Behind the medical fallacies of the anti-abortion movement
"Lawmakers are in essence diagnosing patients they can’t see, using medical knowledge they don’t have. "
(Originally published by Antigravity Magazine)
If you went to religious schools like I did for a time, you were likely subjected to vivid imagery of the afterlife. Pastors at pulpits and teachers at whiteboards weaved worlds of a land that awaited those of us who stayed on God’s good side—clouds and angelic harps and a bright light slicing through the slats of a golden gate, behind which lay everything we ever wanted. No pain, poverty, or sadness. Then there was the other imagery. Fire and brimstone crackling underfoot amidst an afterlife of torture, courtesy of God’s hooved, horned, and red fallen son. Screams from the damned would fill the air, none louder than those who murdered babies. People who performed abortions were butchers. Those who sought them were spoken of as though they were morally broken or led astray, and should’ve kept their clothes on rather than spend eternity in damnation.
But what if the abortion seekers were two 8-year-olds?
Audrey Hayworth told the two girls’ stories to the Louisiana House of Representatives Administration of Criminal Justice committee in 2023, hoping to have rape and incest exceptions added to the current abortion law. And while doing so, a man carrying a Bible and a rosary stood to the side of the table spouting Bible verses. Hayworth, a feminist writer and pro-choice advocate for over two decades, told me, “One of the [8-year-old girls] had just turned nine and was in her second trimester.” One of the girls had the baby, while the other got an abortion. For the latter, the doctor and nurse had to go on a day they were closed in order to avoid protests. The little girl didn’t even know what was going on around her.
Hayworth’s story was unable to sway the committee, nor did the committee budge in 2024. Close to four out of five Louisiana citizens believe rape should be an exception to anti-abortion laws. By denying this exception, Louisiana has made it clear that the confused little girl from Hayworth’s story should’ve kept that fetus, and some would likely say it was her God-given duty to do so.
The current state of reproductive health care in Louisiana has been chaotic, which was to be expected. But it isn’t because the legislature isn’t listening to experts. They’re just listening to the wrong ones. Over the course of decades, right wing groups have thrown money at “research” centers that use shoddy science methods to give legitimacy to their personal philosophies, adding fuel to the fire of the anti-abortion movement, all in an effort to “help” and “protect” women.
Due to the near total abortion ban there have been numerous cases of severely ill patients, including pregnant women with cancer, being denied abortions until they got so sick that their lives are “irrefutably at risk,” causing what several organizations in a recent report have called a denial of basic human rights. Women have been subjected to riskier procedures, like C-sections. Or, they are being forced to avoid prenatal care until after 12 weeks, like in the case of Kaitlyn Joshua, who was denied miscarriage care. The hospital she arrived at was scared to even use the medical term for miscarriage, “spontaneous abortion,” on paperwork out of fear it would trigger an investigation. There’s also the case of Nancy Davis, whose baby was born without a skull, due to a condition known as acrania. “I had to carry my baby to bury my baby,” Davis told NBC.
This is all happening because doctors are scared. In the aftermath of the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade, then-Attorney General Jeff Landry sent a letter to the Louisiana State Medical Society threatening legal action against any doctor who performed an abortion. They risk up to 15 years in prison and $200,000 in fines. Michelle Erenberg with Lift Louisiana said doctors aren’t acting as quickly. “[They think] It looks like a miscarriage, but does it qualify for that narrow window [in the abortion exceptions]?” This pits the doctor’s desire to not go to prison against the best course of action for their patient.
The Louisiana abortion law is vague and attempts to turn a complex medical issue into a binary one, despite the fact that every woman’s medical history and pregnancy is unique. Lawmakers are in essence diagnosing patients they can’t see, using medical knowledge they don’t have. In the aftermath of Davis’ incident, Democratic state Sen. Katrina Jackson, the author of the abortion bill, and 35 other lawmakers (26 men) stated the hospital “grossly misinterpreted” the law, and Davis was a valid exception. The signatories added that their faith would “compel us to carry this child to term,” because the vital organs would form later. Acrania has an almost 100% mortality rate, with a prognosis of death within the first week of life according to The Fetal Medicine Foundation. (I reached out to Senator Jackson to see if she has any concerns about the consequences of her bill, and received no response.)
Lawmakers were warned by medical experts and women that their anti-abortion policies would be disastrous, including noting that Louisiana is one of the most dangerous places in the country to give birth, especially for Black women. But despite pleas to make the law clearer, there has been pushback from groups like Louisiana Right to Life, and lawmakers and anti-abortion activists have been hostile to anyone who doesn’t agree with them—even sexual assault victims.
In 2023, during the hearing to add rape and incest exceptions, some people gave emotional testimonies about considering suicide after their rapes. People from the crowd would yell each time, “Better dead than a murderer.” According to Hayworth, Right to Life employees sat there smirking.
In talking to Sofia Resnick, a journalist that covers abortion, she noted that pro-lifers refer to necessary abortions needed for things like ectopic pregnancy as “separation of mother and unborn child,” despite the fact they are often doing the same procedures.
That’s because pro-lifers have painted an alternate meaning around the word “abortion” devoid of all medical context and nuance. This is partly the cause of the perceived vagueness in the abortion law, because lawmakers are trying to legislate concepts they don’t understand based on research from dubious institutes that don’t follow medical consensus. This has also led to an issue where most search engine information about abortion is unreliable.
But the misinformation isn’t just in Google.
The Dobbs decision that led to the overturning of Roe v. Wade was based on half-truths. A scientist whose work was cited in a brief sent to the U.S. Supreme Court stated his findings on fetal pain were misinterpreted, adding their claims were “an unjustified leap.” The brief asserted that fetuses feel pain early in the pregnancy. At about 10 weeks is when immature pain receptors start to form. However, in order to feel pain, according to the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, a fetus must have a brain developed enough to receive the pain signals. That isn’t until after at least 24 to 25 weeks, which coincides to when a fetus is viable.
Mary Ziegler, historian of abortion law and professor at UC Davis, told me how the political use of pseudoscience goes back decades. In the ‘60s, the anti-abortion movement was mostly Catholic. But once GOP operative and religious extremist Paul Weyrich galvanized Evangelical leaders furious over desegregation, Evangelicals hitched their wagons permanently to the cause. Weyrich saw abortion as a perfect wedge issue, precisely because it evoked so much emotion. Zeigler said Weyrich wanted to “make abortion what gets [voters] out of bed in the morning.” One piece of anti-abortion propaganda that exacerbated the movement was The Silent Scream. It’s a 1984 film that claimed to show a 12-week fetus screaming while a doctor performed an abortion. Fetuses are not capable of screaming, because that would require fully formed lungs. However, the film was so effective that President Reagan, who once expanded abortion rights while governor of California, screened it at the White House. Reagan gave anti-abortion advocates positions in his administration, including the position of U.S. surgeon general. Religious right activists suggested tying anti-abortion sentiment and the Equal Rights Amendment as a way to get new conservative voters. Unsurprisingly, the anti-abortion movement gained an anti-woman reputation. A lot of the rhetoric focused on the rights of the fetus, intentionally removing the woman entirely, if not outright shaming them. In addition, public perception was not on their side because people thought of pro-lifers as violent and uneducated religious extremists.
Then some anti-abortion proponents came up with an idea to make the movement not seem anti-woman: show how abortions hurt women. According to Mary Ziegler, Vincent Rue gained prominence during the ‘80s when he helped coin the term “Post Abortion Syndrome,” (PAS) taking inspiration from “Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.” PAS states that most women feel lingering traumatic emotional distress after their abortion. This “syndrome” has since been debunked.
Eventually, despite pushback, proponents figured out how to adopt the language of the feminist movement, a.k.a. “woman-protective anti-abortion argument.” Then in the late ‘90s, David Reardon founded an institute to study PAS as a legitimate ailment. Reardon wanted to give scientific legitimacy to his Christian conservative views, stating that research would show “compelling evidence” that sinful acts like abortion and pornography lead to psychological and spiritual pain. He added that by “finding this evidence and sharing it with others, we bear witness to the protective good of God’s law in a way which even unbelievers must respect.” This led anti-abortion researchers like Reardon to pursue publication of their “research” in legitimate science journals. Decades have passed, and now their research studies are being cited in court cases and shaping law.
In 2023, U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk made a ruling in the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. U.S. Food and Drug Administration case which would have led to abortion medication being restricted or pulled from the market. In his opinion, Kacsmaryk cited two studies that were later retracted by the publisher. In total, the think tank that funded the research, Charlotte Lozier Institute, had three studies retracted due to lack of scientific rigor and undeclared conflicts of interest—one of those conflicts being that some of the authors of the retracted Lozier studies were also plaintiffs in the Alliance v. FDA lawsuit.
According to experts, the data was presented in a way that exaggerates their findings and their conclusions were misrepresented.
“A Longitudinal Cohort Study of Emergency Room Utilization Following Mifepristone Chemical and Surgical Abortions, 1999–2015,” cited in the legal brief, looked at Medicaid patients’ visits to the emergency room within 30 days of getting an abortion and reasoned that abortion medication is risky. According to Dr. Rachel Jones of the Guttmacher Institute, they willfully ignored data specific to abortion-related emergency room visits. It assumed that those who had abortions didn’t visit the ER for any other reason than the abortion itself. Furthermore, according to Sofia Resnick, the article was originally peer-reviewed by someone who worked at the same institute that the lead author worked in, thus invalidating a crucial step in the verification process.
This pseudoscience provides cover for anti-choice legislators who have already reached their conclusions on the issue, and gives a legal rationale for anti-choice judges such as Judge Kacsmaryk, a Trump appointee who is often sought out by ultra-religious organizations filing lawsuits. The anti-choice medical plaintiffs were represented by Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), the religious extremist organization that overturned Roe v. Wade, and the organization that helped introduce the bill banning gender-affirming care in Louisiana. ADF has given money to Charlotte Lozier Institute, the anti-abortion science group who wrote the anti-abortion pill papers in the first place. The “science” has been an integral weapon for the conservative legal movement, with abortion as well as trans health care.
Now, those once on the fringes have gone mainstream, and the peddlers of junk science are reaching the ears of politicians. Dr. Ingrid Skop, a doctor with Charlotte Lozier Institute, is on the Texas health board that oversees maternal mortality. She believes girls as young as 9 can (and should) carry a child to term.
Louisiana Right to Life (LARTL) is the most influential anti-abortion organization in the state. One anonymous source told me, “Probably half of [lawmakers] at minimum would vote for all [abortion] exceptions if they were free to do so.” But “All [LARTL] have to do is send a floor note [or] even a nod against and everyone [votes] accordingly.”
According to a secretly recorded conversation between Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill and journalist Lauren Windsor, LARTL is responsible for writing legislation for the state. A screenshot obtained from an anonymous source shows LARTL Executive Director Benjamin Clapper in a group message with several lawmakers in 2022. Clapper wanted to discuss changes to the abortion law with at least Rep. Laurie Schlegel, Rep. Sharon Hewitt, and Sen. Katrina Jackson, though other lawmakers were in the group chat. Also present in the group chat was someone named Gene Mills, which may be Director Gene Mills of the Louisiana Family Forum, though his messages were redacted.
Since LARTL (who declined to answer the questions I sent them) is the preeminent anti-abortion group in the state, it’s best to take a look at what they state. LARTL championed the recent rescheduling of abortion pills mifepristone and misoprostol to Schedule IV controlled dangerous substances, which is the same schedule as medications like Xanax, Valium, and Ambien. And in a report posted to their website, they paint a grim picture of what the rise of abortion pills has done to women seeking abortions. On their Facebook page, they post that nearly half of women who take abortion pills seek medical attention afterwards. In reality, according to Dr. Ushma D. Upadhyay and Dr. Chris E. Adkins, more than 50% of ER visits after abortion involve “observational care only — indicating that an adverse event did not occur,” though adding that 3 to 5% will likely need a routine procedure after a medication abortion to complete the process. In addition, mifepristone blocks hormones that support pregnancy, and is used months before the fetus is viable. It’s been taken by over five million people in over 20 years with only 32 known deaths, making it safer than Viagra or penicillin.
But if you take abortion pills and regret it, LARTL says that abortion pill reversals are possible.
“That is absolutely not possible,” Michelle Erenberg of Lift Louisiana told me. “This idea that you could reverse a medication abortion… by administering very high doses of progesterone is complete junk science. The LDH (Louisiana Department of Health) studied this (in 2016) and released a report saying that there’s no evidence of efficacy, and in fact can be quite dangerous.”
The notion of “abortion pill reversals” comes from a case series done in 2012 by Dr. George Delgado. According to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, this experiment was not supervised by an institutional review board. In addition, Dr. Delgado is not an OBGYN. Dr. Delgado was also asked by UC San Diego School of Medicine to please stop using the medical school’s name after he listed them as an affiliation in a widely criticized paper in 2018.
Despite the treatment being panned as junk science, Erenberg told me that anti-abortion clinics tell women they can reverse their medication abortions. “Maternal wellness centers,” also called “crisis pregnancy centers,” are places known for telling women anti-abortion junk science, in addition to having little to no oversight, and not having to follow HIPAA.
This new stigma that anti-abortion groups are painting on abortion pills has led to Louisiana hospitals removing misoprostol from hemorrhage carts. Misoprostol is often used as the second step in a pill abortion, since it empties the uterus. But it’s also given to patients when the doctor fears they are at risk of hemorrhaging.
In the wake of reporting that hospitals were pulling misoprostol from carts, LARTL posted a “myths vs the truth” graphic on Facebook. In the post, LARTL quotes Dr. John Voltz of Lafayette, who states he was confident that he could still provide adequate emergency care to his patients. LARTL’s social media shows they often use quotes from medical professionals to ease people’s concerns. Those medical professionals often share the same worldview as LARTL though. Dr. Voltz’s practice group is a member of one of the pro-life medical groups, American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG), that signed on to the abortion pill lawsuit against the FDA. In addition, Dr. Voltz was one of 170 anti-abortion doctors who signed a public statement admonishing their pro-choice colleagues for demanding federal abortion protections be returned.
This new fixation on abortion pills results from the increasing number of abortions. Despite nearly half of the country restricting or banning abortion, the rate of them increased between 2020 and 2023. This can be attributed to abortion pills. Abortion pills, which have been the primary method for abortion for years, accounted for over 60% of abortions in 2023, with about 8,000 women a month in states with restrictive bans receiving them. The majority of Americans believe that abortion pills should be legal. In conjunction, several states have telehealth shield laws that protect the abortion pill providers and patients from prosecution by anti-abortion states. Those two reasons are likely why the anti-abortion groups are trying to paint a new stigma on abortion pills using fear-mongering and faulty science.
Despite the access to abortion pills providing some form of work-around for women seeking abortions, they don’t fix everything. Each anti-abortion state is largely using a “make it up as you go” method to their abortion laws. What’s considered an abortion in one state is not in another. In Louisiana, Dr. Angela Parise states that the new laws have not hindered her ability to provide a dilation and curettage (D&C—surgical abortion). But in Georgia, the doctors for Amber Nicole Thurman didn’t have that confidence. The 28-year-old medical assistant had a rare complication from taking abortion pills, when not all of the fetal matter was expelled. For cases like this, just like with miscarriages, the minor procedure to do is a D&C. But performing that procedure in Georgia is a felony. The doctors waited 20 hours before operating on her. Thurman went septic and her organs started to fail, and eventually she died, leaving behind a six-year-old son.
She is the first reported casualty directly due to anti-abortion laws.
I asked Zeigler if she felt the pseudoscience was intentional. She said, “When you get these people alone in a room, they seem to really care about fetuses and children.” She believes what is happening is that their deeply-held convictions skew the way they interpret their findings. But that care has led to a situation where states are fighting for the right to track women. And as Trump continues to peddle myths of “after birth” abortions, despite that being literally murder, the term “abortion” gets more stigmatized.
Ziegler believes that the ultimate goal of the anti-abortion movement is to achieve “fetal personhood.” Rightwing groups since the fall of Roe have hinted in their circles that the path to a national abortion ban would be leveraging the 14th Amendment to state that fetuses have equal rights as humans. If pro-life “research” dictates life starts at conception, doctors could end up being charged with murder if they perform an abortion.
Zeigler did add that the right’s pro-life stance also collides with their view of gender and sex. Just as the ruling of Roe v. Wade in 1973 coincided with women seeking greater freedoms, the Dobbs decision comes at a time where ultra-conservative movements like “trad-wives” come into play. Despite the language of care and public health many of these groups use when discussing abortion, it is still connected to their other opinions. Many pro-life doctors also hold anti-queer and anti-vax views, using their “science” as a way to give cover to their ideology. And once you weaponize “science” for one thing, it’s not hard to see how this could be weaponized against IVF, birth control, and even climate change remedies.
But it is not all hopeless. Dr. Rachel Jones from Guttmacher told me that the three retracted Lozier Institute papers are an example of the community holding their own accountable, and some journals are changing their procedures to catch junk science before it goes wide.
In addition, 10 states have abortion on the ballot this year, and so far abortion in the post-Roe world has won whenever it was put to a vote. However, Erenberg added nothing will change long term if we are not able to make our elected officials feel our anger at the polls. Which, shockingly, may not be as far-fetched as one might think. According to a 2023 poll by Louisiana State University, a majority of Louisianians support abortion access.
The average American doesn’t view abortion policy in black and white terms. The hardliners are a loud minority, and a monster the GOP can no longer control. It has been hurting them at the polls to the point where Trump and other GOP politicians are having to walk back comments on abortion, gaining the ire of the pro-life movement.
I asked Audrey Hayworth how people could go about accessing reliable abortion care information and she pointed to Abortionfinder.com and Lift Louisiana. Michelle Erenberg of Lift Louisiana stated that a lot of anti-abortion centers advertise on Google and billboards, but a good rule of thumb is: If a clinic is offering free ultrasounds, they will not provide any useful information on abortion, and in fact will try to stop you from having one. To be clear, there is misinformation coming out of the pro-choice camps too, in terms of possible at-home abortion remedies using things like herbs.
Hayworth told me, “I am encouraged that people are listening to women talk about their lived experiences and fears about reproductive health. It’s through the hardest conversations that hope emerges for a new and better future.”
illustrations by Romey Petite
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