In an escalation to the increasing abortion activism within professional medical organizations, the American College of Nurse-Midwives (ACNM) has distanced itself from a pro-life group of obstetricians and gynecologists, requesting they not attend a recent conference.
The ACNM held its annual Midwifery Works conference recently, but for the first time in six years, the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG) was not in attendance. In fact, according to The Daily Signal, ACNM contacted the organization in September and specifically requested that AAPLOG cancel their exhibit booth and refrain from participating.
“We are unable to accommodate as your mission doesn’t align with our position statement on abortion,” an ACNM staffer wrote in an email to AAPLOG. “We affirm patient autonomy.”
The move comes amid abortion activism within professional medical organizations which has increased since the overturning of Roe v. Wade in June. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), which has had ties to population control and eugenics societies since the 1950s, as Live Action News has reported, recently changed its professional recommendations around the abortion pill in order to increase access rather than protect safety.
The organization, which decades ago overhauled its terminology to change the definition of the beginning of life, has now redefined “early-term” and “late-term” abortions to minimize the fact that abortions occur past viability, and has denied that abortion is ever “surgical.”
Even at the university level, pro-life medical students have been expelled from OBGYN programs with ties to abortion, and the American Medical Association (AMA) has discussed ending conscience protections for any students that do not wish to participate in abortions.
Dr. Donna Harrison, CEO of AAPLOG, pushed back in a letter dated October 6th, stressing that members “were very disappointed that the ACNM decided, after accepting our application and money, to cancel our educational exhibit booth at the upcoming Midwifery Works conference,” as the Daily Signal reported. Dr. Harrison called the move “a clear attempt to silence the voices of many within your own organization who do not include abortion as part of their clinical practice and who desire to educate on the peer-reviewed medical literature that show the risks abortion poses to the health of women.”
ACNM’s move comes in the wake of a perceived threat to pro-life OB/GYNs from the American Board of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ABOG), the organization responsible for certifying OBGYNs, which has also adopted a pro-abortion stance. This summer, ABOG released the following as part of a statement: “ABOG will review reports of dissemination of misinformation and disinformation about COVID-19, reproductive health care, contraception, abortion, and other OB GYN practices that may harm the patients we serve or public health. Eligibility to gain or maintain ABOG certification may be lost if ABOG determines that diplomates do not meet the standards that they have agreed to meet and that the public deserves and expects.”
Many pro-life OBGYNs saw this as a kind of veiled threat to their very practice if they do not agree with ABOG’s stance that “access to safe and legal pregnancy termination is essential to reproductive health.”
“One of the greatest threats to maternal health care is the rabid pro-abortion activism currently being displayed by both ABOG and ACOG,” Dr. Harrison told the Daily Signal. “Three national studies have revealed that somewhere between 75% and 93% of OB-GYNs do not perform abortions in their practices.”
“Physicians and midwives who care for both of their patients, both the pregnant mother and the human being in her womb, are being systematically bullied and eliminated from being able to practice medicine, at a time when maternity care deserts are worsening around the country,” Harrison continued. “ACNM has recently joined in the bullying by refusing to allow midwives who care for their in-utero patients to even speak or exhibit at the recent ACNM national conference.”
