In an op-ed published by STL Today, a woman named Kristina Stierholz makes the erroneous claim that she ‘had an abortion’ when she underwent emergency surgery for an ectopic pregnancy 34 years ago. However, treatment for an ectopic pregnancy is not an induced abortion.
She writes, “I recently realized I had an abortion 34 years ago. I never knew it before. It’s a weird shift of mindset and strange rethinking of my past.”
It is a shift of mindset, but it’s legally inaccurate and caused by the mass confusion pro-abortion groups and media outlets are stirring up. This confusion has misled many women to believe that they, too, have had abortions — when in reality, they have never sought to intentionally, directly kill their preborn children.
What happened
In 1989, Stierholz was recently married and pregnant. She admits she wasn’t sure if she was going to “keep the baby” for financial reasons so she hadn’t told anyone except her husband that she was pregnant. She explains, “My father was stridently pro-life. He was a doctor and belonged to several organizations that worked to limit the availability of abortions. We had multiple arguments on this and he was immovable on the subject.”
But before she could choose to abort her baby, her gynecologist told her that she may have miscarried. After her stomach began to get “puffy,” Stierholz returned to the doctor. It was discovered that she was “bleeding from my fallopian tubes into my belly.” Stierholz was sent to the ER for emergency surgery for an ectopic pregnancy.
“Just before I took a taxi to the emergency room, I finally called my parents to let them know what was going on. My dad was a wreck with worry. After many misfires in the emergency department, it was midnight and I was lying on a hospital gurney waiting for the surgical theater to be available when my doctor told me that my dad had called her. I have no idea how he found her in the hospital. He just wanted to know I was going to be safe,” she writes.
Doctors carried out the surgery and were able to repair the fallopian tube. Her parents were relieved, she said, and her father sent “the biggest fruit basket I’ve ever seen to my doctor’s office.” She and her husband went on to have three children.
“My dad later died, unchanged in his beliefs about abortion,” she writes. Her father knew the truth: surgery for ectopic pregnancy is not an induced abortion.
The fall of Roe v. Wade
Thirty-two years later, after the overturning of Roe v. Wade, Stierholz says she has “come to understand that I had an abortion back then.”
She adds, “I would never have said that before. My pro-life dad never considered it an abortion. It was midnight surgery to ‘save the life of the mother.’
“I try to imagine my scenario if it happened in Texas today. […] Would they need affidavits and court rulings to allow me to end that dangerous pregnancy?” she wondered. She questions what her father would think about “this new definition.”
But surgery for ectopic pregnancy was not an induced abortion in 1989 — and it’s not an induced abortion today, either. So, the answer — would she be able to end her pregnancy in such a scenario in Texas today? — is yes. As Live Action News has reported numerous times, pro-life state laws (including those in Texas) do not outlaw treatment for ectopic pregnancies or miscarriages, which are not induced abortions.
Medical definition of abortion
Definitions do matter. And in the case of abortion, there is a major difference between the medical definition of abortion and the legal definition of abortion. Medically speaking — and as far as Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary is concerned — abortion is “the termination of a pregnancy after, accompanied by, resulting in, or closely followed by the death of the embryo or fetus: such as a: spontaneous expulsion of a human fetus during the first 12 weeks of gestation, b: induced expulsion of a human fetus.”
Medline Plus defines abortion as:
a procedure to end a pregnancy. It can be done two different ways:
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- Medication abortion, which uses medicines to end the pregnancy. It is sometimes called a “medical abortion” or “abortion with pills.”
- Procedural abortion, a procedure to remove the pregnancy from the uterus. It is sometimes called a “surgical abortion.”
By these definitions, even a natural miscarriage is classified as a “spontaneous abortion.” But legally, it’s not an abortion.
Legal definition of abortion
Legally speaking, pro-life laws protecting preborn children from abortion aren’t referring to strictly the removal of an embryo or fetus from the uterus (or in this case the fallopian tube), but rather a procedure or drug cocktail (the abortion pill) that is specifically being used to cause the preborn child’s death prior to or during delivery. Criminalizing abortion legally means that it is illegal to intentionally and directly cause the death of the preborn child, which is more specifically known as an induced abortion.
As doctors have already declared, an induced abortion is not medically necessary to save the life of the mother. This is true for ectopic pregnancy treatment in which the goal is to save the mother’s life, when the embryo dies not by intent but as a tragic result of the surgery meant to save his or her mother.
Most pro-life laws, including the Texas Heartbeat Act, define abortion as (emphasis 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.
Notice that the law clearly states, “An act is not an abortion if the act is done with the intent to […] remove an ectopic pregnancy.” Stierholz’s surgery was not an abortion by law. It did not carry the “intent to cause the death” of her preborn child.
Even Planned Parenthood knows this. But, a month after Roe v. Wade was overturned, the abortion giant scrubbed information about ectopic pregnancy from its website which stated that, “Treating an ectopic pregnancy isn’t the same thing as getting an abortion…. The medical procedures for abortions are not the same as the medical procedures for an ectopic pregnancy.”
As Live Action researcher and Live Action News contributing writer Carole Novielli explained, “Planned Parenthood has freshly scrubbed its website in light of the media’s attempts to convince women that ectopic pregnancy treatments and other lifesaving procedures are actually abortions.”
Why would Planned Parenthood suddenly change course and allow women to believe surgery for an ectopic pregnancy is an abortion — right after Roe fell? Because the media is full of stories aimed at scaring women into believing abortion is health care (like treatment for miscarriages and ectopic pregnancies) and that women will die without it.
But this is all a manipulation to keep abortion facilities open and profitable.
No, Kristina Stierholz, you did not have an induced abortion. You lost your child to a medical tragedy — a very different act than the homicide of an undelivered human being.
