread by the pro-abortion left in America today is that we need to intentionally end the life of an unborn baby in order to save the mother’s life in many of these cases.”
“Women face many possible illnesses during pregnancy, including premature rupture of membranes, severely high blood pressure, diabetes, hemorrhaging, cancers, and heart disease,” the doctor explained. “As an obstetrician-gynecologist who used to provide abortions early in my training, I know that intentional feticide is never necessary even in the worst-case scenarios.”
Dr. Bruchalski insisted that a physician’s goal “should be to care for both patients and to get them both as far along in the pregnancy as possible as long as the mom and baby are doing well.”
In some instances, however, Dr. Bruchalski wrote, a “preterm delivery” is required to save the life of the mother prior to the baby reaching the age of viability, such as when the mother develops an infection. In such cases, he said, “The unborn baby may not survive because it’s not yet viable outside the womb. But ending the life of the unborn child was never the direct intention in treating the infection.”
A direct or “elective” abortion, on the other hand, Dr. Bruchalski emphasized, is never necessary. “There are no advantages for a mother to end her pregnancy by an elective abortion, even in the most life-threatening circumstances.”
He explained that the procedures for an elective abortion “become more dangerous the further along in pregnancy,” which he said is when the majority of maternal health complications arise.
“Abortions after 24 weeks cause massive fluid shifts, which can push the mom into heart, lung, or kidney failure,” he explained. “If the mother’s life is in immediate danger, a C-section takes one hour,” whereas, “a direct abortion after 24 weeks can take two to three days.”
“The argument cannot be made that an abortion is necessary because it is faster than delivery,” he affirmed.
According to Dr. Bruchalski, Dr. Byron Calhoun, a high-risk OB-GYN in West Virginia has also confirmed that medically “there is never a need to directly end the life of the unborn child in order to save the mother.” Dr. Bruchalski said in the Federalist that Dr. Calhoun wrote to the former: “The baby may be delivered prematurely and die from that, but it is never necessary to kill the baby to save the mother’s life.”
Countering the pro-abortion narrative that argues proper maternal care is at risk with pro-life abortion bans, the Divine Mercy Care founder clarified that elective abortions are not the same as medical interventions that treat a true health emergency of the mother.
“Chemotherapy for a pregnant mother that tragically results in miscarriage is not an elective abortion,” Dr. Bruchalski wrote. “Treatment for an ectopic pregnancy is not an elective abortion. Preterm delivery for an infection is not an elective abortion.”
He argued that women in such circumstances have been treated for their pregnancy complications “before, during, and after Roe v. Wade.”
“But abortion advocates want you to think these cases are compromised in post-Roe America and bundled up in the wrongly dubbed ‘rights’ they are fighting for, in order to keep the abortion-on-demand culture alive,” he said.
Lamenting that 50 years of Roe has “crippled the medical field by making abortion the commonplace solution to disease, personal needs, and conveniences,” Dr. Bruchalski called out pro-abortion medical professionals for “intentionally creating confusion over medical definitions to justify abortion on demand and to scare voters.”
Such medical professionals, he charged, “want to reserve the right to perform elective abortions in any circumstance because they worship the cash cow that stems from their patients’ ability to choose death.”
“‘Life of the mother’ reasoning appears to come from a place of medical concern for women,” Bruchalski warned, “but it’s really a false flag operation.”
He concluded, “This lie — that elective abortion is necessary to save the life of the mother — unnecessarily pits the mother against her child. But mom and baby are on the same team. They are a part of the same family.”
