After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade, one might think that anti-abortion proponents could slow down or even pause their work to rob half the population of their basic human rights, but nope! This was only the beginning for them and the anti-abortion agenda continues, from introducing tons of new bills restricting and banning abortion access to already working to expand the ban to things like contraception and IVF.
One especially disturbing tactic that’s been on the rise is an attempt to redefine what “abortion” even means. We recently saw the President and CEO of Americans United for Life argue before Congress that a 10-year-old rape victim who recently had to travel out of state to receive an abortion didn’t actually get an abortion. She absolutely did, but this woman claimed that if the pregnancy was threatening her life, then that makes it an exception to state law, and if it’s an exception to the law, then it’s not actually an abortion—which, again, yes, it is.
Watch @cateici lie and tell @RepSwalwell that the 10 y.o. rape victim who traveled to Indiana didn’t get an abortion. It wasn’t an abortion, she says. (It was.)
— ⚓️Imani Two-Kitchens Gandy⚓️ (@AngryBlackLady) July 14, 2022
They’re redefining what abortion because they know the law is ghoulish and forces children to have babies. Disgusting. pic.twitter.com/RdvXHowiHF
That logic is absurd, but this argument is nothing new. In fact, this kind of language is even written into a number of state laws and statutes. Texas’ official state health and safety code, for instance, reads: “An act is not an abortion if the act is done with the intent to: (A)save the life or preserve the health of an unborn child; (B)remove a dead, unborn child whose death was caused by spontaneous abortion; or (C)remove an ectopic pregnancy.”
We’re seeing a major revival of this sort of argument, with claims that some abortions—those deemed nice and necessary enough to be tolerated by anti-abortion advocates—aren’t really abortions at all.
These semantic gymnastics are, unsurprisingly, being embraced by people who consider themselves “pro-life” and need to justify their own abortions. The New York Times ran an especially confounding op-ed recently with the abhorrent headline: “In a Post-Roe World, We Can Avoid Pitting Mothers Against Babies.” The author described the process of finding a doctor that would treat her with the sensitivity she desired while undergoing a necessary procedure to remove an ectopic pregnancy (when the fetus grows outside of the uterus)—which, by the way, is an abortion. While her reasons for getting an abortion might be different from another person’s, access to safe, legal, and compassionate medical care is what every person seeking an abortion for literally any reason deserves.
So, just so we’re on the same page here:
— Ashley 🧠💚 (@AshleyEsqueda) July 5, 2022
– you CHOSE the doctor you wanted
– you CHOSE to treat your impending loss before it almost killed you
– you CHOSE to rationalize what you did — an abortion, by the way! — extremely publicly in the NYT
Glad we agree choice is critical!
This is an argument for better, gentler healthcare, not banning abortion.
— Heidi N. Moore (@moorehn) July 5, 2022
If you owe your peace of mind to ending a pregnancy safely, you owe that same peace of mind to other women, right?
I hope you see that you are asking for compassion and that you, in turn, extend it.
The medical processes a person undergoes to remove an ectopic pregnancy or a miscarriage, or in other life-threatening circumstances, are abortions. They’re the exact same procedures, the same medications. Calling them something else doesn’t change that, it’s simply an attempt to further disparage abortion, to convince people that abortion is not healthcare (which it very much is) by separating the same process into different categories. It’s also dangerous.
Ever since the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v Wade was leaked, we’ve been hearing claims that abortion bans will not affect people experiencing ectopic pregnancies and other life-threatening emergencies. Fox News recently went so far as to call warnings to the contrary “disinformation.”
Not every state even has the kind of exemptions we’ve been talking about here, but even in those that do, pregnant people who are experiencing life-threatening emergencies are very much being affected by this sudden ban on abortions. Because no matter what language is baked into these laws, that is still the procedure people in those situations need. We know that medical providers are delaying or refusing treatment because of the extreme confusion around what is and isn’t legal. This is also affecting people who aren’t even pregnant, as stories pile up of pharmacists refusing to fill prescriptions for medications that might be considered “abortifacients,” even if they were prescribed for completely unrelated, even life-saving reasons.
Trying to insist that some abortions aren’t actually abortions doesn’t help protect anyone, it just puts so many more people in danger.
(image: Alex Wong/Getty Images)
