Pro-life group fact-checks ’60 Minutes’ for outright lies about OB/GYN training in Texas

Secular Pro-Life executive director Monica Snyder recently exposed brazen pro-abortion lies promoted on the CBS News broadcast 60 Minutes. During the episode, Dr. Eve Espey (an abortionist; more about her later) told reporter Sharyn Alfonsi that medical residents in Texas are no longer legally allowed to learn a variety of standard care practices since the enactment of the state’s pro-life laws.

“They lack an opportunity to learn trauma-informed care, diagnosing pregnancy complications in the first trimester and in the second trimester,” Espey lied. “They miss learning miscarriage care, ectopic pregnancy care, pregnancy of unknown location care. I mean the list goes on and on.”

Alfonsi then gave her own false account regarding Texas medical student residents. “Those [procedures and treatments] are part of the training required to become a certified OB/GYN anywhere in the US. But here’s the problem,” the reporter claimed. “In Texas, some training is no longer offered because of the new laws. That means OB/GYN residents now have to leave the state for two to four week rotations to get the required training.”

60 Minutes reported this as fact, but it’s entirely false.

How does Texas law define abortion? 

Under Texas law, “abortion” is defined as (emphases added):

[T]he act of using or prescribing an instrument, a drug, a medicine, or any other substance, device, or means with the intent to cause the death of an unborn child of a woman known to be pregnant. The term does not include birth control devices or oral contraceptives. An act is not an abortion if the act is done with the intent to:

(A) save the life or preserve the health of an unborn child;

(B) remove a dead, unborn child whose death was caused by spontaneous abortion; or

(C) remove an ectopic pregnancy.

Under the state’s pro-life SB8 law, a doctor may commit an induced abortion if a woman’s life is considered to be at risk.

Together, the laws make it clear that only induced abortion — the direct and intentional killing of the preborn child — is prohibited in Texas. All valid pregnancy-related care is allowed. Yet the lies that women are dying and doctors are prevented from helping them because of the pro-life law continue to make the rounds.

Does Texas law prohibit medical students from learning required OB/GYN training?

To be blunt, Espey is lying when she claims Texas law prevents medical residents from learning the standard care that is required to become a certified OB/GYN.

Snyder pointed to the website of the OB/GYN residency program out of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, which lists what care practices it teaches to its medical residents.

She explained, “They go into a lot of detail about what they teach their medical residents in Texas, including not only maternal fetal medicine and obstetrics but even a rotation for obstetrics and gynecology emergency services. In that rotation, they treat over 20,000 patients annually, which offers their medical residents exposure to a wide range of conditions including ruptured ecoptic pregnancy, pelvic infections, and medical complications of early pregnancy. They also have a rotation for family planning, which, among other things, includes learning miscarriage management, including medication, office manual aspiration, and procedural management in the operating room, which means D&Cs.”

Clearly, medical residency programs in Texas provide training on the procedures and treatments that Espey claimed they are legally prohibited from providing.

Medical residents desiring induced abortion training have opportunity to travel out of state

Snyder then noted, “This is an important part of their description of the residency program: ‘During this rotation, fourth-year residents have the ability to travel out of state‘ — out of Texas —  ‘to receive opt-out induced abortion training‘” (emphases added).

“What does that mean?” said Snyder. “It means a couple of things. First of all, it means that training on induced abortions is different than training on miscarriage management. It also means the medical residency program offers training on miscarriage management in Texas as a standard and required part of the program. This isn’t surprising” (emphases added).

Snyder explained:

The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) sets the standards for any medical residency program in the country to be accredited. They have a long list of program requirements for graduate medical education in obstetrics and gynecology.

They list requirements for the program in terms of family planning, including clinical experience in all forms of contraception, educating patients on the surgical and medical methods of abortion, experience in managing the complications of abortion, but when it comes specifically to the clinical experience of actually providing abortions, they have a few extra notes.

Basically, if a residency program is in a jurisdiction where induced abortion is illegal, then the program has to cover the costs for someone to travel out of state to get clinical experience in providing induced abortions.

This proves, said Snyder, that medical residents are actively training in miscarriage care, pregnancy complication management, management of abortion complications, and any other pregnancy-related condition within the state of Texas. It’s required for accreditation.

“There are no notes here about how if it’s unlawful to teach your residents miscarriage management, you need to cover travel for them to go out of state to learn it because it’s [miscarriage management] not unlawful,” said Snyder.

Committing induced abortion as part of training must be accessible, but residents can opt-out

ACGME clearly states that a residency program must make clinical abortion training accessible and that residents can travel out of state to receive opt-out induced abortion training, It is only required that there exists the option to learn to commit induced abortions, not that residents have to participate in induced abortions.

Based on the ACGME requirements, a residency program may have to cover residents traveling out of state to learn how to commit induced abortions if induced abortion is prohibited in their jurisdiction. But, as Snyder previously noted, traveling to receive clinical training on induced abortions is optional for the residents. Medical residents can ‘opt out’ of committing abortions due to religious or moral objections.

Therefore, 60 Minutes’ reporter Alfonsi’s claim that “OB/GYN residents now have to leave the state for two to four-week rotations to get the required training” is a misrepresentation of the requirement.

They don’t have to be trained on committing abortions, but that training must be made available to them.

Who is Eve Espey?

“So who is this doctor that 60 minutes is interviewing who just casually with a smile claims that medical residents in Texas don’t learn any of this stuff?” asked Snyder.

According to 60 Minutes, Espey is simply ‘the chair of the OB/GYN Department at the University of New Mexico.’ However, producers left out some key details.

Espey’s faculty page at the University of New Mexico details that she won the Margaret Sanger Award — Planned Parenthood’s highest honor — in 2014. Named in honor of its founder Margaret Sanger, who had eugenic and discriminatory motives for launching what would later become Planned Parenthood, the award has not been given out since 2015. Espey was also the lead author, noted Snyder, of “Now is the Time to Stand Up for Reproductive Justice and Abortion Access,” in which she argued that OB/GYNs should “prioritize” abortion advocacy, despite there being no medical need to intentionally kill a preborn child via induced abortion.

“Did you know that there are over 40,000 OB/GYNs in the United States?” said Snyder. “Did you know only 7% of OB/GYNs in private practice even provide abortion? I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that 60 Minutes happened to find an OB/GYN who is a hard-core abortion rights supporter and they happen to not mention that fact in the interview.”

Espey may want Americans to think that committing abortions is a vital and common part of the OB/GYN experience. But it’s not. A National Survey of OBGYNs’ Experiences After Dobbs shows that only 18% of office-based OB/GYNs commit abortions. It also found that when breaking down the numbers, only 29% of OB/GYNs practicing in pro-abortion states where abortion is legal actually commit abortions, while that percentage drops to 10% in pro-life states that have laws protecting most children from abortion.

Call on President Trump to pardon the FACE Act prisoners on his first day in office.