On October 22, a coalition of medical professionals and organizations launched the Women’s Healthcare Declaration, a statement supporting life-affirming healthcare that protects and promotes the health and dignity of both pregnant women and their preborn children, as well as calling for accurate information for women and the public about prolife state laws.
In a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, three physicians and one attorney explained why this declaration is so crucial.
AAPLOG CEO Dr. Christina Francis said the following in her remarks at the press conference:
The only people’s practices who needed to change in states with prolife laws were those providing elective induced abortions. Intentionally ending the life of our fetal patients is not healthcare. Pregnancy is not a disease. Physicians across the country know this to be true and practice accordingly. This is why we joined with 11 other organizations on this declaration – the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, the American Academy of Medical Ethics, the American Association of Christian Counselors, The American College of Family Medicine, the American College of Pediatricians, the Christian Medical and Dental Associations, the Catholic Medical Association, the North Carolina Physicians for Freedom, the Catholic Healthcare Leadership Alliance, Christ Medicus Foundation and the Guiding Star Project.
South Carolina emergency physician, and AAPLOG member, Dr. Cortney Draper echoed Dr. Francis’s sentiments in her remarks, stating,
There are those who are spreading deceptive and inaccurate information… They claim that without a highly permissive approach to induced abortion, it is impossible for physicians to treat women facing serious or even life-threatening pregnancy complications. Nothing could be further from the truth. Every life-affirming physician is prepared to intervene to save the life of their pregnant patient, including situations that require separating mom and baby when we face a choice between saving mom but losing baby and losing both… State laws recognize this in a variety of ways, allowing physicians to treat patients facing miscarriages, ectopic pregnancies, and all other medical emergencies.
In her remarks, Michigan neonatologist Dr. Robin Pierucci, chair of the prolife committee of the American College of Pediatricians, emphasized the importance of the healthcare system recognizing the dignity of preborn children with life-limiting diagnoses, sharing the stories of multiple families of children with prenatal diagnoses.
Prenatal diagnoses do not adequately describe postnatal prognosis— we do not know until after birth exactly how a baby will or will not be affected by what has been diagnosed. Even when we suspect that there are serious limits to what we can medically offer, it remains our duty to care and not prematurely abandon a little one, or their mother, or family. And I have never met a mother who regretted meeting her baby, no matter what the diagnosis.
If you haven’t read the full declaration or signed it yet, you can do so at WomensHealthMatters.org.
