May 1, 2023, 9:32 AM ET

Female OBGYNs debunk abortion myths during Senate hearing

During a hearing of the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary regarding the Texas abortion pill ruling and the impact of the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade on Wednesday, two pro-life female physicians spoke out about misinformation surrounding abortion, including how it does not reduce the maternal mortality rate, and how chemical abortions are not safer than Tylenol.

Chemical abortions vs. Tylenol

Dr. Ingrid Skop, Vice President and Director of Medical Affairs for Charlotte Lozier Institute, has three decades of experience and dispelled the claim that the abortion pill — also called a chemical abortion — is safer than Tylenol.

“Regarding chemical abortion, the industry tells us it’s safer than Tylenol,” she said. “They’re comparing Tylenol overdose deaths to the undercounted deaths from chemical abortion. There’s no comparison. Women assume they mean normal Tylenol use. They don’t realize that they’re comparing it to deaths that happen from overdoses. The abortion industry tells us about the complications they know about. But my experience has been because the women have been assured [the abortion pill] is so safe, when they have a complication, they do not return to the abortion provider. They come to me as their gynecologist or they come to the emergency room in distress. And so when we look at good quality records linkage studies that detect all chemical abortions and all subsequent events, we find 5% to 6% of these women present to an emergency room within a month, approximately the same number will require surgery because their bodies cannot evacuate all of the dead tissue.”

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As previously reported by Live Action News, a 2016 study that analyzed trends in acetaminophen-related adverse events tracked the rate of annual ER visits relative to annual sales of the drug. It found that, for 2012 (the most recent year covered by the study), there were 282.1 acetaminophen-related ER visits for every 1 million units sold. If the typical dosage of Tylenol is two tablets, this would indicate that .056% of acetaminophen doses resulted in a hospital visit (282.1/500,000 = .00056).

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However, a recent study found that the ER and urgent care visit rate for chemical abortions is 6%. That’s 107 times greater than the rate for acetaminophen/Tylenol. And that number is a lowball, because only about half of all states require the reporting of abortion complications, and the FDA only requires that abortion pill-related deaths be reported. This indicates that the complication rate could actually be higher than 6%.

Abortion does not reduce the maternal mortality rate

Abortion advocates claim that access to abortion reduces the maternal mortality rate. As Live Action News has reported, this simply isn’t true. Dr. Monique Chireau Wubbenhorst, Assistant Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Duke University Medical Center with more than 20 years of experience, explained the truth to the Senate committee.

“The solution to maternal mortality — and I’ve been working in this area globally and in the United States for many years — is to improve health care, health education, and to increase support to pregnant women,” she said. “Abortion does nothing to address any of those issues.”

She continued, “The main causes of maternal mortality have been for years — and in the most recent CDC data from 2021 — are deaths from cardiovascular causes, infection, and embolism and so on and so forth. Abortion will not reduce those deaths.”

Dr. Chireau Wubbenhorst also told the committee that there is “no argument and no paper anywhere” to reinforce this myth.

“There are studies that purport to do so,” she said. “But when you look at the essence of the studies, what they’re saying is that well, if you reduce the number of women [who give birth] by performing abortions on them, that somehow reduces the number of mortalities. In point of fact, we cannot predict exactly who will have a poor outcome. We cannot predict who will have an adverse maternity outcome. And so that asks the question, how many, what percent of high-risk pregnancies? Should we abort twenty percent? Thirty percent? Forty percent? I think the other issue really relates to community and civil society engagement in terms of helping women to have better outcomes for their pregnancies.”

She added, “… [T]he risk of a woman dying from abortion, not experiencing complications but dying — increased 38% for each week of gestational age. Abortions performed past 21 weeks had a mortality rate 76 times greater than abortions done in the first trimester. Abortion does not prevent pregnancy complications or reduce maternal mortality. … There’s no way to predict whether an individual woman will suffer a pregnancy complication and a presumed effect of abortion or maternal mortality is speculative and based on statistical sleight of hand. It does not address cause of maternal mortality.”

The mental and physical side effects of abortion

Dr. Skop also spoke to the committee about both the mental and physical effects that abortion has on women.

“In my 30 years practicing caring for women, I’ve cared for many women who have been harmed by abortion,” she said. “I’ve cared for a woman who died of a second-trimester abortion from sepsis. I have, in my practice, another young girl die from sepsis after a first-trimester surgical abortion in which her uterus had been perforated.”

In addition to seeing the physical harm, Dr. Skop spoke of the psychological harm that abortion can cause.

“I’ve cared for many, many women who have explained to me that their anxiety and depression is due to their unresolved guilt over an abortion,” she said. “I trust those women to tell me what the cause of their concerns are. I’ve seen women who self-harm. I’ve seen women who turn to substance and alcohol use and abuse due to this guilt that they have regarding chemical abortion.”

No federal reporting requirements

She added, “And I would like to state that so that everyone is aware, the United States does not have any federal mandates to report any data about abortion. We do not know how many abortions occur. We do not know the complications and we certainly don’t know the deaths because as I reported, it’s well known that mental health deaths can follow abortion and our CDC does not try to make that linkage at all. Countries that have made this linkage have documented far higher mental health deaths in the year following abortion compared to childbirth, including six times as many suicides.”

Abortion is not health care

Dr. Chireau Wubbenhorst also spoke to the committee about how true healthcare does not kill.

“An unborn child who is a human being, a member of the human family, not a clump of cells or a potential child, but a child assuming the human form, abortion’s goal is to kill that human being,” she said. “It neither treats, palliates, or prevents any disease and is therefore not healthcare. This is reinforced by the fact that the majority of OB/GYNs do not perform abortions. Studies show that the percentage that do is declining and has been for decades from a high of 40% in 1985 to between seven and 24% at present. Given this, abortion cannot be considered essential healthcare for women.”

She added that medical and technological advancements have allowed doctors to “recognize the fetus as a patient within the patient” and that “doctors caring for a pregnant woman have two patients — not one.”

Abortion as a tool of eugenics

Dr. Chireau Wubbenhorst went on to speak about the use of abortion as a tool of eugenics.

“The current emphasis on dilation and evacuation [abortion] in the second trimester really arises from a eugenic view of abortion,” she explained. “… It’s an admission that [abortionists wrongly believe] the fetus is not truly a human being and ignores the fact that fetuses do experience pain at earlier gestational ages.” Recent research shows that preborn children begin to feel pain no later than the end of the first trimester.

She also explained the role eugenics has played throughout medical history.

“The women in the United States who are at the highest risk for adverse pregnancy outcomes — mostly African American women — are, in fact, from the eugenic viewpoint, the unfit. The early eugenicists made similar arguments proposing contraception and sterilization as solutions to medical and public health problems. Therefore, we must consider that the effective public health measures and medical treatment, patient education that are needed to improve maternal outcomes are the real answer to maternal mortality, not abortion. For pregnancies where serious complications occur, early delivery of the unborn child may be necessary. But the delivery is not an abortion because its goal is to save the life of the mother and the life of the fetus if possible.”

She added, “Since Roe v. Wade, an estimated 17 million unborn African Americans have been aborted in the United States, which is more than the populations of the countries of Senegal and Cambodia respectively, and slightly less than the entire population of the Netherlands. This means the deaths of not only the 17 million Black people who were aborted but all their descendants, their families’ hopes and dreams.”

She said the fertility of Black women is “being controlled” because “38% of abortions occur in Black women, a rate which is two-to-three times higher than that of white women.”

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