As a neonatologist, my views on abortion are not based on politics or on whatever the current talking head on television happens to be saying. My views on abortion are based on years of caring for premature infants as a doctor and director of a neonatal intensive care unit. From that unique perspective, I find that the deceptively named Women’s Health Protection Act is an extreme brand of politics that puts lives at risk by allowing elective abortion on demand until birth.
The premature people I care for as a neonatologist are not a theory. At the edge of viability, I can see how pain affects them. Even prior to viability, anesthesiologists now intentionally treat their pain during fetal surgery because evidence shows it improves the babies’ intraoperative and post-operative outcomes. Additionally, recent scientific literature reviews conclude that “unreflective pain” is present as early as 12 weeks gestation and likely even earlier. The Women’s Health Protection Act would enshrine late-term abortion at the same gestational ages of the babies I treat on a daily basis. Babies will feel the pain of these late-term abortions.
However, whether or not a person at any stage of life (fetus, baby, adolescent, or adult) can feel pain is not what determines their humanity or value. As Katie Shaw, a young woman with Down syndrome, explained so powerfully at this year’s March for Life, every human life is a wonderful thing, no matter the person’s capabilities or level of development.
It is this fact that led me to wrestle with the reality of abortion. An abortion immediately affects two lives (for the sake of space, I will hold off on discussing fathers and extended families). But our culture for 50 years has discarded and ignored the second life of the unborn child, and speaking honestly, I did not always recognize the intrinsic value of a newly conceived person. Growing up in a pro-choice family (whom I continue to love with all my heart), I did not understand until I became a physician, with an obligation to weigh the medical risks and benefits of every intervention, just what a dereliction of duty abortion is.
I now understand that zero abortion methods are without risk. Abortion is the opposite of the “easy solution” our culture promises. Women who have an undesired pregnancy absolutely need our attention, our compassion, and access to resources. But the pregnancy itself is not what is abnormal – the conditions surrounding the pregnancy are what needs treatment. And no matter how the term is defined, taking the life of a child is not healthcare. Neither the baby nor the woman deserves to suffer further injury due to an abortion; both deserve to be treated with medical excellence, empathy, and a promise to walk with them.
Abortion kills babies. It also kills some women, increasing women’s risks of maternal mortality and suicide, bleeding and infection, and poor mental health. It wounds everyone involved. As a mother, as a doctor, and as an American, it breaks my heart that Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, and President Biden – the leaders of our nation – have become so committed to the ideology of abortion that they now ignore the science of human prenatal development, fetal pain, and abortion dangers.
Every abortion causes direct harm – to the baby and also to the mother – meaning at its most fundamental level, the “Women’s Health Protection Act” is a lie. It provides care that is neither healthy, necessary, or protective. And this political theater doesn’t just pave the way for increased access to abortion; it actively dismantles common-sense laws that were put in place to protect women’s health, including informed consent, requirements that abortions be performed by licensed physicians, and that abortions be performed in safe, clean facilities.
I understand those who promote the Women’s Health Protection Act because I used to think just like them. I used to think abortion was no big deal and “my choice” was what mattered. But as a doctor, I cannot ignore the real lives involved in abortion. Given the science and data, and the abortion industry’s cover up of that science and data, and my obligation as a physician, daughter, sister, and mother to speak the truth, I changed. I followed the science.
Dr. Robin Pierucci, M.D., M.A., is an associate scholar at Charlotte Lozier Institute and chair of the American College of Pediatrics Pro-Life Committee. A clinical neonatologist, she serves as medical director of a 50-bed neonatal intensive care unit.