New Birthing Center Delivers Babies in One Room, Aborts Them in Another

State   |   Steven Ertelt   |   Mar 6, 2014   |   2:41PM   |   Washington, DC

Babies will be delivered in one room at a new clinic in Buffalo, New York and killed in abortions in another.

A new birthing center in Buffalo, New York will provide an alternative for women seeking to give birth outside of a hospital setting. But it will also do abortions — setting up a terrible irony. Babies will be welcomed into life in one room and, down the hall, their lives will be snuffed out in abortions.

Writing at Slate, pro-abortion blogger Amanda Marcotte has more. She loves it because it supposedly helps mainstream abortion as no different than legitimate prenatal and birthing care. Supposedly, it’s “comforting” to be able to have a doctor who will either kill or deliver your baby depending on your mood.

proabort30bIt’s a step forward in the necessary integration of abortion into other forms of OB-GYN care: Feministing reports that the nation’s first-ever birthing center/abortion clinic has opened in Buffalo, N.Y. The clinic, run by Dr. Katharine Morrison, offers a traditional slate of gynecological services, including abortion up to 22 weeks, under the name Buffalo WomenServices. But they also have a freestanding birthing center called the Birthing Center of Buffalo, where women who want a nonhospital birthing experience can go while having the benefit of being attended by a certified nurse midwife and an OB-GYN who has admitting privileges at the local hospital in case of complications.

The place was set up with an explicitly feminist point of view, and it sounds like they go beyond the call of duty in making sure their patients are emotionally, as well as physically, cared for. “In our clinic, we have RNs, LPNs, social workers, counselors, and trained medical personnel, in addition to our physicians, to assist our patients,” the general information page reads. But having a single clinic provide both birthing and abortion services doesn’t need to be rooted in feminist ideology. Having a single place to go for all your pregnancy needs instead of sorting patients out depending on their preconceptions about outcome is just plain common sense. Being able to go to the same doctor to give birth and have an abortion at different times in your life is likely comforting for patients. And if you’re not sure what you want to do about a pregnancy when you first discover it, it’s going to feel easier to go to a clinic for counseling that understands all the options and can provide them in-house as well.

his Buffalo clinic, then, is a major step in the right direction. It also helps counteract anti-choice propaganda that paints abortion providers as sleazy death-lovers who try to talk women into abortions to make money. The same doctor who is performing abortions is also delivering babies. There’s no contradiction there.

No contradiction? That’s the definition of a contradiction!

Ironically, abortions hurt the very women who will be attempting to give birth at the center — by increasing the risk associated with premature birth, for example.

In a fascinating new webinar sponsored by Heartbeat International and the Charlotte Lozier Institute, CLI adjunct scholar Dr. Elizabeth Johnson gave a fascinating presentation on induced abortion and the subsequent risk of pre-term birth.

In her talk, Dr. Johnson describes the serious public health concerns associated with pre-term birth and discusses the growing body of research on the topic as it relates to both clinical practice and a woman’s informed consent.

Pre-term birth is one of the most significant challenges facing the field of obstetrics and a serious public health issue. Pre-term birth is associated with substantial problems for families including significant infant mortality and morbidity, parental stressors, and financial burdens.

In the past few years, an ever-increasing number of studies have demonstrated that elective abortions in the first and second trimester are associated with an increased risk of subsequent spontaneous pre-term birth. A 2012 study published in the British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, which looked at 26 years of birth data, showed that a single induced abortion increased a woman’s risk of having a premature baby by 37%.