The American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists affirms the Dublin Declaration which states:
As experienced practitioners and researchers in Obstetrics and Gynecology, we affirm that direct abortion is not medically necessary to save the life of a woman. We uphold that there is a fundamental difference between abortion and necessary medical treatments that are carried out to save the life of the mother, even if such treatments results in the loss of life of her unborn child. We confirm that the prohibition of abortion does not affect, in any way, the availability of optimal care to pregnant women.
There is a night and day difference between induced abortion and separating a mother and her unborn child for the purposes of saving a mother’s life (preterm parturition). There are times when separating the mother and her unborn child is necessary to save the life of the mother, even if the unborn child is too premature to live. In those tragic cases, if possible the life of the baby will be attempted to be preserved, and if not possible, the body of the unborn child is treated with respect, recognizing the humanity of the life which is lost in the separation. In contrast, the purpose of an induced abortion is to produce a dead baby. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention defined legal induced abortion as an “intervention performed by a licensed clinician (e.g., a physician, nurse-midwife, nurse practitioner, or physician assistant) that is intended to terminate a suspected or known ongoing intrauterine pregnancy and produce a non-viable fetus at any gestational age.” That is what an abortionist is paid to do: to kill the unborn child before delivering it, or to kill the child during the delivery process, as is done with partial-birth abortion. So the focus of the abortion procedure is on killing the unborn child, and the purpose of the abortion is to produce a dead baby. Induced abortion, that is the deliberate killing of an unborn child prior to separating that child from the mother, is never necessary to save the life or preserve the health of any woman.