Medical doctors who abide by their oath to heal and care for all human beings, including the unborn, are being demonized by abortion activists and left-wing publications.
This week, Mother Jones published a lengthy hit piece slamming OB-GYNs who believe that killing an unborn baby in an abortion is not medical care.
Specifically, the pro-abortion feminist magazine went after the American Association of Pro-life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG), a nonprofit organization of pro-life doctors who believe unborn babies are valuable patients who deserve care, too.
It highlighted the organization’s work with the Trump administration on health care and conscience protection policies, including a new rule (being challenged by abortion activists) that protects pro-life medical workers from employment discrimination if they refuse to help abort an unborn baby.
The magazine and the abortionists and abortion activists who it quoted as experts claim AAPLOG “twists medical science to restrict a woman’s freedom” – with the ultimate goal of women’s oppression.
AAPLOG is run by women and its members serve women, so it makes no sense that its goal is women’s oppression.
The magazine also held the pro-life organization to a different standard than its organization of choice, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG).
“AAPLOG unashamedly supports the right of unborn children to have a chance at life and the rights of women to be informed about the harms that abortion causes,” AAPLOG board chair Dr. Christina Francis told Mother Jones in an email about her organization’s scientific objectivity. “We exist to educate our members and the public on these issues. We are not a PAC and do not have political interests that guide how our organization is run.”
The article attacked AAPLOG’s pro-life bias while ignoring the well-established pro-abortion bias of ACOG. Mother Jones even called the pro-abortion group a “preeminent association for women’s health,” when it really is an abortion advocacy group with its own biases.
The magazine viewed AAPLOG as particularly dangerous to its abortion agenda because it uses science to back up its pro-life position.
“And that is perhaps what is most troublesome about the growing power of AAPLOG: Patients trust their doctors to give unbiased medical advice, but that may not be the reality,” the article states.
It continues:
While AAPLOG’s positions have been dismissed by many in medical and scientific circles [such as the pro-abortion ACOG], its arguments, like those from Francis, illustrate the organization’s unique role in anti-abortion advocacy, distinct from anti-choice groups who stake their opposition on moral grounds. This war is being waged over the science. “It does feel different when you are calling into question long-standing understandings about how health care works,” [said Mary Alice Carter, a senior adviser at the pro-abortion group Equity Forward]. “[AAPLOG] poses a different threat because they have that medical stamp behind them.”
It slammed the organization for using “alternative facts” that it implied cannot be trusted. As examples, it pointed to AAPLOG’s opposition to IUDs because they can be early abortifacients and its position that life begins at fertilization – both of which are backed by science.
Abortion activists are concerned about pro-life doctors’ work with the Trump administration, too. As the report continues:
Public records shared with Mother Jones by the pro-choice watchdog group Equity Forward reveal frequent emails and phone calls between [the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services official Diane Foley] and the head of AAPLOG, Donna Harrison. Harrison has written to Foley to share scientifically suspect anti-abortion research, as well as her concerns that health clinics might be able to get around the new Title X rule by dispensing medication abortion to be taken at home rather than on site.
… Just one day after Trump’s election, for instance, AAPLOG notified its members that it was “submitting a list of qualified pro-life physicians willing and able to serve the new administration,” according to Rewire.News. (“Our work, and its impact, flourish regardless of who holds elected office,” Francis wrote in an email. “This is nonpartisan.”)
“We’re seeing [abortion opponents] take advantage of this moment,” Carter said.
But this isn’t scandalous. It’s politics, and abortion activists did the same during the Obama administration. Planned Parenthood CEO Cecile Richards and other abortion activists visited the White House dozens of times during the pro-abortion president’s time in office.
Still, the pro-abortion magazine criticized AAPLOG for its involvement in a new HHS anti-discrimination rule that protects pro-life medical workers from employment discrimination because they refuse to help kill human beings through abortion and assisted suicide.
According to the report:
Back in 2009, AAPLOG wrote to Obama’s HHS, objecting to the administration’s proposal to rescind a sweeping Bush-era rule that allowed health care workers to refuse patients’ treatment they found morally or religiously unacceptable. “Like pro‐life physicians generally,” it wrote, “AAPLOG members overwhelmingly would leave the medical profession – or relocate to a more conscience‐friendly jurisdiction – before they would accept coercion to participate or assist in procedures that violate their consciences.” Its requests were ignored. Ten years later, when the Trump administration considered the issue, this statement ended up verbatim in the final text of the HHS rule allowing such carveouts.
Additionally, it slammed Harrison for testifying in front of state and federal lawmakers about the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, which would ban abortions after 20 weeks when strong scientific evidence indicates unborn babies can feel pain.
“There are small human beings in the womb who are being pulled apart in pieces or having their skin burned off or partially delivered through their mothers’ vagina and having their brains pierced and sucked out through a suction catheter. The Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act will protect unborn children in the United states from being killed in these brutal ways,” she told a U.S. Senate committee in 2019.
Mother Jones attacked Harrison for promoting “falsehoods” and linked to an outdated fact-check as “proof” that unborn babies don’t feel pain at 20 weeks. More recently, however, a leading scientific researcher on pain urged the medical community to put politics aside and consider growing evidence that unborn babies may feel pain as early as 12 weeks of pregnancy. The scientist is pro-choice and once agreed with abortion activists, but now believes there is “good evidence” that unborn babies’ brains and nervous systems are developed enough to experience pain prior to 24 weeks.
Science is not on the side of abortion activists, and they know it. They are struggling to combat the important work of AAPLOG and other pro-life organizations that use science, facts, logic and philosophy to defend the rights of unborn babies against the violence of abortion.
It is becoming increasingly clear that abortions are not “essential” or good or necessary. They are not health care or a human right. An abortion is the destruction of a unique, living human being in the womb, and it is an injustice that AAPLOG and others are working to end.
