If abortion is ‘essential health care’ why are less than 10% of OB-GYNs performing them?

The most recent survey of practicing OB-GYNs shows “only 7 percent of physicians focused on women’s health care performed abortions.”

So says Christina Francis, M.D., CEO of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG), who spoke to The Lion about the problematic claims often made in favor of abortion.

“If induced abortions truly were good for our patients and ‘essential health care,’ as is so often claimed by abortion proponents, why would only 7% of practicing obstetricians perform them?” Francis asked, citing the 2018 survey published in the journal Contraception.

“Perhaps it is, at least in part, because the other 93% know (as do our more than 7,000 members) that induced abortion is not health care, solves no medical problems, and, in fact, often worsens outcomes for our maternal patients,” said the board-certified OB-GYN.

Francis reminded as well that “induced abortion has one intended outcome – the death of my fetal patient. This is not my definition, it’s the CDC’s.”

“Women face significant challenges in maternity care in this country right now – they deserve truly excellent healthcare both for their sake and that of their current and future children,” she added.

Francis’ colleague, Donna Harrison, M.D., who served as AAPLOG CEO for 10 years prior to becoming the organization’s director of research, placed the survey results in context during a recent interview.  

“So, when our professional society – the American College of OB-GYNs (ACOG) – comes out with its rabid, insane pro-abortion statements, they do not represent most OB-GYNs,” Harrison told internist and cardiologist Peter McCullough, M.D., for his Courageous Discourse Substack’s “Profiles in Valor.”  

She further asserted that the major medical societies that have adopted a fierce pro-abortion stance have abandoned the Hippocratic Oath doctors traditionally take as they commit to “do no harm.” 

“Why are the societies, and even governmental bodies, why are they so pro-abortion?” asked McCullough. “Why does this become such a hot-button issue for them?” 

“I think there is a eugenic issue component to this, which can’t be denied,” she said. “That’s where the money comes from. And, so, I’m old enough to know that you follow the money. And what we have is funders of the abortion industry – funders like Bill Gates, like George Soros, those who are committed to seeing a reduction in population – they fund this and, unfortunately, I think our major medical society, American College of OB-GYN has fully bought into the eugenic argument, and they fully support killing human beings as an answer to social problems.” 

Harrison explained abortions are also “a very lucrative thing to do.” 

“If you think about it, for a surgical abortion, you can charge, depending on the gestational age, anywhere from $500 to $2,000 for a 10-minute procedure,” she said. “Just think about that. Very little malpractice insurance. Patients almost never sue because they don’t want to be in front of a court.” 

The OB-GYN noted that women and girls who obtain telemedicine drug-induced abortions don’t even have an ultrasound beforehand. 

“And there’s also a couple other dangers,” she added. “One is how in the world can you screen for sex trafficking when all you see is someone on this side of the screen?” 

Harrison explained there is no way to know if someone else is in the room with a young woman seeking drugs to produce an at-home abortion. 

“You don’t see if someone is holding a gun to the head of this woman,” she observed. “And you don’t even know if the woman who’s talking to you is the one who’s gonna get the pill.” 

“Roughly one out of three to one out of four pregnancies” in the United States end in elective abortions – or about 1.3 million per year – Harrison said.  

“AAPLOG has spent the last 50 years looking at the effects of abortion on women, because we all know the effects on the human being in the womb,” she continued. “But what we’ve found is that abortion really hurts women, and it hurts them in multiple different ways, one of them being increased risk of preterm birth in subsequent pregnancies, and, also, adverse mental health outcomes, even for women who have unwanted unplanned pregnancies. 

“If you look at women who abort those unwanted unplanned pregnancies, versus women who give birth, those women who abort are at increased risk of suicide, drug abuse, and hospitalized for major depression. 

So what about the abortion industry’s claim that abortion must be available at every stage of pregnancy because of serious danger to the mother’s life or fetal anomalies?  

That is a fearmongering narrative, she says. 

“We’re not talking about separating a mom and a baby when the mom’s life is in danger,” Harrison explained. “Every OB-GYN does that. Pro-life OB-GYNs do that. Because when a mom’s life is in danger, and the baby is too young to survive outside, if you don’t separate her, you lose mom and baby. If you do separate, knowing that the baby will die, you can save the mom, and an example of this is an ectopic pregnancy.” 

The doctor also took aim at another popular myth, that miscarriages are abortions.  

“They’re not abortions,” she explained. “The difference between a miscarriage and an elective abortion is that in a miscarriage, the baby’s dead, and in an elective abortion, the baby’s not dead until the abortionist kills that baby.”