In June 2022, when the US Supreme Court published its decision in Dobbs vs Jackson Women’s Health Center, misinformation and fear mongering about pregnant women’s access to emergency care spread quickly, uncritically and widely in the media. So I launched the Pro-Life Professional Insight project, hosted by Rehumanize International, to collect and publish stories from pro-life medical professionals, which illustrate how they protect, not threaten, women’s health. Click below to go to the project site.

Pro-Life Professional Insight Project

I have also written and spoken to clear away this misinformation in other venues:

Abortion Confusion Needs Greater Wisdom, Not More Abortion

The ethics and legality of elective abortion are completely different than that of treating pregnancy complications, even if elective abortion sometimes uses the same medical procedures as true medical treatment. Here is the difference: In an elective abortion, a doctor tries to end the life of a child for reasons that are social, not medical. By contrast, in the medical management of pregnancy, the doctor tries to resolve a pathological condition so that the mother can give birth to the child.

Future of pro-life movement depends on listening to women

Pro-lifers and pro-choicers both can miss the full experience of unexpected pregnancy and abortion and fail to see that post-abortive women are so much more than their singular decision to have an abortion. The stories I’ve heard make it ever more clear that what is really needed is support and love. Listening to women allows us to offer them hope, love and realistic alternatives to abortion through the plentiful pregnancy resource centers and maternity homes across the United States.

What Pro-Life Advocates Can Learn from Listening to Women’s Abortion Stories

If pro-life advocates wish to think deeply about the problem of abortion, they should also listen to the stories of women who have had them. Their stories are easy to find. Planned Parenthood websites post lots of them. There are projects like the 1 in 3 Campaign, but I have learned the most from a podcast called The Abortion Diary. 

I do not agree with the pro-choice goals of The Abortion Diary or the pro-choice views of nearly all the 170 women interviewed. But the project’s director and the women interviewed deserve a lot of credit for telling their stories with detail and honesty. After listening to their stories, I still think these women should not have ended the lives of their children. But I also see that their stories show a remarkable period of personal growth that began with the experience of unexpectedly becoming pregnant and having an abortion and continued by recognizing the problematic circumstances that led to that choice and by working to change their circumstances and themselves.  

Abortion Is, and Is Not, a Religious Issue

It is surprising to hear people say, as the The New York Times’ Elizabeth Dias reported, that the proposition “Life begins at conception” is a religious belief. No religious authority ever reasoned to the conclusion that life begins at conception based on divine revelation or any set of religious teachings. “Life begins at conception” is a scientific and philosophical conclusion and is hardly a religious belief. But to portray it so appears to counter the most serious objection that abortion advocates face. If “life begins at conception” were seen as a religious belief, then it could be dismissed as dependent upon religious authority and an inappropriate basis for civil law.

Podcast Episodes: The Voices of Pro-Life Medical Professionals

Episodes 21 & 22 on the Caring For Both podcast of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians & Gynecologists

I discuss the ethical distinction between elective abortion and emergency care, pro-life professionals’ stories from the project, and take-aways for pro-lifers from listening to women’s abortion stories.