September 23, 2024
A side with no facts will often resort to fabrications or misdirection to win an argument. The abortion lobby is no exception. In the final lap of the 2024 election, they’ve put their foot on the misinformation gas, pushing fear at every turn. But Students for Life Action (SFLAction) are slowing them down with actual facts.
Claim: States are letting women die because of a lack of abortion access.
Fact: There are no laws in any of the 50 states that require women’s lives to be put at risk because of their pregnancy.
According to the Guttmacher Institute, a pro-abortion organization, all 41 states that have some measure of abortion restriction also have requirements that save the life of the mother. This obviously excludes the nine states and Washington, D.C., that allow abortion through all nine months with zero restrictions.
However, any procedure to remove an ectopic pregnancy, stillborn, or otherwise dead preborn baby isn’t an abortion. Most pregnancy complications, according to Cleveland Clinic, “are treatable, especially when your pregnancy care provider detects them early.”
READ MORE HERE: Is Abortion for Life of the Mother Ever Valid? and What is an Ectopic Pregnancy?
Claim: Women are being prosecuted for abortion in pro-life states.
Fact: There are currently only two states with laws like this on the books, and most prosecution is related to other legal violations, not the act of abortion itself.
A common fear pushed by the abortion industry and Democrats is that with former President Donald Trump in the White House, women will be arrested for getting abortions or seeking them out in every state coast to coast.
However, an analysis by the Charlotte Lozier institute shows that almost no states will arrest or prosecute women for this.
According to that analysis, “While this has often been characterized as ‘prosecution for abortion,’ that is inaccurate as in such cases the individuals are not being prosecuted for abortion itself. Instead, they are prosecuted for things like attempting to get pregnant women to take abortion pills without their consent, improper burial of human remains (burial is regulated for a reason), performing abortions without a license, and so on.”
Only two states – Oklahoma and Nevada – have laws coming close to this falsehood. Nevada has no substantial preborn protections, allowing abortion up until five and a half months of pregnancy. Oklahoma’s law states that any individual “who administers to any woman, or who prescribes for any woman, or advises or procures any woman to take any medicine, drug or substance, or uses or employs any instrument, or other means whatever, with intent thereby to procure the miscarriage of such woman” more or less implies that that women undergoing an abortion would not be punished.
Claim: Infanticide isn’t real, and no one is intentionally killing babies after they’re born.
Fact: Infanticide is real, and Minnesota data proves that. Babies being left to die in toilets, dumpsters, or trash bags, is a horrific phenomenon that makes its way into the news all too often.
However, infanticide happens as a matter of state policy. According to data from the Minnesota Department of Health and additional reporting from the National Review, “Since Governor Tim Walz was inaugurated in 2019, eight babies survived abortion attempts in Minnesota. On five occasions, no measures were taken to preserve life.”
WATCH this viral video of Hawkin at Northern Arizona University calling a late-term abortion facility in front of a live audience and scheduling a 34-week (8 ½ month) abortion.
Vice President Kamala Harris voted against a measure that would’ve provided lifesaving, humane treatments for abortion survivors. Why would she do this if infanticide doesn’t happen, or no one wants it? The reason Harris gave at the time was that this would “jeopardize the right to reproductive health care in our country.”
READ: We Won’t Be Silenced: Students for Life of America Launches ALMOST ABORTED Billboard Campaign with True Stories that Abortion Extremist Democrats IGNORE and Harris & Walz Record of Support for INFANTICIDE Highlighted in New Students for Life Action Commercial Buy
Claim: Late-term abortion doesn’t happen.
Fact: Late-term abortions are happening and they’re legal in many states.
Not only does late-term abortion exist in numerous states, the Biden-Harris Administration’s top healthcare policy priority, the Women’s Health Protection Act, would allow abortions up until birth nationwide without any ability for the states to push back.
There are numerous documented instances of late-term abortions. In 2020, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) reported that more than nine in 10 abortions (93.1%) take place by three months of pregnancy (12 weeks). That leaves almost 7% (6.9 to be exact) occurring later and later in pregnancy. Of that, 5.8% of abortions end lives from 14 to 20 weeks (five months), leaving more than 1.1% in the last months of pregnancy.
Despite this being a clear case of something immoral, it didn’t stop Harris from dodging this line of questioning during the presidential debate and during a CBS interview in 2023 when she refused to name a single limit on abortion she would support. As senator, Harris also co-sponsored legislation to ban state-level restrictions on abortion.
READ: Yes, Jen Psaki: Abortions Up to Birth Do Happen & You Support Them and Late Term Abortions Are Real & Infants Need Protection
Claim: Maternal mortality rates have worsened since Roe v. Wade was reversed.
Fact: Maternal mortality rates in some states have actually improved.
A recent NBC News story claimed that maternal mortality rates in Texas have increased since the fall of Roe in 2022. According to that story, “From 2019 to 2022, the rate of maternal mortality cases in Texas rose by 56%, compared with just 11% nationwide during the same time period, according to an analysis by the Gender Equity Policy Institute. The nonprofit research group scoured publicly available reports from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and shared the analysis exclusively with NBC News.”
However, analysis from Professor Michael New found this was wrong. According to his analysis, “During the year with the strongest pro-life protections in place, the Texas maternal mortality rate actually *fell* by about 30%. Any reported increase between 2019 and 2021 could have been due to COVID-19 or other factors.” New continued. “A state task force that reviewed individual death certificates found many of the pregnancy related deaths were miscounted. Overall, the Texas maternal mortality rate in 2012 was more than 61% *lower* what was reported in the Obstetrics and Gynecology article.”
Additionally, in his article in the National Review, New takes the origin of the data to task, saying, “first, the Gender Equity Policy Institute has not released its full report and has only released a very limited amount of data. Additionally, the Gender Equity Policy Institute has no previous background either collecting or analyzing maternal-mortality data from Texas or elsewhere.”
This reality is supported by the news reports’ own data and graphics.
SFLAction will continue to monitor the pro-abortion industry’s misinformation in the 2024 election and correct the record when possible.