Questions abound in GOP lawmaker’s viral tale of teen allegedly harmed by pro-life law

Editor’s Note, 2/6/24: Live Action News has been informed that the Lozier study which is referred to in this article has been retracted by SagePub, where the study is available for download. We are currently reviewing this information. 

UPDATE 9/2/22: Though Rep. Collins expressed his regret in voting for the state’s heartbeat bill, he has voted in favor of different legislation that would protect nearly all preborn babies from abortion. Collins offered his approval for that bill once amendments that include exceptions for rape and incest were included in the bill’s language.

8/24/22: Last week, the South Carolina Supreme Court blocked the state’s pro-life heartbeat law, while legislators consider a bill that would protect nearly all preborn children from abortion. In the midst of this political wrangling, Republican State Rep. Neal Collins made a statement about how he now regrets his vote due to the supposed harm it caused to a teenager.

During a public hearing for the House Judiciary Committee regarding the new legislation, Collins said he voted for the previous heartbeat legislation, but now regrets it, allegedly due to a phone call he received from an unnamed doctor. “A 19-year-old girl appeared at the ER,” he said the doctor told him. “She was 15 weeks pregnant. Her water broke. The fetus was unviable. The attorneys told the doctors that because of the Fetal Heartbeat Bill — because that 15-week-old had a heartbeat — the doctors could not extract.”

Allegedly, the girl was sent home from the hospital, despite being in a supposedly life-threatening situation. “The doctor told me at that point there is a 50% chance — well, first she’s going to pass this fetus in the toilet. She’s going to have to deal with that on her own,” he said. “There’s a 50% chance — greater than 50% chance that she’s going to lose her uterus. There’s a 10% chance that she will develop sepsis and herself, die.”

He concluded that this knowledge weighs on him because he voted for the heartbeat bill, and won’t vote for another one without “significant changes to the bill.”

Collins said he was told that after another two weeks, the mother returned to the hospital, and her preborn child was “extracted,” as it no longer had a heartbeat. He did not say if, as claimed, she lost her uterus or became septic.

Standard of care?

Abortion advocates have wasted no time trumpeting Collins’ remarks across the internet, claiming it proves that pro-life legislation harms women. Yet there are numerous questions regarding his story — including whether it actually happened as Collins described.

If it did, it’s a clear case of medical malpractice.

Christina Francis, Board Member and CEO-Elect of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG), responded to the lawmaker’s remarks in a statement to Live Action News.

“If that really is what the physician said to him, she [or he] was wrong,” Francis said. “That is not standard of care. Standard of care would be to admit the woman for at least 48 hours for close monitoring of any signs of infection or bleeding.”

Additionally, Francis questioned how what appears to be a case of preterm premature rupture of membranes (PPROM) would lead to someone losing their uterus. “This is absurd and not based on any data I’m aware of,” she said. It is true that sepsis is a risk of PPROM, but this is precisely why the patient would not be discharged. “There are signs of developing intrauterine infection that any physician who is well-trained in obstetrics can identify long before sepsis develops,” she explained. “This is why these patients are monitored very closely and often as inpatients, at least for a few days.”

Sending the patient home would be a clear sign of negligence and malpractice — regardless of what happens with the preborn child.

“A physician saying that a woman’s only choice in this situation is to go home to deliver her child herself is an obvious dereliction of duty and evidence that that physician has likely not offered her patients all of their options in the past — as many physicians will offer expectant management with close observation in this circumstance and many women, even pre-Dobbs, choose that option,” Francis said.

Expectant management, as explained by the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), involves careful watching and waiting, as in some cases, the membranes may re-seal and the amniotic fluid may stop leaking. Medication can be given to stop preterm labor and to strengthen the baby’s lungs, and antibiotics are administered if signs of infection are present.

An AAPLOG practice bulletin also explains the best methods of handling these complications, and noted that in the past, most instances of pre-viable rupture of membranes ended with the death of the preborn child; however, the rates of neonatal survival in these cases has improved over the past few decades, and aggressive treatment can improve it even further.

What is not called for is an induced abortion. Premature delivery may be inevitable, and the baby may be born too early to survive, but there is no comparison between a natural, premature delivery, and exposing a child who is able to feel pain to an abortion procedure that literally dismembers them.

Against the law… or legal?

Though abortion advocates frequently claim pro-life legislation puts women’s lives at risk, as Collins did here, every single pro-life bill contains an exception for medical emergencies. South Carolina’s heartbeat legislation is no different. In the text of the bill, abortion is restricted after a preborn child’s heart can be detected — but it specifically allows an abortion if the woman’s life is at risk.

As the bill says:

‘Medical emergency’ means a condition that, by any reasonable medical judgment, so complicates the medical condition of a pregnant woman that it necessitates the immediate abortion of her pregnancy to avert her death without first determining whether there is a detectable fetal heartbeat or for which the delay necessary to determine whether there is a detectable fetal heartbeat will create serious risk of a substantial and irreversible physical impairment of a major bodily function, not including psychological or emotional conditions. A condition must not be considered a medical emergency if based on a claim or diagnosis that a woman will engage in conduct that she intends to result in her death or in a substantial and irreversible physical impairment of a major bodily function.

If everything in Collins’ story is true, and actually happened, the woman would have been legally able to undergo an abortion… even though an induced abortion to intentionally kill a child is not medically necessary and would not have been the expected standard of care in this situation.

Alone on a toilet?

Another issue that raises questions is Collins’ angst over the possibility that the mother could deliver her baby’s body alone, at home, in the toilet. While this would be unusual for PPROM, for the reasons listed above, it actually is a commonplace occurrence in another situation: induced abortion.

This scenario is most likely to happen with the abortion pill, especially as the abortion industry pushes for women to undergo chemical abortions (abortion pill) at home, alone, without medical supervision. Despite claims abortion industry insiders’ biased studies, the abortion pill has been shown to come with a four times higher risk of complications than first trimester surgical abortions; documented side effects include uterine hemorrhaging, viral infections, sepsis, and thousands of adverse events, including deaths.*

A 2021 population-based longitudinal cohort study found that emergency room visits following a chemical abortion increased over 500% between 2002 and 2015 within the study population.

And meanwhile, the woman is going through the abortion process alone, having to see or even dispose of the bodies of their preborn babies along the way, often into the toilet (Reports indicate that the abortion pill is being distributed and taken by women well past the FDA’s recommended gestational age of 10 weeks, so similar scenarios to that of the 19-year-old girl are likely). Far from the easy experience they are promised, women have described it as painful and traumatic, terrifying, humiliating, horrific, and like “the scene of a murder.”

But delivery on a toilet isn’t restricted to just the abortion pill. The same situation can arise during a late-term abortion. Late-term abortionists have been caught advising women to avoid the hospital and wait in the hotel room over the toilet if they find themselves going into labor, where they might deliver their child. Staffers tell women to simply leave the baby there and wait for them to arrive and handle the body.

Worse, women are often advised not to go to the emergency room if they experience abortion complications, and if they absolutely have to go, they’re encouraged by the abortion industry to lie and say they are experiencing a natural miscarriage. This, of course, makes it appear that the abortion pill is safer than it is, since these complications aren’t reported or accounted as being a result of an induced abortion.

Pro-abortion OB/GYNs have begun using their profession as a political weapon, and it’s possible the doctor who spoke to Collins did the same.

Rather than speaking truthfully about pregnancy complications and pro-life laws, Collins may have been taken in by an inaccurate, if not outright false, story that — if true — is evidence of medical malpractice, not of the supposed “dangers” of pro-life protections. Induced abortion is not a panacea to every pregnancy problem, and it doesn’t save women’s lives. These kind of fear-based tactics, terrifying women into thinking they will die without induced abortion, is not feminist or empowering; it’s a misogynistic take on a divisive issue meant to keep women reliant on abortion at all costs, at the expense of their health, with the abortion industry profiting the most.

*FDA has received reports of serious adverse events in women who took mifepristone. As of June 30, 2021, there were reports of 26 deaths of women associated with mifepristone since the product was approved in September 2000, including two cases of ectopic pregnancy (a pregnancy located outside the womb, such as in the fallopian tubes) resulting in death; and several cases of severe systemic infection (also called sepsis), including some that were fatal. The adverse events cannot with certainty be causally attributed to mifepristone because of concurrent use of other drugs, other medical or surgical treatments, co-existing medical conditions, and information gaps about patient health status and clinical management of the patient. A summary report of adverse events that reflects data through June 30, 2021 is here.

Editor’s Note: This post has been updated since original publication.

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