One of the abortion industry’s most effective allies in the sale of late abortions (which carry astronomical price tags) is the notion that women will die without them. This is patently false. In fact, no woman has ever died because she could not undergo a late abortion.
While there are situations in which a mother’s life is threatened by continuance of the pregnancy, abortion is not the only way to terminate a pregnancy. Some high-risk pregnancies require premature parturition, or preterm delivery.
In a new Live Action project, former abortionist and practicing OB/GYN Anthony Levatino explains: “You never need late-term abortion to save a woman’s life. If necessary, you accomplish the delivery.” Preterm delivery involves inducing the delivery of the child before he has reached term. The procedure is performed for various reasons, including the cessation of extreme health risks to pregnant women.
This procedure in no circumstances requires the prior, direct killing of the preborn child. While the child may be too underdeveloped to survive outside the womb, his natural death would be the result of an ethical delivery which saved his mother’s life. Furthermore, the child’s death is by no means inevitable in these circumstances; hospital delivery offers preterm children the medical technologies that are used to sustain premature babies every day. Dr. Levatino explains: “Now, did every one of those children make it, because they were preterm? No. But they all had a chance. And most of them did make it.”
The Pro-Life Dublin Declaration, which is supported by the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists, affirms the unnecessary nature of late abortion where maternal health is involved:
As experienced practitioners and researchers in Obstetrics and Gynecology, we affirm that direct abortion is not medically necessary to save the life of a woman. We uphold that there is a fundamental difference between abortion and necessary medical treatments that are carried out to save the life of the mother, even if such treatments results in the loss of life of her unborn child. We confirm that the prohibition of abortion does not affect, in any way, the availability of optimal care to pregnant women.
But the abortion industry and their compatriots in the medical community continue to peddle the lie that circumstances exist wherein a mother will die without undergoing a late abortion. Indeed, at this week’s congressional hearing on fetal pain legislation, the abortion industry once again proved collective indifference toward the torture experienced by preborn babies who die of barbaric late abortions.
Politics, Dr. Levatino explains, have also devastated abortion legislation in the U.S. Supreme Court opinions that refer to “women’s health,” purporting that abortion is necessary in a battery of circumstances (no doubt to bolster their fabricated constitutional “right” to elective abortion). The definition of “women’s health” was first proffered by the Supreme Court in the majority decision of Doe v. Bolton—a follow-up case to Roe v. Wade in the same year. Doe defines women’s health to include a woman’s physical health; but, according to Levatino, the definition “didn’t say how badly impaired her physical health had to be for it to be a problem.”
The definition of “women’s health” also includes her mental health, her economic health, and her social health, he explains. As a consequence of this devastating concession, abortion-zealous politicians have appealed to the vague definition for decades when faced with Pro-Life reforms to the law. They say, according to Dr. Levatino: “I would be happy to support your bill, so long as it contains an exception so big that the bill is of no real practical effect.”
See more of Dr. Levatino’s interview with Lila Rose, here.