RFK Hearing: Setting the Record Straight on Pro-Life Laws
Caroline MolloyWhile questioning Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President Trump’s nominee for secretary of Health and Human Services, Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., implied that pro-life state laws do not allow physicians to provide emergency treatment for incomplete miscarriages.
Cortez Masto’s line of questioning followed a familiar playbook. Since the Dobbs decision in 2022, the abortion lobby, with the help of sympathetic media outlets, have created confusion with the intent of turning Americans against pro-life laws, falsely alleging that they will not allow critical medical care in pregnancy emergencies. They then point to examples of poor-quality medical care that caused harm to pregnant women as proof of their assertions.
As an obstetrician-gynecologist practicing in Texas for more than 30 years, I have practiced when few restrictions existed on elective abortion, and when abortion limits have been enforced. I would like to set the record straight.
Pro-life laws don’t prevent me and other physicians from providing quality medical care.
Elective abortion is not essential medical care. The vast majority of U.S. abortions are performed for social, financial or other reasons having nothing to do with serious health concerns. Nearly 96% occur on a healthy unborn child being carried by a healthy mother. In addition to ending the lives of unborn children, abortion harms many women emotionally, physically and socially, and is a poor solution to the crises American women face.
I have been honored to spend my career caring for the needs of both my patients, a mother and her unborn child. On rare occasions, I have needed to deliver a baby prematurely in a pregnancy emergency to protect the mother’s life, and sometimes, tragically, the baby does not survive. This is not an abortion, which must involve the intent to cause the death of an unborn child. My intent in such circumstances was to save the mother, even if I was unable to save her child.
