Florida abortion law enters 21st century

From Reuters (a short article, so here it is in its entirety):

Florida Governor Rick Scott signed legislation on Friday barring late-term abortions in cases where doctors determine an unborn child could survive outside the womb, in a move critics say further chips away at abortion rights. 

The measure is among new limits on abortion pushed by Republicans in several states, some of which have prompted court challenges. 

Existing Florida law forbids abortion after 24 weeks' gestation, unless a woman's life or health is jeopardized by continued pregnancy.

The new law, effective next month, sets the no-abortion point at any stage of development when a doctor determines the fetus is viable.

Once fetal viability is attained, no abortion would be allowed under the new law unless two doctors certify in writing that termination is necessary to save the patient's life or to "avert a serious risk of substantial and irreversible physical impairment of a major bodily function ... other than a psychological condition."

The bill's sponsors argued modern medicine has made it possible to save infants far earlier than the third-trimester standard for pregnancy termination used by the U.S. Supreme Court in its 1973 ruling that legalized abortion nationwide.

Critics accused Scott and Republican legislative leaders of failing to respect women's rights.

"They don't think women should be able to control their own health care decisions," said Barbara DeVane, a Tallahassee lobbyist for the National Organization for Women (NOW).

DeVane said she did not know if NOW would take the issue to court in Florida, but predicted patients will challenge the law.

Let's start with what Reuters got right: the new Florida legislation does restrict abortion after viability. And the bill's sponsors do argue that advances in modern medicine created the need to update the law.

And now for what they got wrong.

First, Reuters failed to mention that the sponsors' argument is provably true. I am a Florida resident, and happened to be attending the University of Miami in 2007, when Amillia Rose Taylor was born just a short drive away from me:

She was just 21 weeks and 6 days. With proper medical care, she survived. If any state has reason to understand that viability is not a hard line set at 24 weeks, it's Florida. Frankly, I'm embarrassed that it took them this long to update the law.

Second, the trimester framework from Roe v. Wade is completely irrelevant and has been since 1992, when the Supreme Court decided Planned Parenthood v. Casey. In Casey, the Court got rid of arbitrary dividing lines based on trimester and replaced them with... an equally arbitrary dividing line based on viability. The Florida law is exactly what Casey explicitly permits. It's hardly the vanguard of protecting life.

So, third, it's a little misleading to lump this together with "new limits on abortion pushed by Republicans in several states, some of which have prompted court challenges." That makes it sound like this is legislation is somehow related to 20-week bans, which it isn't. 20-week bans are based on the emerging science of fetal pain, as well as the increased risks of abortion for the woman after that point; their proponents want the Supreme Court to reconsider Casey in light of these developments. But Florida is just tweaking its Casey-era law.

And fourth, this isn't exactly an error on Reuters' part, but I just want to comment on NOW's prediction that patients will challenge the law. That's hot air and DeVane knows it. Every major abortion case since Roe* has been brought, not by women, but by abortion businesses and/or their political allies (usually the Center for Reproductive Rights). That isn't going to change any time soon.

*Even Roe wasn't really brought by a patient. When pro-abortion attorney Sarah Weddington learned that Norma McCorvey (Jane Roe) had become pro-life, her reaction was that she should have "picked a different plaintiff." 

Court cites Roe v. Wade in support of compelled C-section

[Guest blogger Roni Cairns contributed to today's piece.]

One argument in favor of Roe v. Wade, and for the general argument that bodily autonomy trumps the right to life, is that pro-life logic would dictate in favor of forced cesarean sections. Many pro-lifers would of course disagree. It's true that in some scenarios a C-section is the safer course of action for the baby. But the mother who desires a vaginal birth if at all possible, or who wants a second opinion before submitting to a C-section, probably isn't deliberately trying to kill her kid. The right to life isn't the right to be free from any and all risks. (One of the leading causes of death in young children is vehicular accidents; it would be far safer for children if we walked everywhere instead of driving cars. But parents' reliance on automobiles is not a violation of the right to life.) We're really talking about a negative right, the right not to be murdered.

That said, one of our readers, Roni Cairns, stumbled upon a fascinating court case that sheds some light on the issue. In Jefferson v. Griffin Spalding County Hospital Authority, 274 S.E.2d 457 (Ga. 1981), hospital administrators sought to compel a C-section in a severe case of placenta previa. The cervix was completely covered by the placenta, so had the woman gone forward with a vaginal birth, the placenta would have had to detach from the wall of the uterus in order to deliver the child—causing the mother to hemorrhage, and depriving the child of oxygen well before complete dilation. Doctors provided the court with evidence that without a C-section, the child's chance of death was virtually 100%. The mother had only a 50-50 chance of survival herself.

Clearly this was a situation where a C-section was warranted. So why did the mother refuse in the first place? Because she was "of the view that the Lord has healed her body and that whatever happens to the child will be the Lord's will." (Notably, once a child is born, acting on such a belief can form the basis for a murder charge. And rightfully so.)

While acknowledging the general rule that people have the right to refuse medical treatment, and the right to exercise their religion, the court found an exception here. The child was 39 weeks along, viable, and obviously incapable of making an informed decision about religious matters. The court's decision was unanimous:

The Court finds that the State has an interest in the life of this unborn, living human being. The Court finds that the intrusion involved into the life of Jessie Mae Jefferson and her husband, John W. Jefferson, is outweighed by the duty of the State to protect a living, unborn human being from meeting his or her death before being given the opportunity to live.

Perhaps surprisingly, the opinion cited Roe v. Wade in support of its view:

A viable unborn child has the right under the U. S. Constitution to the protection of the State through such statutes prohibiting the arbitrary termination of the life of an unborn fetus. Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (93 S.C. 705, 732, 35 LE2d 147) (1973).

Roni speculates that the court was referring to this passage in Roe: "Although the results are divided, most of these courts have agreed that the right of privacy, however based, is broad enough to cover the abortion decision; that the right, nonetheless, is not absolute, and is subject to some limitations; and that, at some point, the state interests as to protection of health, medical standards, and prenatal life, become dominant. We agree with this approach."

Pro-life disagreement with Roe is really about when the interest in prenatal life becomes dominant. Radical abortion supporters would say never; only born life matters. But that position finds no support in the Supreme Court's seminal abortion rights case.

The Key to Avoiding Red Herrings

[Today's guest post by Clinton Wilcox is part of our paid blogging program.]

I'm currently reading through a book by John S. Feinberg on modernism and postmodernism*, and he made a claim in his book that I thought would be excellent to share. It's also a point that I've been raising in my presentations on abortion.

Feinberg tells us that, in a debate, there are two reasons that you need to clarify any issue at hand: 1) you need to think through the logic of the case presented, and 2) if you don't, the case that you are attacking may be only peripheral to the topic at hand. Many people skip the first reason and proceed right to the second. An example of this would be a conservative Christian who tries to argue against evolution by throwing out arguments for the existence of God. But that's only a peripheral issue in the debate, because even if God exists, the theory of evolution could still be correct. The Christian may be thinking that God's existence would disprove evolution, because if God exists, there's no need for a naturalistic explanation of the origins of life. But the Christian isn't making the case he thinks he is, and is completely failing to address the actual arguments for evolution.

The abortion debate is similar. In order to adequately argue your pro-life or pro-choice case, you have to present a positive case (that is, a case that supports your position) and possibly a negative case (that is, a case that responds to your opponent's arguments). Good pro-life arguments support the biological humanity and philosophical personhood of the unborn child. Good pro-choice arguments argue that the unborn are not persons or that a woman should not be legally compelled to refrain from killing the unborn child. When we keep this in mind, it's easy to see how many arguments are really about peripheral issues and don't even respond to the case presented. These are side issues; they may be affected by the issue at large, but by making a point on a peripheral issue, you do not move any closer to refuting the core argument.

Let's take the pro-life position first. If a pro-life person makes an argument that the unborn are fully human and fully persons, then arguments about difficult situations, such as poverty, or from personal rights, like the right to choose or privacy, are not an adequate argument for the pro-choice position. If pro-life people are right, and the unborn really are full human persons, then poverty would not justify killing them (as it would not justify killing a human child outside the womb), nor would the "right to choose" or right to privacy. Conversely, if the pro-choice position succeeds, and the unborn either are not persons or do not have the legal right to remain dependent on the mother, then a woman can have an abortion for any reason, whether or not we find it indecent (which is, incidentally, a point that Thomson made in her essay A Defense of Abortion, source of the famous violinist thought experiment). If a pro-choice person is going to respond to a pro-life argument, they must directly attack the case that the unborn are biologically human and philosophically persons and show how they are not, in fact, human or persons.

Now let's take the pro-choice position. If a pro-choice person makes an argument that the unborn are not persons or that a human embryo or fetus does not have the right to remain "plugged into" a woman against her will, then arguments about how abortions hurt women or about how women could make an adoption plan for the child instead of aborting are not responsive points. If the unborn really are not persons or do not have the right to remain "plugged in," then a woman should logically be allowed to have an abortion for any reason: even if that reason is to avoid the emotional pain of bonding with the child and then having the child be raised by someone else. Also, all surgeries carry an element of risk, so if there is nothing morally wrong with killing the unborn child, the fact that it hurts some women is not a response to the pro-choice argument.

Bearing this in mind will hopefully avoid frustrations in the pro-choice person, who may feel as if they're not being listened to because the pro-life person is responding to a peripheral argument, but not directly addressing the argument being presented. In our attempt to have good, intelligent discussions on the abortion issue, we need to keep in mind what our arguments for the pro-life position are, what the arguments for the pro-choice position are, and how to adequately respond to those arguments.

*The book I'm reading through is Can You Believe it's True? Christian Apologetics in a Modern & Postmodern Era, but the principle that I'm espousing in this article is one that anyone, religious or non-religious, can benefit from.

"People of Choice" website highlights the bad, the worse, and the ugly

Recently, Life Dynamics launched a new website called People of Choice. Inspired by People of Wal-Mart, it highlights abortion advocates displaying hatred of children, ignorance of human anatomy, extreme selfishness, racism, and other unflattering traits.

"Abortion is not murder. it is a medical procedure to remove unnecessary piece
of meat. what if it is born and becomes a freak, for example gay."
Just lovely.

If you've been at this for as long as I have, you've surely encountered some of these types before. Dealing with, say, men who are obviously pro-choice for self-interested reasons (but remember, it's all about "women's rights") gets tiring. Humor is a good way for us to stay sane. If the goal were to boost pro-life morale, I'd say job well done.

But an email announcing the project indicates that People of Choice is actually meant for people who are undecided:

Years ago there was an article published about the abortion issue and one of the questions they asked was "forgetting the abortion issue for a moment, what is your perception of the two sides?" They said that the most common response that they got was exhibited by this one guy who said, "Look, I don’t really know what I think, I listen to one side and I think they are right. I listen to the other side the next day and I think – no – they’re right. I go back and forth. But what I do know is, I think I like the pro-choice people better than I like the pro-life people." And, that’s a major issue and you cannot discount that. ...

There’s an old saying in marketing that people do not buy products from people they do not like. The pro-aborts, working with their stooges in the media, have been very good at painting a perception of the pro-life movement. They’ve painted this picture of pro-lifers that is very unflattering, and yet, we know there’s all this stuff out there showing what the pro-aborts are really like. And, the media never puts that out there, never says a word about any of that stuff. What we are going to do with this People of Choice website is show the American public what they’ve never been shown before. This is what they’ve never known. These are the kind of people we have to go up against. I think it’s going to change things. We’ve already seen that the pro-aborts are already getting very incensed about it. They don’t want this stuff out there.

I'm not sure how I feel about this. On the one hand, I have no problem with hanging people by their own words; ClinicQuotes does this very effectively, quoting abortionists and industry workers who freely admit to horrific things. People of Choice is much snarkier than ClinicQuotes... but I've been snarky on occasion, too.

On the other hand, the site just rubs me the wrong way. It's very negative, and that negativity may turn undecideds off. Pro-choicers who are more reasonable than those featured on People of Choice will dismiss the whole thing as a giant ad hominem attack (and in the process, feel persecuted and become even more entrenched in their position).

Changing the negative perceptions of pro-lifers is important, but it could be accomplished by a more positive site – for instance, showcasing inspiring stories of pro-lifers adopting children with disabilities, opening their homes to pregnant teens, etc. On the other hand, would that be as effective? There's a reason political candidates go negative: it works. (And of course, the other side went negative long ago.)

It seems that, like Tevye, I've run out of hands. So I ask you: what do you think about People of Choice?

Birth isn't the beginning of life, so let's stop talking like it is

[Today's guest blog post by Alexa Gospodinoff is part of our paid blogging program.]

I think most pro-lifers would agree that if one were to examine our current scientific knowledge of the human life cycle from an unbiased perspective, without any cultural baggage, one would immediately see that a human life biologically begins at fertilization and quickly conclude that all human beings are equally worthy of the right to life regardless of level of development. But it's clear that that's not the way most people think. Secular Pro-Life has touched on both obvious and subtle anti-preborn phrases in our language before, and to a large extent those are the kinds of things I'm talking about. But even expressions that only imply birth-as-beginning-of-life—like "born this way, "a born leader," and "a sucker born every minute"—add up to ensure that without critical thought, people will instead perceive birth as the beginning of life. And the consequences for preborn children are very real.

To me, it's obvious that discrimination based on birth originates from the fact that birth is when we become visible to born people. It's a sad but true universal fact that if the dominant, privileged group is not visually exposed to members of a vulnerable population, the culture at large will not consider the needs of that vulnerable population, nor will its members be treated as fully human. A born person is not necessarily more developed, more capable of rational thought, more viable, or even actually older than a person before birth. It is instead through the literal invisibility of preborn children throughout most of human history that birth has become an acceptable criterion for discrimination.

Almost every pro-abortion argument either is explicitly predicated on the idea that human life begins at birth, or depends on its audience to consciously or subconsciously discriminate against preborn persons. That's how someone can conclude that banning abortion is a more intolerable violation of bodily rights than tearing off someone's limbs. While it's true that some people do nominally or actually reject birth as the beginning of human life and yet consider themselves pro-choice, as an industry and an ideology, abortion would quickly wither and die without societal discrimination based on birth status.

Consider this: despite what certain pundits might have you believe, few women, no matter how poor, scared, or desperate, would agree to have the life of a born human ended in order to escape their circumstances. If every person who self-identifies as "pro-life" or "personally pro-life" were to immediately stop using phrases which contribute to preborn erasure and discrimination based on birth status, and start calling out others when they hear that kind of language, we could make an enormous difference in the number of children who are aborted without passing a single law or winning a single debate. (The laws would follow. The debates would follow.)

In fact, I think it's more important to avoid preborn erasure outside the context of abortion. So it's heartening to me to read people's thoughts about avoiding birth discrimination in language, although it's frustrating when dehumanization and erasure are described as "poisoning the debate." Imagine if we denounced the practice of referring to women as "bitches" and "sluts" as "poisoning the equal pay debate". No matter what the topic of conversation, preborn children deserve to be recognized as human beings for their own sake.

In short, I think a big part of "winning the abortion debate" doesn't involve debating at all. The next time you hear the word "born" or "birth," consider whether it's perpetuating that utterly false dividing line between preborn and born.

Tomorrow: response to the #AbortStigma tweetfest

[Editor's Note: If you have had an abortion and are dealing with the psychological aftermath, please visit AbortionChangesYou.com for free, non-judgmental peer support through this difficult time. If you are experiencing the desire to harm yourself, skip the website and call 911 or 1-800-SUICIDE immediately.]

Tomorrow, abortion advocates plan to flood twitter with an #AbortStigma hashtag, which is exactly what it sounds like. The originators of the hashtag claim that post-abortive women have been "silent," and that they want to "discard the horrors pro-lifers have painted in our absence." The reality, of course, is that the pro-life movement has not silenced post-abortive women, but has amplified their voices; abortion advocates just don't like what these most vocal women have to say (although the official website does concede that regret is at least possible).

More activists are hopping on the bandwagon and intend to use the hashtag to advance the opinion that no one should ever express disapproval of abortion. That's a pretty extreme view, one that I don't think is even shared by most pro-choicers. But it's out there, and pro-lifers naturally plan to chime in with the very legitimate reasons abortion is stigmatized. Abortion isn't just one choice among many; it's a choice that kills someone. Which, of course, is why many post-abortive people experience guilt and regret. "Destigmatizing" abortion by treating it as just another medical procedure belittles the very reasons women "suffer in quiet solitude."

So that's that. But allow me to suggest a secondary theme in the #AbortStigma discussion: we have a responsibility, as pro-lifers, to end the stigma of young and unwed parenthood. Although acceptance is growing for unmarried cohabitation and non-traditional family structures, many pregnancies remain subject to near-instant condemnation. Sixteen? Struggling with substance abuse? In college? "Don't ruin your life with a baby."

I'd be remiss if I didn't point out the role that religion plays in this. Some religious schools have a policy of kicking out students, and even teachers, who become pregnant outside of marriage. I can't think of a better way to perpetuate abortion. If people of faith are reading, I urge you to work within your communities to fix this.

To break down the stigma that really needs breaking down, I asked SPL member Michelle Rodriguez to contribute her thoughts. Here's what she has to say:

When I conceived my oldest at fifteen, I had a very vague idea as to how I would be treated once my uterus expanded to reveal my secret. I had the notion that if I just reassured the skeptics that my future would be fine, they would take their negativity elsewhere. Some people however, were determined to convince me otherwise.  

My parents didn't take the news lightly. One of the first things that they exclaimed was, "What will our friends and family think?!" Their disappointment shifted when they came up with the "solution." They said that no one should know of my pregnancy, and that I WILL have an abortion. "We'll pretend that nothing happened and go on with our lives," my mom said happily. I was shocked that they valued the family's reputation more than my daughter's life. 

It's not just my parents that think that way. When I talk to abortion minded girls they often mention being afraid of the rejection, the stares, and the comments. If they're in a private school they fear getting expelled. If they are close with their friends they imagine getting isolated and forgotten. Nobody wants that, yet somehow society manages to justify the stigma by saying that it keeps teenage pregnancy down. This is a myth, considering the fact that the majority of these pregnancies are unplanned, often unwanted. 

Last year the Bloomberg administration released an ineffective campaign where they used shame approaches as a strategy to reduce teenage pregnancy in NYC. The posters depicted minority children crying saying things like, "Honestly Mom, he won't stay with you. What happens to me?" and a texting game in which the protagonist (a pregnant teen) goes to prom just to get called a fat loser. What would a pregnant girl contemplating abortion think when she sees such ads? That she has nothing but misery and failure to look forward to? We need to build our girls up, not tear them down.

Why Abortion Regulation Matters

[Today's guest post is by Maria Tsikalas.]

News organizations from Al Jazeera America to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel were in full force last week lamenting current and pending legislation in Louisiana, Wisconsin and other states that would require admitting privileges at nearby hospitals for abortion providers.

The New York Times said:

The requirement that doctors have admitting privileges has emerged as a new tactic of the anti-abortion movement, which says it is intended to protect women’s health. But major medical groups have said that the rule has no bearing on safety since, in the rare cases of emergency, hospitals will accept and treat women experiencing complications from abortion regardless.

The Times declined to raise any specific cases whatsoever where admitting privileges for abortion clinics might have actually saved women’s lives. Allow me.

Maria Santiago went into cardiac arrest and died in February 2013 in a Baltimore clinic following her abortion. The staff at the facility did not provide correct post-anesthesia care and observation. No one at the clinic, including the abortion provider, had current CPR certification, and the defibrillator in the clinic was broken. The Maryland Office of Health Care Quality determined that the facility “was not equipped to complete a procedure safely [and] failed to implement a safe discharge plan for the patient. … The Respondent practiced in an environment in which unlicensed/untrained office staff were allowed to perform ultrasounds, evaluate fetal gestational age, and provide medications to patients to promote abortions.”

In that same month, in the same state, Jennifer Morbelli died following her abortion at Germantown Reproductive Health Services. The fly-by-night abortionist responsible for her procedure, Leroy Carhart, had left the clinic immediately following her visit. In the hours following, Morbelli’s family tried to reach him for emergency instructions to no avail. They then took her to a nearby hospital, where emergency room staff also tried to contact Carhart and the clinic staff without success, leaving “hospital physicians in the dark about her condition and prior medical treatment, causing a delay in providing the care she needed,” according to Operation Rescue. The Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene found in their inspection following the incident that “the staff were not trained on the emergency transfer of a patient to the hospital from the facility,” nor did the facility have any policies in place to ensure such training.

Tonya Reaves hemorrhaged to death at a Planned Parenthood in Chicago in 2012. She underwent four abortion procedures in one day and bled internally for between 9 and 11 hours. The abortionist in question, Mandy Gittler, who has no certification from any organization in obstetrics and gynecology, initially blamed the incident on Reaves probably having a deformed uterus (despite the fact that Reaves had had an abortion at Planned Parenthood two years before with no complications). Gittler neglected to tell the hospital staff that she might have accidentally perforated the uterus during the abortion, which she admitted to having known as a possibility. Uterine perforation in two places turned out to be the cause of death. Following the abortion, Gittler never even looked at the autopsy report; she was apparently uninterested in what had happened under her watch and indifferent to ensuring that she did not repeat the fatal mistake.

In all of these cases, one can reasonably conclude that had abortion doctors been quicker to involve hospitals following complications, these three women might still be alive. Does that mean, then, that admitting privileges are the solution? Not necessarily. But it does indicate that more oversight and regulations of some form are certainly warranted. After all, as the grand jury report in the infamous Kermit Gosnell case stated, “Even nail salons in Pennsylvania are monitored more closely for client safety.” And a New York Post article published in April reported that New York City’s tanning salons are inspected more often than its abortion clinics. More than 30 percent of the city’s abortion centers weren’t inspected even once over a 12-year period.

After the Sandy Hook massacre, President Obama immediately pushed for gun control legislation, proclaiming "If there's even one step we can take to save another child ... surely we have an obligation to try." But in the wake of the deaths of these women, and other tragic incidents at abortion centers across the United States, what is the response? Abortion-supporting politicians and lobbyist groups are remarkably silent about how to prevent even one more fatality. It's time for them to surrender their "women's health" cards.

How many "bad apples" does it take before you finally treat the orchard?

Just a few notes about the above graphic (which I encourage you to share on facebook).

This is just a sampling of the abortionists and abortion facilities that are known to have endangered women, as evidenced by health code violations, repeated ambulance calls, and medical malpractice lawsuits.

The key word is "known," because in the absence of effective abortion regulation, abortionists can hide their malfeasance for years. Such was the case with Kermit Gosnell. He operated in Pennsylvania, where a pro-choice gubernatorial administration refused to enforce abortion laws. He was finally caught by accident, when the feds took an interest in his shady prescription painkiller side business. If only he'd quit while he was ahead and not expanded into drugs, he would have gotten away with murder.

Every time, inevitably, each and every one of these abortionists is dismissed as an "aberration." But those aberrations add up quickly. There are fewer than 1,000 active abortionists in the United States. Think of it as a large group of bad apples in a relatively small barrel. Fifty or a hundred substandard abortionists is much more significant than, say, fifty or a hundred substandard dentists.

More information on the listed names and others can be found at abortionsafety.com (an SPL project) and abortiondocs.org (an Operation Rescue project), both of which link to primary sources. For more on abortion regulations, visit Americans United for Life.

Abortion and maternal mortality: correlation is not causation

I recently discovered an awesome website called Spurious Correlations. It uses hilarious graphs to illustrate the long-understood but frequently ignored truth that correlation is not causation.

"Number of people who died by becoming tangled in their bedsheets"
and "Total revenue generated by skiing facilities (US)."
Clearly the ski resort industry has blood on its hands.

Sometimes these correlations are purely accidental, as in the above case. Other times, there might be a confounding factor at play. For instance, I would imagine that "Total revenue generated by arcades" and "Computer science doctorates awarded" are both tied to the tech boom in general, which improves video game quality and increases the demand for skilled computer scientists. (But I'd need more data to prove it.)

I really hope this site takes off, because the public's failure to understand that correlation is not causation can have catastrophic effects.

One of the pillars of the abortion movement is the idea that legalized abortion prevents maternal deaths. They can point to improved maternal mortality rates after the legalization of abortion in the United States and elsewhere. Post hoc ergo propter hoc.

But there are two major problems with that theory. The first is that the numbers themselves are often either wrong or manipulated. Dr. Bernard Nathanson, the co-founder of NARAL, admitted to using inflated figures and noted that "repeating the big lie often enough convinces the public," which is unfortunately true.

The second problem is the spurious correlation problem. The movement for the legalization of abortion happened to coincide with medical breakthroughs that dramatically improved Americans' health in general, and in particular, allowed doctors to manage infection, hemorrhage, and other issues that may appear as complications of abortion. It also coincided, in the developing world, with independent foreign aid focused on maternal health issues, such as the provision of midwives.

Untangling all these influences requires serious effort, and when the spurious correlation happens to support your current ideology, there is no incentive to undertake that research. But in 2012—sadly, several decades too late to combat the big lie effectively—researchers published the results of an in-depth study of maternal mortality in Chile, which restored the right to life in 1989. It found that the anti-abortion law did not lead to an increase in women's deaths; in fact, just the opposite happened. The authors concluded that if a country wants to reduce maternal mortality, it should invest in education, not abortion.

The misapprehension of maternal mortality has grave consequences. Not only are unborn lives lost, but the diversion of money to the ideological goals of the abortion industry reduces the funds available for the desperate, real needs of impoverished people.

Two inspiring lives

Numerous pro-life groups commented on Maya Angelou's passing last week. Most emphasized her courage in rejecting abortion when she became pregnant at the age of 16. But the Radiance Foundation pointed out that Angelou did not speak out for other children to have the same chance at life. In fact, she fundraised for Planned Parenthood, the nation's largest abortion organization.

Secular Pro-Life stayed silent; we generally don't comment on celebrity deaths. That said, I agree with the Radiance Foundation that it's inappropriate to "claim" Angelou for the pro-life movement.

At the same time, I kind of understand the impulse of pro-life groups who assumed, or wanted to believe, that Angelou was pro-life. A woman grows up in poverty in the Jim Crow South, chooses life for her child under dire circumstances, and later becomes a celebrated author, civil rights activist, and household name. Who wouldn't find that inspiring?

So let's remember Angelou for her many accomplishments. But if you're looking for someone who made a contribution to the civil rights movement and the pro-life movement, you don't need to twist the facts to invent one in Angelou. The woman you're looking for is Dr. Mildred Jefferson.

Jefferson (1926-2010) grew up in Texas. She was the first black woman to graduate from Harvard Medical School—in 1951, when her home state remained segregated by law. She then became a surgeon.

But when the abortion movement emerged, Dr. Jefferson devoted her time and effort to opposing it. Two years after Roe, she took office as the president of the National Right to Life Committee, and held that position for three terms. After that, she continued her involvement in the pro-life movement, helping NRLC form its political action committee and working to elect pro-life political candidates regardless of party.

Dr. Jefferson connected her personal struggles to larger principles of social justice. In her own words: "I am at once a physician, a citizen and a woman, and I am not willing to stand aside and allow this concept of expendable human lives to turn this great land of ours into just another exclusive reservation where only the perfect, the privileged and the planned have the right to live."