Dear ProLife Colleague, Another political candidate has put his head in a meat grinder with a statement about abortion. Republican Rep. Joe Walsh (Ill.) said Thursday that abortions are “absolutely” never necessary to save the lives of pregnant women. “With modern technology and science, you can’t find one instance,” Walsh said. “There is no such exception as life of the mother, and as far as health of the mother, same thing.” The comment was first reported by WGN radio. It came after a debate between Walsh, a House freshman, and his opponent, Democrat Tammy Duckworth, an Iraq War veteran. So reported THE HILL’S Healthcare Blog “Healthwatch.” (Oct 19). The difficulty stems from the understanding of the word abortion. In benign language, a “spontaneous abortion” is a “miscarriage,” the spontaneous loss of a pregnancy. In common parlance, “abortion” generally refers to an “induced abortion,” the purposeful termination of an otherwise progressing pregnancy, that is, the purposeful killing of the unborn child in the termination of the pregnancy. AAPLOG believes in “treatment to save the life of the mother.” This is NOT “abortion to save the life of the mother.” We do not believe the purposeful killing of the unborn child is ever necessary to save the life of the mother. But it is , rarely, necessary to end the pregnancy in the course of treatment to save the mother’s life. In this kind of case, we would be trying to save the life of both our patients—the mother and the premature child. And we acknowledge that in some cases, the child would be too premature to have any chance for survival. Both doctors and families sometimes face such painful choices and decisions. For the AAPLOG statement, go to: https://www.aaplog.org/position-and-papers/abortion-to-save-the-life-of-the-mother/ In our letter of Oct 8, we reported on the Dublin Declaration on Maternal Mortality. https://www.aaplog.org/get-involved/letters-to-members/dublin-declaration/ This Declaration deals with the pressure on Ireland to adopt more permissive abortion standards in that country. The Dublin Declaration is identical to the AAPLOG statement, albeit using slightly different language to describe their stance. The Dublin Declaration says: “As experienced practitioners and researchers in Obstetrics and Gynaecology, we affirm that direct abortion – the purposeful destruction of the unborn in the termination of pregnancy – 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 of optimal care to a pregnant woman” The AAPLOG Director of Research and Public Policy, Dr. Donna Harrison, was interviewed by CNN today on the statement by Congressman Joe Walsh. She basically made the points above.
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