Abortion

Last month, I wrote about Adriana Smith, the pregnant young mother who tragically experienced blood clots in the brain and was declared dead by neurological criteria. Adriana’s body was maintained with mechanical support to allow her baby to be gestated. I thought that was the right decision. Here is how I analyzed the situation in my post: That column was quite controversial — something new for me (eye roll) — and I received many angry responses (as well as expressions of support). Most of my critics claimed that it was somehow undignified to force a dead woman to gestate a baby. I heard the trite Handmaid’s Tale trope more than once. Well, time has passed, and thankfully Adriana’s baby was Read More ›

What a tragedy. A Georgia woman named Adriana Smith was two months pregnant when she suffered blood clots to the brain and was later declared deceased by neurological criteria, i.e., “brain dead.” Under the law, that means Adriana’s body is a cadaver. The medical team has kept her body functioning so that her baby can continue to gestate. The baby is now at 21-weeks gestation, which is close to viability. (Whether a true corpse can gestate for months is a different question that I won’t address here.) From the AP story: Smith’s family says Emory doctors have told them they are not allowed to stop or remove the devices that are keeping her breathing because state law bans abortion after cardiac activity Read More ›

Taking abortion pills can lead to dangerous side effects, perhaps even death. Which is why the process of chemical abortion — called “medical” by pro-abortion advocates — is supposed to occur only under the guidance of a doctor. Indeed, post-Dobbs, women died because of improperly supervised chemical abortions, wrongly blamed by the media and pro-abortion advocates on pro-life laws.

But the medical establishment is so invested in unlimited abortion that JAMA Internal Medicine just published an advocacy article calling for the two drugs used in chemical abortions to be available over the counter:

A growing body of evidence indicates that mifepristone and misoprostol meet the FDA’s criteria for OTC sale. The medications are not addictive, and the user determines on their own whether they have the condition needing treatment, in this case an unwanted pregnancy. The criteria that the FDA is likely to focus on are whether the user can appropriately self-select for use and whether they can use the product correctly over time, often referred to as actual use.

Regarding the former, research indicates that people can accurately self-assess their gestational duration and other eligibility criteria for medication abortion. In the event someone uses the regimen significantly past 10 weeks of pregnancy (for example, after 12 weeks’ gestation), it is less likely to be effective, but it is unlikely to cause serious medical complications for the pregnant person. For the question about actual use, even with facility-based medication abortion, patients generally take the medications on their own at home, manage adverse events, and determine when they need follow-up care. [Citations omitted.]

Back in the 1990s, noting the success of abortion rights advocacy in the federal courts, the assisted-suicide movement moved to circumvent the democratic process by convincing the United States Supreme Court to impose an assisted suicide Roe v. Wade: a decision that would establish doctor-prescribed or administered death as a national constitutional right. The assisted suicide advocates succeeded in obtaining two Supreme Court hearings. However, in a delicious irony, not only did their cases fail abysmally, but the precedent the Supreme Court established in one of the cases would years later become the hammer that shattered the constitutional right to abortion. The Attempt to Declare Washington’s Law Banning Assisted Suicide Unconstitutional In 1994, the assisted suicide advocacy group Compassion in Dying (now merged Read More ›