Though apparently not pro-abortion enough for Planned Parenthood, Leana Wen continues to promote the killing of unborn babies through her medical work.
Wen, who was fired as the CEO of the abortion group earlier this year, wrote an op-ed for Time this week perpetuating the myth that women need abortions to be healthy.
“Women’s health in the United States is in a state of emergency,” she wrote. “… for women to be healthy, they need access to healthcare—including reproductive healthcare.”
As CEO of the largest abortion chain in America, Wen repeatedly insisted that abortion is health care. Apparently, she still believes it, too. In the op-ed, she blamed pro-life leaders for introducing laws and policies to protect unborn babies from abortion, claiming they hurt women’s health.
She pointed to statistics indicating that maternal mortality is increasing in America, and referred to a Texas study that claimed to show a link between pro-life laws in the state and a rise in maternal mortality rates. However, that study repeatedly has been debunked.
Wen went on to accuse the Trump administration of reducing access to birth control, cancer screenings and other health care by defunding Planned Parenthood through a new Title X rule.
But the billion-dollar abortion chain really is the one to blame. Planned Parenthood could have continued to provide Title X health services if it had agreed to stop abortions or completely separate its abortion business from its legitimate health services. Instead, it chose to prioritize abortions.
Later, Wen recycled the old myths about back alley abortions.
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“In 2019, conservative state legislators passed an unprecedented number of bills aimed at overturning Roe vs. Wade,” she wrote. “If that were to happen, one in four women could be living in states where abortion is banned and criminalized. Worldwide, 70,000 women die because they lack access to safe, legal abortion, and this could happen once again the U.S.”
But legalizing abortion does not make it safe. Abortion is inherently dangerous because it kills the life of a baby in the womb. It also can be deadly to mothers, legal or not.
In May, the Washington Post fact checker found what pro-life advocates have been saying for years: that few women died from illegal abortions in the decade prior to Roe v. Wade, and a rise in the use of antibiotics appears to be the biggest factor in the drop in maternal abortion deaths, not the legalization of abortions.
Dr. Bernard Nathanson, a former abortionist and co-founder of NARAL, admitted later in life that their “statistics” about back alley abortions were false. Nathanson said abortion activists often claimed between 5,000 and 10,000 women died every year from dangerous, back alley abortions and argued that legalizing abortions would protect women.
He wrote: “I confess that I knew that the figures were totally false and I suppose that others did too if they stopped to think of it. But in the ‘morality’ of our revolution, it was a useful figure, widely accepted … The overriding concern was to get the laws eliminated, and anything within reason that had to be done was permissible.”
Actual government statistic prior to the Roe decision show nowhere near that many women died in abortions. A 1972 Center for Disease Control report noted the maternal death rate from abortions was 39 in the United States, the year prior to Roe.
As of 2008, the Centers for Disease Control reported more than 400 women died from legal abortions in the United States, including 12 that year. The most recent annual report from the CDC says four women died from abortion complications in 2013. However, the numbers likely are higher. Some states do not report their abortion data to the CDC, and pro-lifers believe the abortion industry sometimes covers up women’s abortion deaths so it can maintain its claims about “safety.”
Today, thousands of doctors continue to affirm that killing an unborn baby is not medically necessary to protect women’s health. A woman’s life and health can be protected without destroying the life of her unborn child.
Wen’s solution actually could endanger more women and unborn children.
“At this time of public health emergency, we need to depoliticize women’s healthcare,” she concluded.
What exactly she means by that is not clear, but it is clear what the abortion industry wants: no regulations or restrictions on abortion whatsoever. Without accountability from the government, there is no way of knowing if abortion facilities are safe. There is no way of knowing if they are not committing infanticide on babies born alive after failed abortions.
Depoliticizing, deregulating abortion will not keep people safe. It will not save lives. More babies and more women almost certainly would die in legal abortion facilities that are little different from the back alley clinics that abortion activists claim to want to protect women from.
