Former Biden White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki used her MSNBC monologue on her show, “Inside With Jen Psaki,” on Sunday to claim that no politicians support late-term abortion. It isn’t the first time she has perpetuated this lie, which this time comes just days prior to a published op-ed from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) and Society of Family Planning calling for abortion “without restrictions, without limitations and without barriers.”
“No one is rooting for late-term abortions. No one is running on the platform of aborting viable babies. No one is selling late-term abortions as Ron DeSantis claims. No one,” Psaki erroneously claimed. “Not Joe Biden, not Kamala Harris, not Hillary Clinton, not Nancy Pelosi, or any other politician demonized by the right-wing, roots for more late-term abortions. None of them do.”
She continued, “What is happening here is an attempt by Republican presidential candidates and other leaders who know their views on women’s healthcare are out of touch with the public. Are Ron DeSantis and Tim Scott in favor of a mother dying as a result of her pregnancy? If a doctor determines a baby cannot survive outside of the womb, should a mother be required to carry that baby to term?
She added, “This is not politics. This is health care.”
She couldn’t be more mistaken.
There are many politicians who run on a platform of abortion on demand, and some, including those mentioned by Psaki, who want to allow abortion through all 40 weeks of pregnancy for any reason. The Biden administration has been attempting to codify Roe v. Wade with legislation which would prevent states from enacting laws to protect human life inside the womb prior to so-called viability. Abortion would still be allowed beyond ‘viability’ for health reasons (which include financial and familial concerns, just as Roe and Doe did).
“Viability” is an arbitrary term, according to a well-known abortionist. As previously reported by Live Action News, when asked about the age of viability during the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reforms proceedings in 2019, Planned Parenthood abortionist Colleen McNicholas confessed that, to an abortionist, “viability” does not necessarily depend on gestational age but is “complicated.”
“So, viability is a complicated medical construct. There is no particular gestational age,” McNicholas said. “There are some pregnancies in which a fetus will never be viable. There are a number of different factors that we think about when we’re considering if a pregnancy is or isn’t viable.”
One abortionist, Dr. Shannon Carr, admitted during an investigation into the death of her patient Keisha Atkins, that what she meant by “irreversible” physical harm from pregnancy as the reason she aborted Atkins’ baby at 24 weeks, was nothing more than the usual effects of pregnancy on a woman’s body.
As for the mental harm she said pregnancy would cause Atkins, Carr made racist assumptions about Atkins, saying that the baby would ruin her “overall prospects in life” as a “Latina woman.” But Atkins was not Latina.
Plenty of abortionists are “selling late-term abortions,” despite Psaki’s claims. To claim otherwise is to ignore the existence of abortionists like Warren Hern in Colorado, Cesare Santangelo in Washington, D.C., and so many more. All Psaki would have to do is a simple ten-second internet search to find late-term abortion availability in the United States.
Psaki is also wrong in her claim that abortion is health care.
Induced abortion does not improve maternal mortality rates, and in fact, could help to worsen them. If a woman’s life is at risk during pregnancy and the pregnancy must end, the child can be delivered alive and in some cases from 21 weeks on, the doctors can attempt to save that child’s life as well as the mother’s rather than killing the child prior to delivery. If the child is too premature to survive, her death would be a tragic result of a life-saving preterm delivery, not the direct and intentional act of killing her in an induced abortion.
If a child is deemed likely to die before or shortly after birth, that does not afford anyone the right to prematurely end that child’s life. Some children are capable of surviving against the odds, especially when given proper medical care that is often denied to children with certain health conditions. A life-threatening diagnosis is not justification for intentional killing.
