Top OB-GYN Org Can Combat Lies About Pro-Life Laws But Won’t

The nation’s largest organization of obstetricians and gynecologists has a chance to put patients first by offering clarity and education about pro-life laws to its more than 60,000 members, but it likely won’t because it hurts their abortion agenda.

American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG) CEO Dr. Christina Francis penned a letter to American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) CEO Dr. Sandra E. Brooks on Monday asking her to join the fight against media-led misinformation that seeks to demonize lifesaving laws in dozens of states.

Democrats and corporate media have falsely claimed that red-state legislation limiting abortion keeps doctors from doing their jobs, denies women treatment for miscarriages and ectopic pregnancies, and puts women seeking abortions at risk of prosecution and jail. Their lies, especially about the dangerous and sometimes fatal drugs responsible for more than half of the nation’s abortions, have undoubtedly put the lives of women like Amber Thurman, Candi Miller, and their babies at risk.

AAPLOG, Francis noted, has spent the two years following the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson decision bringing “clarity, and accuracy” about pro-life laws to doctors. Now, she and her organization are hoping that ACOG, “despite our differences in opinions on induced abortion,” can also “come together to improve education and patient outcomes.”

“Lying to patients and physicians can have deadly consequences. For our colleagues and
patients, medical organizations must commit to educating the public based on facts, not political
agendas (on either side),” Francis wrote.

According to Francis, ACOG can begin by educating the public and its members on the risks of mifepristone and misoprostol “and advocate for safeguards to ensure that women receive appropriate supervision during the abortion process.”

“This would include an in-person evaluation to rule out contraindications and at least one follow-up visit to ensure she is not experiencing complications,” Francis noted.

Francis also encouraged ACOG to “work with state-level attorneys general, health departments, and medical boards to ensure that physicians are receiving appropriate guidance on their state laws” and “promote educational content that offers clarity on state abortion laws and empowers
physicians to offer their patients the care they need.”

Finally, Francis said ACOG can and should do everything in its power to dispel the myth that women who are suffering complications from induced abortion “will not be prosecuted for seeking care.”

“Our nation’s maternal mortality rate is already shamefully high, with 80% of maternal deaths
being preventable – including Ms. Thurman’s and Ms. Miller’s. As physicians, we cannot afford to let any more of the patients we were sworn to protect die due to false understandings of state abortion policy or distorted narratives surrounding abortion drugs,” Francis concluded.

Doctors who refuse to uphold the Hippocratic oath by offering adequate care to women and their babies aren’t restrained by pro-life laws. On the contrary, their practices are protected in every pro-life law — including the one Democrats are trying to demonize in Georgia — by exceptions that specifically give them legal authority to intervene in dire cases.

As SBA Pro-Life America’s State Policy Director Katie Daniel noted in a press conference on Friday, those exceptions “rarely changed from the laws pre-Dobbs to the laws post-Dobbs” and did not cause confusion before the overturning of Roe v. Wade. It was only after that 2022 decision that the pro-abortion crowd began falsely claiming that medical professionals are at risk of penalty and punishment for performing their duty to care for patients.

AAPLOG is correct in identifying ACOG as one of the organizations that has enough power and influence to change that distortion. ACOG’s history of hostility towards pro-life doctors and pro-life laws, however, suggests the organization is more interested in advancing a pro-abortion agenda than correcting twisted narratives about ending life in the womb.

In fact, ACOG, which proudly classifies abortion as “essential health care,” is one of the top purveyors and supporters of abortion deception.

Contrary to evidence showing preborn infants form pain receptors as early as 10 weeks gestation, ACOG claims babies in the womb do not feel pain until at least 24 weeks. Similarly, ACOG denies the endless stream of scientific evidence confirming the presence of an unborn baby’s beating heart with claims that the sound heard “in very early pregnancy” is simply the “ultrasound machine translating electronic impulses that signify fetal cardiac activity.”

Unlike AAPLOG, which seeks to use “precise, medically accurate language to describe the pregnancy-related practices which intentionally harm our patients,” ACOG discourages its tens of thousands of members from using more than a dozen scientifically accurate terms such as “unborn baby,” “elective abortion,” “womb,” and “abortion-on-demand” to describe the realities of abortion.

The organization even paints the incredibly unpopular decision to end a baby’s life in the third trimester as “Abortion later in pregnancy” rather than “Late-term abortion” and says the term “partial-birth abortions” should be avoided because it is “graphic” and “inflammatory.”

More recently, ACOG President Stella Dantas swore to “vigorously combat” the pro-life laws known for preventing the deaths of thousands because she falsely believes they cause “interference in the practice of medicine.”

If Democrats and ACOG doctors truly wanted to protect women of the present and future from harm, they would do everything they could to clear up the confusion and chaos surrounding abortion. Instead, they constantly create it, capitalize on it, and smear organizations like AAPLOG that are working to combat it.

Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire, Fox News, and RealClearPolitics. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on X @jordanboydtx.