The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists promotes and partners with Big Abortion

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) claims to be the “premier professional membership organization for obstetrician–gynecologists,” but ACOG is far from unbiased where abortion is concerned. The organization has referred for, advocated for, and promoted abortion for decades.

ACOG has a history of ties to population control advocates, and the group’s move toward decriminalizing abortion began in the 1960s; this eventually culminated in the organization’s official support for unrestricted abortion on demand.

Currently, the group is at the forefront of efforts to expand abortion — in particular, the abortion pill (mifepristone).

ACOG’s Abortion Advocacy Began with Eugenicists

ACOG was originally founded in 1951 as the American Academy of Obstetrics and Gynecology before its renaming in May of 1956. ACOG’s shift to abortion advocacy began shortly after its founding, and control of the organization was quickly taken by those involved with Planned Parenthood — the “endemically racist” Population Council and the American Eugenics Society.

In 1960, ACOG fellow Dr. Alan F. Guttmacher, a board member of Planned Parenthood who took the helm as president in 1962, told media that an ACOG committee had begun a fact-finding expedition to liberalize abortion laws. Then, by 1968, its leadership had moved to approve the American Law Institute’s Model Penal Code to decriminalize abortion.

By then, ACOG was led mostly by men connected to eugenics-based organizations.

In his book, “Abortion and the Pro-life Movement,” Dr. John Willke claimed that in the mid-1960s, ACOG officials along with Dr. Guttmacher sought to redefine the terms “conception” and “pregnancy.” Soon thereafter, ACOG officials worked to change the definition of the beginning of life from fertilization to implantation (in the uterus).

ACOG Promotes Big Abortion

While ACOG is often cited by the media as an unbiased source (and is even cited in order to fact check organizations which hold a pro-life position) ACOG backs and partners with the abortion industry, issuing numerous releases, training documents, practice bulletins, and committee opinions supporting abortion.

When a shortage of abortion providers occurred in the 1990s, the National Abortion Federation (NAF) and ACOG stepped up to “convene[] a symposium to address the shortage,” noted an abortion timeline published by the pro-abortion Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH). More recently, representatives from ACOG District IX took part in the California Future of Abortion Council.

ACOG’s “Abortion Training and Education” webpage notes that one of the organization’s recommendations is to “[e]xpand the trained pool of non-obstetrician–gynecologist abortion providers, such as family physicians and advanced practice clinicians (APCs), by integrating first-trimester abortion training into family medicine and APC training programs [and] opposing restrictions that limit abortion provision to physicians only or obstetrician–gynecologists only.”

ACOG Partners with Big Abortion 

ACOG is a “partner” with the pro-abortion and Buffett-funded Society of Family Planning (SFP, founded in 2005) thanks to a generous contribution from the Packard Foundation, an early investor in the abortion pill manufacturer Danco Laboratories.

In 2005, the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute (named after the aforementioned Dr. Guttmacher) also listed ACOG as a “partner.” More recently, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists partnered with a Planned Parenthood affiliate to repeal pro-life protections in South Carolina.

According to Randall K. O’Bannon, Ph.D., Director of Education & Research at National Right to Life (NRL), “ACOG lets… unapologetic abortionists and abortion advocates assess the safety of abortion methods they perform and promote and then allows them to promulgate that spin as the official position of the national group, making these far from objective assessments.”

For example, long-time abortionist Eve Espey says she was the “past President of the Society of Family Planning” and “Chair of the ACOG Contraceptive Equity Expert Work Group,” and her curriculm vitae (CV) notes that she served on several ACOG committees including being a Legislative Chair in New Mexico. In other words, she is heavily involved in leadership roles with ACOG. But Espey has also contracted to train abortionists to commit later procedures in New Mexico, was a Planned Parenthood Margaret Sanger Award recipient, served on the Board of Directors at Planned Parenthood of New Mexico, served on the Board of NARAL, participated in NAF conferences, and is a member of the pro-abortion Physicians for Reproductive Health group (PRH). Her CV also notes that in 2013, she received the “Rashbaum Award, Abortion Provider Award, lifetime achievement award that honors the distinguished career of a physician who has provided abortions and served as a mentor.”

Citing some other examples of ACOG’s lack of objectivity when it comes to abortion, NRL’s O’Bannon added that “Mitchell Creinin wrote the first practice bulletin for ACOG on ‘medical abortion’ in 2005 and [Daniel] Grossman and Creinin [who both openly commit abortions] worked on an updated version of this practice bulletin which appeared in 2014. Daniel Grossman joined with other abortionists on ACOG’s official practice bulletin on second trimester abortion in 2013.”

More recently, Grossman and Jamila Perritt (president of Physicians for Reproductive Health who also commits abortions) assisted with ACOG’s “Committee Opinion on Increasing Access to Abortion.” And Grossman has been included in ACOG workgroups and cited in additional ACOG publications.

If any doubt of ACOG’s pro-abortion bias remains, a 2023 op-ed written by leaders of ACOG and SFP published in The Washington Post stated that abortion “must be available without restrictions, without limitations and without barriers.”

ACOG Refers for Abortion

ACOG’s “Guide for Patients Seeking Abortion” webpage refers women to the profitable abortion industry by linking to websites such as AbortionFinder.org (multiple places), the National Abortion Federation, and Planned Parenthood — which committed nearly 400,000 abortions last year alone.

Today, ACOG’s website makes clear how biased the organization is on abortion, calling the killing of a preborn baby from abortion “essential” and claiming to be “committed to protecting and increasing access to abortion” along with “oppos[ing] any effort that impedes access to abortion care.”

ACOG is also vowing to “integrate abortion as a component of mainstream medical care, and to oppose and overturn efforts restricting access to abortion” (emphasis added).

ACOG’s website states that abortion “should be removed from the political arena and returned to the patient and their trusted health care professional” (i.e. the abortion industry).

ACOG Advocates for Abortion 

The organization has an “Abortion Is Essential Health Care” webpage containing links to aid its members on how to “advocate” for abortion “in your state” — even linking to a page that includes how to “[s]top Florida abortion bans” and other political efforts to protect abortion, including a “talk about ballot initiatives.”

These initiatives are currently codifying abortion into state constitutions.

The website also instructs members on how to “Shape the Public Discourse” on abortion with information about…

• How to talk about ballot initiatives on abortion

• Using state-specific data

• Resources on trending issues in the news and the media

• How to discuss abortion across different audiences

“ACOG’s Implementing Progress in Abortion Care and Training (IMPACT) Program seeks to improve access to abortion care in the U.S. by providing ACOG members, other clinicians, patients, and the public with the most up-to-date, evidence-based information, clinical training, and resources on abortion,” the group’s website states.

ACOG Action heavily promotes abortion, making regular suggestions to members on how to both expand abortion access and force federal taxpayers to fund abortion by pushing to end the pro-life Hyde Amendment (which was put in place to prevent that very thing).

This ACOG advocacy branch notes that one of its “policy priorities” for 2024 is to “[s]upport, defend, and expand access to and availability of comprehensive evidence-based obstetric and gynecologic care, including abortion.”

Their #obgynaction hashtag on social media reveals a plethora of abortion advocacy.

ACOG Annual Report Mentions Abortion 31 Times

ACOG’s 2022 annual report devoted multiple pages boasting of its abortion advocacy, mentioning the word nearly three dozen times.

“Through 2022, ACOG faced the possibility—and then the reality—of the loss of abortion as a constitutional right. The ruling handed down in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization demanded ACOG’s leadership on behalf of our members and their patients,” the ACOG report read. “On June 24, the day the decision in Dobbs was officially handed down, ACOG launched our crisis response plan. Through each one of our avenues of communication, we condemned the decision and avowed renewed and ongoing advocacy and education to support the needs of patients across the country. Critically, we simultaneously launched a long-term program to meet member needs in key areas of challenge.”

The report also notes that it partnered with a group in a ‘get out the vote’ effort related to the “initiatives affecting abortion access on the ballot in California, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Montana, and Vermont in 2022.”

In addition, ACOG leadership said it is “[d]efending abortion as a human right and opposing the criminalization of patients and health care professionals.” In 2022, it “worked with the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology and the ACGME to preserve training objectives in clinical abortion care, which is essential health care.”

It also says it “aided in the passage of abortion shield laws that help solidify New York as a national access state for abortion care.”

ACOG Funded by Abortion Philanthropists 

The ACOG is stridently pro-abortion and has been funded by the pro-abortion Ibis Reproductive Health (here and here), an organization previously funded by U.S. abortion pill manufacturer Danco Laboratories and by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, a Danco investor. (After Live Action News exposed Ibis’ financial conflicts of interest, the funding connections were suddenly scrubbed from Ibis’s website.)

ACOG has also been funded by the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, and has received hundreds of thousands from the foundation every year for several years. Unsurprisingly, Buffett was also one of the first investors in Danco.

• 2019 $1.5 million

• 2018 nearly $1.5 million

• 2017 nearly $786K

• 2016 nearly $446K

• 2015 nearly $586K

• 2014 nearly $360K

• 2013 $368K

• 2012 $340K

• 2009 $704K

• 2008 nearly $308K

The pro-abortion Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has also sent grants to ACOG.

ACOG has funded the Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health, where abortionists are trained, even promoting Bixby’s Ryan Residency Programs on its website.

Currently, the ACOG Foundation, a recipient of taxpayer dollars which claims to fund “programs and activities that further the interests of ACOG members,” has granted (2023-24) Planned Parenthood of California Central Coast $20,000. The Foundation is seeking proposals for grants that will “advance public education initiatives in a post-Dobbs environment.”

ACOG Pushing Abortion on Members

ACOG’s 2022 annual report boasted the organization had 61,727 members and that the organization took in over $27 million in dues and fees from its members and over $14 million in “grants, contracts, or other,” that same year.

The ACOG has been touted by the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG) as an “abortion advocacy” org which is “no longer objective on the abortion issue” and “does not adequately represent its thousands of members.”

The reason AAPLOG says this is because studies show that the majority of OBGYNs in the United States do not commit abortions.

In 2019, ACOG’s Green Journal published a study authored by abortionist Daniel Grossman and others associated with pro-abortion groups, which surveyed U.S. obstetricians and gynecologists. The pro-abortion authors found, according to the LA Times, that “fewer than 1 in 4 were willing and able to perform one [abortion] themselves.”

“Among the doctors who answered questions about the procedure, 1 in 3 cited personal, religious or moral reasons for not providing abortion services,” the media outlet stated.

A 2023 report issued by Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) claimed that “Nearly one in five (18%) officed-based OBGYNs nationally say that they are providing abortion services after the Dobbs.” KFF is heavily pro-abortion and Kaiser’s own website lists multiple pro-abortion philanthropists as “funders,” including the Gates and Buffett Foundation.

“Nationally, 14% of OBGYNs say they provide in-person medication abortions, but only 5% say they provide telehealth medication abortions,” claimed KFF. KFF’s 2023 National OBGYN Survey “obtained responses from a nationally representative sample of OBGYNs practicing in the United States who provide sexual and reproductive health care to patients in office-based settings.” And, according to the report, the response rate for eligible OBGYNs was just 29.9%.

In 2019, Dr. Barbara Levy, VP for Health Policy at ACOG, suggested to the LA Times that physicians “have different concepts of when an embryo or fetus becomes a viable life.”

ACOG has worked tirelessly to influence the positions of its members towards abortion, regularly changing its own long-held messaging and definitions on when life begins (fertilization), fetal heartbeat and other developmental markers, as well as later abortion.

All of this is to accomplish one goal: accommodate Big Abortion.

See how drastically ACOG’s messaging has changed since this screenshot (2011):

ACOG’s abortion advocacy has resulted in the organization censoring pro-life doctors. ACOG has also been sought out for fact-checks against pro-life organizations (including Live Action’s Baby Olivia video), for attacks against pro-life pregnancy help centers (PRCs) and “abortion pill reversal (APR),” and state pro-life protections.

It’s time for the extreme pro-abortion bias of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists to be exposed.

The DOJ put a pro-life grandmother in jail for protesting the killing of preborn children. Please take 30-seconds to TELL CONGRESS: STOP THE DOJ FROM TARGETING PRO-LIFE AMERICANS.