Earlier this week, attorneys for the state of Georgia defended the new law banning abortions when an unborn baby’s heart begins beating.
Georgia’s Attorney General refuted a common argument frequently made by abortion advocates, that abortion is somehow medical care or health care. In responding to the lawsuit from the ACLU, the attorney general made it clear that that is not the case.
“It is well-settled that ‘a fetus is a living organism within the womb, whether or not it is viable outside the womb,’” their filing read. “Accordingly, a State may properly recognize that an unborn child is alive even before ‘viability’ and— consistent with its power to protect unborn life—may prohibit the killing of that child by restricting certain types of pre-viability abortions.”
“Defendants deny all allegations in the complaint that killing a living unborn child constitutes ‘medical care’ or ‘health care,’” Georgia’s legal response added.
“The act’s primary objective is to advance Georgia’s interest in protecting the life of the unborn, an objective the act pursues through restrictions on abortion, as well as other tax and child support provisions designed to promote the well-being of unborn children,” the state continued. “The LIFE Act seeks to advance a critical government interest in protecting unborn human life in a context that has not been squarely addressed by the Supreme Court.”
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The notion that abortion is not health care is one that is well-established in the medical community.
Dr. Grazie Pozo Christie, a physician and senior policy advisor for The Catholic Association, has said abortions are not health care and they do not improve women’s lives. She criticized Leana Wen, also a physician and the former president of Planned Parenthood, for telling MSNBC that pro-life laws threaten “women’s health.”
“The emergency is that @PPFA is in danger of losing hold of some of our hard earned tax money,” Christie responded Monday on Twitter. “They feel entitled to it, though they use it to eliminate our children. That’s what they call ‘healthcare’. [sic] ABORTION DOESN’T IMPROVE A MOTHERS [sic] HEALTH.”
Meanwhile, medical leaders representing more than 30,000 doctors said intentionally killing a late-term unborn baby in an abortion is never necessary to save a mother’s life.
In a letter published at The Public Discourse, leaders of the American College of Pediatricians, American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists and other medical groups explained their support of the Born Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act.
The bill, which narrowly failed in the U.S. Senate last week, would require that abortionists provide the same basic medical care to an infant who survives an abortion that doctors would to any other baby born at the same gestational age. Democrats wrongly claimed the bill was an attack on “women’s health care.”
“Abortion treats no disease,” the doctors responded. “Pregnancy is not a disease, and deliberately killing the unborn child by abortion is not healthcare.”
They said abortions – “the guarantee of a dead baby” – are never necessary in the rare cases when a mother’s life is in jeopardy late in her pregnancy.
