FACT CHECK: Missouri medical pros say they can’t do their jobs without killing preborn babies

More than 800 Missouri medical professionals including 500 doctors are endorsing Amendment 3, a ballot initiative known as the “Right to Reproductive Freedom Initiative.” But their reasoning has nothing to do with actual health care.

The amendment states, “The Government shall not deny or infringe upon a person’s fundamental right to reproductive freedom, which is the right to make and carry out decisions about all matters relating to reproductive health care, including but not limited to prenatal care, childbirth, postpartum care, birth control, abortion care, miscarriage care, and respectful birthing conditions.”

If it passes, the amendment will allow abortion on demand at any time during pregnancy for any reason in Missouri. While abortion advocates frequently deny that abortions happen late in pregnancy for anything other than dire or life-threatening medical reasons, research shows that abortions occur in the third trimester for the same reasons they do in the first trimester.

In an op-ed for The Kansas City Star, one pro-abortion doctor, Erin R. Lockard, who is not an OB/GYN but a geriatric medicine specialist, claimed that Missouri’s pro-life law is “preventing doctors from doing our jobs.”

Rape and incest

After claiming that a law preventing the direct and intentional killing of preborn children stops her from doing her job in geriatric medicine, Lockard claimed that abortion must be allowed for cases of rape and incest.

“Survivors of these unspeakable traumas are being denied the health care they need when they deserve compassionate, timely, private care the most. But some politicians in Jefferson City have decided that their beliefs are more important than survivors getting essential health care,” she wrote.

This is insulting to rape and incest survivors who refused abortion and carried their babies to term. It’s also insulting to individuals conceived in rape who are being told that they should have been killed in abortions as preventative health care for their survivor mothers.

Killing a child in the womb cannot erase the suffering mothers experienced due to sexual assault and will not help bring assailants to justice. Abortion is not healing. It is in itself an act of trauma. Introducing a second act of trauma in an attempt to heal the initial trauma is likely to exacerbate the suffering.

Women who had abortions after rape confirmed this when shared their experiences as part of Live Action’s Can’t Stay Silent series. Serena explained, “Abortion never undoes the trauma of sexual assault… I am so thankful for abortion recovery, but abortion never undid my trauma.”

I Regret My Abortion - Serena's Story | Can't Stay Silent

After being drugged and raped at 17, Deana Schroeder learned she was pregnant and underwent an abortion that her family and counselors encouraged. “Even many pro-lifers approve of abortions in cases of rape,” she said. “So surely it must be the best choice, right? Not in my case. It just added more layers of trauma, self-doubt, grief and guilt. The negative impact lasted for years.”

Women like Daisy and Stephanie, and children like Jaelyn, who were conceived in rape, deserve respect.

“When someone says that children conceived in rape should be aborted, they are talking about me,” said Stephanie. “My mother saw that my life was not worth less than anyone else’s simply because of the way I was conceived, and that I should not be put to death for the crimes of my father.”

Life of the mother

Lockard also argued:

Doctors study and train for years to be able to assess health situations and use their judgment and experience to make timely calls for the care that is needed. We know first-hand that life-threatening complications aren’t black or white, and one-size-fits-all laws blatantly ignore the complexities of health and medicine.

Abortion bans, including Missouri’s, force doctors who understandably don’t want to go to prison to ask how close a patient must be to death before they can act. These bans force physicians to get a hold of a lawyer before they can intervene, delaying care and wasting precious time while a patient is suffering, bleeding, and risking their health or life.

This is dishonest by any stretch of the imagination. Doctors should know the difference between natural death and intentional killing. Induced abortion, which carries the goal of producing a dead baby, is not the standard of care for pregnancy complications or medical emergencies. If a pregnancy must end, a preterm delivery or emergency C-section can be carried out. The baby does not need to be dismembered — which involves forced dilatation and the trauma of feeling your baby dismembered inside of you — or lethally injected to cause cardiac arrest before delivery.

Induced feticide by abortion is not necessary for preterm premature rupture of membranes (PPROM), anemia, ectopic pregnancy, elevated blood pressure, HELLP syndrome, molar pregnancy, or other diagnoses in pregnancy. It is not the standard of care in any of these situations.

Fellow doctor, Elizabeth “Betsy” Wickstrom, signed the document along with Lockard. A high-risk OB/GYN, Wickstrom claimed that she sends patients over state lines for abortions in extreme situations, which indicates she is putting their lives at further risk by forcing them to travel for actual health care that could legally be provided to them locally.

“They’re sitting in my exam room with blue lips tugging for breath, literally suffocating in my exam room, and if they don’t terminate that pregnancy, they’re not going to be around to raise their little child. But can I do anything about that here in Missouri? No,” she claimed in a statement.

This is a stunningly outrageous lie meant to scare voters into supporting Amendment 3 and allowing unchecked abortion.

Missouri’s law states (emphasis added), “Notwithstanding any other provision of law to the contrary, no abortion shall be performed or induced upon a woman, except in cases of medical emergency.”

Wickstrom can send a patient like this to the hospital for immediate delivery. In fact, even induced abortion that deliberately kills the baby would be legal in such a case.

However, it isn’t necessary to intentionally kill the preborn child. Even in dire situations, a preterm delivery or emergency C-section can save the woman’s life and allow doctors to attempt to save the baby’s life as well — and despite pro-abortion claims otherwise, these procedures are not abortions. They are not prohibited by any law.

Three Level IV neonatal intensive care units are located in Missouri to help save micro-preemies. Micro-preemies as young as 21 weeks have survived, thanks to advances in care and doctors willing to help them. One of those hospitals, St. Louis Children’s, saved its youngest preemie ever in 2017. Ellie was born at 21 weeks and six days — and started second grade this fall.

Stories like these involve “wanted” babies, so doctors insisting on telling women they have to kill their babies to save themselves is perhaps one of the most evil manipulations taking place in today’s society.

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