A lot of false and misleading information about late-term abortions is circulating around the internet after Hillary Clinton defended them during the last presidential debate.
Clinton, a pro-abortion Democrat, told the American public that she supports late-term and partial-birth abortions. However, she tried to gain sympathy for her radical position by implying that most of these abortions are done when a woman’s life or health is at stake or when the baby has major health problems.
In the days after the debate, abortion advocates produced a slew of expert comments and personal stories to support Clinton’s statements. One of the lies they have circulated is that late-term abortions are performed only in the rarest situations when the mother or child has physical health problems. Research does not support this, and several late-term abortion practitioners have admitted that women do have late-term abortions for “purely elective” reasons.
Dr. Lawrence Koning, an OB-GYN in Corona, California, said Clinton also is wrong about late-term abortions being necessary to save a woman’s life or health, according to Christian News Network.
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“As an OB/GYN physician for 31 years, there is no medical situation that requires aborting/killing the baby in the third trimester to ‘save the mother’s life,’” Koning wrote on social media after the debate. “Just deliver the baby by C-section and the baby has 95+% survival with readily available NICU care even at 28 weeks. C-section is quicker and safer than partial birth abortion for the mother.”
There does appear to confusion between the premature delivering of a baby via induced labor or C-section and the intentional killing of a late-term baby either in or partially outside of the womb (partial-birth abortion). Both are being called abortions, but the situations are very different. With the first situation, the intention is to save as many lives as possible; the other situation involves purposefully killing a life. With the current debate, some abortion advocates are taking advantage of the misunderstanding to imply that pro-lifers oppose doctors’ actions in both situations and don’t care if women die.
In the case of induced labor, doctors are doing the best they can to save both the mother and the child. Unfortunately, sometimes the baby is too young to survive outside the womb, and only the mother’s life can be saved. Pro-lifers are not opposed to this procedure that some are calling an “abortion.” What pro-lifers oppose is the willful, intentional and usually brutal destruction of that baby’s life in an abortion.
And it is this intentional killing method that Koning and other doctors, including former U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, said is not necessary to save lives.
Koop, a pediatric surgeon, said: “When a woman is pregnant, her obstetrician takes on the care of two patients—the mother-to-be and the unborn baby. If, toward the end of the pregnancy complications arise that threaten the mother’s health, he will take the child by inducing labor or performing a Caesarian section. His intention is still to save the life of both the mother and the baby. The baby will be premature. The baby is never willfully destroyed because the mother’s life is in danger.”
The Association of Pro-Life Physicians also contends that doctors never have to willfully kill an unborn child in an abortion to save a woman’s life.
“When the life of the mother is truly threatened by her pregnancy, if both lives cannot simultaneously be saved, then saving the mother’s life must be the primary aim,” according to the doctors association. “If through our careful treatment of the mother’s illness the pre-born patient inadvertently dies or is injured, this is tragic and, if unintentional, is not unethical and is consistent with the pro-life ethic. But the intentional killing of an unborn baby by abortion is never necessary.”
Sadly, the mainstream media often perpetuates abortion activists’ claims that women’s lives do not matter to the pro-life movement. They do. Pro-lifers want to save lives, including women and children. Both matter equally to us, and it’s equally heartbreaking when medical emergencies cause a human life, born or unborn, to die.
