During last week’s Vice-Presidential Debate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota continually misrepresented the conservative position regarding abortion. Context is absolutely critical in this discussion so let us first understand that there are emergency indications for a therapeutic D&C and possibly other operative interventions. Nobody disagrees about these indications. Most commonly the list includes an ectopic pregnancy or intrauterine sepsis or both conditions.
In our country, according to CDC data these indications occur only 2-3% of all abortions performed. 97% of abortions in our country are performed electively most often for “convenience”. The indication of “convenience” is where our differences lie. The overall number of abortions has increased dramatically over the past 20 years. The indications for emergency abortions have also increased dramatically, for three main reasons, all three being antecedent causes of an ectopic pregnancy:
Pelvic Inflammatory Disease most commonly caused by Gonorrhea or Chlamydia. These common venereal infections have been on the rise for the past 40 years, but especially in our country over the past 10 years, and especially in those populations that struggle to have access to medical care—including the Medicaid, indigent populations, and minority patients.
The almost ubiquitous and indiscriminate use of IUDs carry an almost 600% increase above the normal rate for ectopic pregnancy.
Increases in the rate of disease amongst the extremes of age—young and old.
Governor Walz then further compromised his integrity on this issue when he failed to answer a very direct question given to him about Minnesota’s very permissive abortion statute allowing for the termination of a pregnancy up to the time of a normal gestation. He then doubled down and told the story first printed in 2022 in Pro Publica authored by Kavitha Surana about the death in Atlanta of Amber Thurman. He publicly blamed Donald Trump for her death. The details of her clinical course are well known to most people, but they have been purposefully misrepresented by the pro-abortion community. Briefly here are the facts presented in a quote in the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) by Christina Francis CEO of The American Association of Pro-Life Ob/Gyns:
“Ms. Surana reports that in August 2022, nine weeks pregnant with twins, Thurman made an appointment at a North Carolina clinic for a dilation-and-curettage procedure, or D&C, a surgical abortion. She drove there, arrived late, and was given a mifepristone and misoprostol instead. After taking the first pill, she “insisted on driving home before any symptoms started.” Days later, after vomiting and passing out at home, Thurman was taken to a suburban Atlanta hospital, where she reported a tender abdomen. Doctors noted a foul odor during a pelvic exam, and an ultrasound showed possible tissue in her uterus. Thurman needed a D&C, but according to Ms. Surana, the state had “criminalized” that procedure, “with few exceptions,” and practitioners who performed it risked “up to a decade in prison.” Physicians operated some 20 hours after her admission, after diagnosing her with acute severe sepsis. She died.”
That my friends is a classic example of medical mal-practice—in my opinion. Waiting 20 hours to operate on a patient with intrauterine or intrabdominal sepsis and then blaming a law for one’s failure to act is preposterous—especially when the law specifically does not prohibit the action required to save the life of a patient in extremes.
As usually is the case there is more to the story and it involves the use of either or both of the abortion drugs mifepristone and misoprostol In the 56th paragraph of the story, Ms. Surana acknowledges: “It is not clear from the records available why doctors waited to provide a D&C to Thurman.” REALLY!
Again, from the (WSJ):
Rising ectopic pregnancy rates are more dangerous in light of the widespread use of the abortion drugs mifepristone and misoprostol, whose side effects include pelvic pain and bleeding—also the symptoms of an ectopic pregnancy. In Food and Drug Administration v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, the Supreme Court will consider the FDA’s decision to relax safety protocols for administering those drugs. The changes increase the likelihood that a woman will mistake a life-threatening ectopic pregnancy for normal abortion-drug side effects.
A woman today can acquire mifepristone with no screening for an ectopic pregnancy, and she may not even realize she has one until it is a full-blown medical emergency. During oral arguments before the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, the lawyer representing the FDA was asked how ectopic pregnancy could be ruled out without any kind of medical examination. She replied that you can ask questions like, “Are you experiencing shoulder pain”.
Another ignorant remark unfortunately not by a medical expert, but by an attorney who may not know better. Shoulder pain is a sign of an uncontained hemorrhage in the abdomen or retroperitoneum. If a patient exhibits such symptoms, they need to be in the operating room STAT—not in twenty hours! There is not a state in our great union that would not allow for an emergency procedure to be performed under such circumstances.
According to the Guttmacher Institute—The Country’s leading Pro-Abortion NGO along with non-profit Planned Parenthood, there have been more abortions since the Dobbs decision than before. Abortion rates were going down, but with the increased use of mifepristone and misoprostol since Dobbs it can only be expected that there will be an increase in ectopic pregnancies, and the clinician’s ability to diagnose such a condition will be compromised if the status of the pregnancy after the drugs are administered is not followed closely. If our government was really interested in the wellbeing of pregnant young ladies, they would not be arguing before the courts for less access to follow up.
It is also important to note that these terrible clinical misadventures occur with almost equal frequency in states that have permissive abortion laws. One final quote from the (WSJ) article to support my position:
” In Nevada, where abortion is legal until 24 weeks, Alyona Dixon, 24, died on Sept. 28, 2022, owing to “complications from septic abortion,” six days after a Planned Parenthood clinic reportedly gave her the same pills Thurman took. Dixon’s widower has filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against the hospital where she was initially treated and discharged. The complaint cites a physician’s expert declaration that the hospital “failed to adequately rule out sepsis as a cause of Ms. Dixon’s symptoms.”
Each of these details complicates the Harris-Walz narrative that Donald Trump is ultimately to blame for Amber Thurman’s death. That may be a politically convenient claim, but it grossly ignores the facts, stokes needless fear among vulnerable women and medical professionals alike, and exploits a young woman who tragically died.”
Is it really expecting too much to ask for those slinging words and accusations in this political season to just tell us the truth and provide context to their arguments?
Donald Trump is not to blame for the deaths of either of those young ladies. More to blame would be the policies that facilitate and incentivize clinical decisions that are more in the interests of large drug companies and hospitals that have a vested interest in the abortion business than in patients—again my opinion.
Conservatives and the Pro-Life movement are concerned first with the life of the unborn child, but also with the health of mothers and women who many times are making decisions without being given all of the facts and the opportunity to access follow-up perinatal care.
One reply on “The Truth About Abortion”
Dr. Livingston, I belieive your article brings out some major points regarding abortion. It isn’t just a simple matter of being pregnant, there are other medical conditions that need to be assessed by a medical professional. And, there is clearly missing parts of the story in these women’s cases. The idea that an abortion pill can just be obtained, (oh gee I’m pregnant I’ll just take a pill) without a medical assessment must be just another deliberate aspect of these inane people to harm women. Everything they do or want done causes harm. It is unfortunate for women the narrative has become so distorted, it just adds to the bad decisions that are already being made. As you mentioned, PID, IUD, STIs, and a large host of other differentials have to be considered and only a medical provider can make that assessment. That type of information is what is being withheld from women, on purpose. But, as you correctly state, it is now a corporate run medical world.