CLAIM:
Women are dying because they’re being refused the medical care they need. So, it’s okay if a woman dies?

REBUTTAL:
It is never OK for a life to be lost. It should trouble us all. It is difficult to imagine why medical staff would refuse care for someone who needed it to save their life. Most reasonable people agree with these points. These positions have strong Christian support (Proverbs 31:8-9; Luke 10:25-37; Romans 12:9-10; Galatians 3:26-29).

You raised this issue, however, within the context of arguing against abortion restrictions. You have equated abortion restrictions with women losing their lives. It is an illogical connection that needs clarification.

First, abortion restrictions have come into focus because of the June 2022 Dobbs Supreme Court decision, which returned the matter of abortion rights to each state for adjudication. Dobbs did not outlaw abortion anywhere. Instead, it returned the right to govern abortion to each state and U.S. territory, as it had been since the founding of the country up to the 1973 Roe Supreme Court decision.

Second, there is not a single state or U.S. territory that would prohibit abortion if it were necessary to preserve a woman’s life. Every state and territory permits abortion to save the life of the mother.

Therefore, in cases where a woman has wanted an abortion to protect her life in a state that is restrictive on abortion, and she cannot get one, one or more of the following is going on:

1. Her medical condition is not as dire as she claims.
2. She is dealing with medical professionals who are ignorant of her legal right to an abortion to preserve her own life.
3. She is dealing with medical professionals who know the law but prefer not to be involved with any abortion for any reason.

The problem is not with any law that protects unborn life within that state or region but with how people are using or abusing the circumstance.

Childbearing has never been 100% safe for mothers. Maternal mortality, even outside the abortion debate, remains a real issue in this country and around the world and is worthy of concern.

The abortion issue is often leveraged to highlight a problem with maternal mortality. When abortion became legal throughout the United States by a Supreme Court ruling, pro-life advocates surfaced stories of mothers who died as a result of the abortion procedure. Since the Dobbs ruling, abortion advocates now surface stories of mothers who have died because of difficulty obtaining an abortion to preserve their lives. In both instances, strictly speaking, the loss of life was tied to physiological and medical reasons and not because of the legal status of abortion. Using stories of deaths because of abortion law is polemical to make a case for or against abortion. The real issue rests with the integrity or honesty of the mother and those charged with her medical care. If the death of the mother is the result, the law has nothing to do with it. Someone made a mistake.

It is important to note that in every abortion, there is death. In 99+% of abortions, the death that often fails to make the headlines is the unborn child that was aborted. Once all sides acknowledge the intrinsic value of all human life, born and unborn, the sooner we can focus on improving medical education on the laws that do exist for the protection of the mother’s life and on efforts to fight all maternal mortality.