— 7+ Myths about Abortion and the Pro-Life Movement
7+ Myths about Abortion and the Pro-Life Movement
There are a lot of myths about abortion. How can you speak intelligently with your pro-choice friends? Learn the truth about Pro-lifers, ectopic pregnancies, bodily autonomy and more.
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1. Pro-lifers only care about birth and not after
Why might people think this?
Pro-lifers talk about the lives of unborn babies a lot. (To pro-life people this makes sense. Science shows us the baby has its own DNA, heartbeat, fingerprints, etc. If you can argue the baby is alive, you can argue that killing the baby is unethical.) But, women facing an unplanned pregnancy hearing these messages may think “You don’t care about me. You only talk about babies. You don’t know my difficult circumstances.”
PRCs help women before AND after birth.
Pro-life people demonstrate their care for women by volunteering and donating to pregnancy resource centers. PRCs outnumber abortion facilities 3 to 1 (Live Action.) This is impressive, considering most PRCs are 501c3 charities and don’t receive any government funding.
Specific ways PRCs help
Heartbeat International has provided nearly 250,000 free ultrasounds for pregnant women and served 1.5 million clients each year.
In the last 12 months, OCC has provided
- 10,836 diapers
- 212 pack of wipes
- 76 baby outfits
- 115 other items ranging from cribs and mattresses to towels, toys, and blankets.
- 65 pregnancy tests
- 62 ultrasounds
- 298 parenting/life skills classes
2. Women won’t receive health care treatments for ectopic pregnancy or miscarriage.
Medically, treating ectopic pregnancies is not abortion.
The CDC definition of abortion is ending a pregnancy that’s in the uterus. Ectopic pregnancies are outside the uterus.
Treating an ectopic pregnancy involves the medication methotrexate or laparoscopic surgery. The abortion pill uses different drugs (mifepristone and misoprostol) and does not treat ectopic pregnancy, according to the FDA.
Morally, treating ectopic pregnancies is not abortion.
Motives matter. Treating an ectopic pregnancy to save the life of the mother is moral. Over 90% of tubal ectopic pregnancies are embryos who have already died. Ectopic pregnancies are unviable (unable to grow and survive.)
In contrast, abortion targets a live, healthy baby with the intention of destroying that baby. Elective abortion is not necessary for the health of the mother.
Legally, treating ectopic pregnancies is not abortion.
States that limit abortion have to legally define abortion. Each state’s definition excludes treatments for ectopic pregnancies and miscarriages. They have exceptions for instances where the mother’s life is in danger. Guttmacher charts existing state laws restricting abortion. They all provide exceptions to protect the life of the mother. [Review state laws here.] No one wants women to die. Removing a deceased baby (treating miscarriage) is not the same as aborting a healthy baby.
3. What if the life of the mother is in danger?
Thankfully, life-threatening complications are rare.
General complications (including ones that are not life-threatening) affect 8% of all pregnancies.
Pro-Choice people like to bring up fringe arguments where abortion might be medically necessary. This fearmongering is a distraction from all the elective abortions that are NOT medically necessary.
Again, each state has exceptions for instances where the mother’s life is in danger. No one wants women to die.
Compassionate, non-violent care includes early delivery or early C-section.
This saves the mom and gives the baby a chance to live. True, the baby may still die from premature delivery. Babies are viable (or able to survive outside the womb) at 22 weeks, and odds of survival are better at 26 weeks. Which is better? Intentionally trying to save the baby or intentionally terminating him or her? Humane treatment allows the baby to pass away peacefully instead of being ripped apart.
In a true emergency, a c-section can be done within the hour. It is faster than D&E or D&X which requires waiting overnight (or days) for the woman’s cervix to dilate.
For further reading: Fact Sheet: Medical Indications for Separating a Mother and Her Unborn Child – Charlotte Lozier Institute
4. Is abortion safer than pregnancy?
“Using their logic,” OB-GYN and Senator Roger Marshall asks, “should we abort every baby? Should we stop all childbearing? Presenting abortion as the ‘life-saving solution’ denies the modern medical science that can keep both mother and baby safe.” Abortion is never safe for the baby.
In order to answer that question, we need accurate data on abortion.
There’s one study everyone likes to cite by Raymond and Grimes, but it has data problems. People can’t cite other studies because no other researchers can replicate this claim.
The CDC does not require states to report abortion data.
Specifically, Maryland, California, New Hampshire, Washington DC, and New York City don’t report their abortion data. Given the high population and permissive abortion laws in California, that’s a huge gap in data. The CDC requires pregnancy mortality reporting from all 50 states and DC. Comparing pregnancy data with spotty abortion data is comparing apples and oranges. The CDC admits they might overestimate pregnancy-related deaths.
What is the maternal mortality rate? In 2020, the CDC reported 23.8 deaths per 100,000 live births or 0.0238%. Meanwhile, 3% of abortions in Western nations are unsafe, and global abortion mortality is 13%.
Further reading: Equal Rights Institute has a great article about data problems.
5. Fetuses are alive but women can abort them anyway.
Pro-lifers often misunderstand “My body, my choice.” They think that pro-choice people deny that a baby is a separate body. (Some people do, but many take a different approach.)
Ask clarifying questions to see what the person you’re talking to believes:
“Do you mean that the embryo’s body is literally just part of the mother’s body, like a kidney or another organ? Or do you mean that because the embryo is in her body she has the right to kill it?”
Again, the thought is since the baby is INSIDE the woman’s body, and she can do whatever she wants with her body, she can abort. This is the Bodily Autonomy argument, aka the violinist argument. If you’re not familiar with the violinist argument, read about it.
6. More babies means more kids in foster care
7. Why don’t you fix foster care, adoption, poverty, homelessness, etc?
This is a red herring distracting from the issue of abortion. Supporting the human rights of the preborn is morally good. Without first ensuring the right to life, no other social justice cause can exist. This demand to solve all the other problems isn’t applied to other causes. We don’t ask the American Cancer Society to fix homelessness, or the homeless shelter to cure cancer. One doesn’t have to have the answers to all of life’s hardships to know that killing a baby is wrong.
8. What about cases of rape or incest?
- Would you support banning abortion except in the cases of rape/incest?
(If the person says “no, all abortion should be legal,” then it’s not really about the fringe cases.)
Just 1% of women get abortions because they were raped.
Less than 0.5% do so because of incest, according to the Guttmacher Institute.
- Rape is violence against women, and adding the violence of abortion will not help victims, Feminists For Life argue.
Saying babies conceived in rape should be aborted is insulting to people who were conceived in rape. Ryan Bromberger is one such child conceived in rape but adopted in love. (Hear his story in his own words in a 4 minute video.)
Abortion in the case of rape is the only instance where someone other than the perpetrator is punished for the crime.
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