Twice-failed presidential candidate and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton tweeted an article Wednesday by Ilyse Hogue, the head of the abortion advocacy group NARAL, arguing that abortion restrictions will lead to women’s deaths.
“When anti-choice politicians limit access to reproductive care, women die,” Clinton tweeted.
She encouraged her followers to read the CNN article by Hogue, saying it explained “why we must continue to fight the new wave of six-week abortion bans that make women collateral damage for extremist views.”
When anti-choice politicians limit access to reproductive care, women die.
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) April 3, 2019
Please read @ilyseh on why we must continue to fight the new wave of six-week abortion bans that make women collateral damage for extremist views: https://t.co/6Hq32TB4Vl
Hogue’s article argues that heartbeat bills, which would ban abortion after about six weeks when the fetal heartbeat is detected, would “compound” the crisis of high maternal mortality rates.
She goes on to accuse Republicans of not caring about the maternal mortality crisis in Georgia, where Gov. Brian Kemp (R) has promised to sign the heartbeat bill, and throughout the nation.
“Instead of focusing on problems like maternal mortality, the GOP seems intent on pushing extreme bills like the one that just passed in Georgia,” she argued. “Kemp promised on the campaign trail that he would "sign the toughest abortion laws in the country" and all signs suggest he will sign HB 481 into law.”
However, Kemp also highlighted his solutions to the high maternal mortality rates on the campaign trail in November.
“We know that there is a direct correlation between access to maternal care and improved maternal health outcomes,” he said. “Our plan is to enhance and increase any and all provider loan forgiveness programs for OB/GYN providers in rural Georgia to increase the number of providers in areas where mothers have to travel hours to seek maternal care.”
While Hogue argues that abortion bans will increase the maternal mortality rate, she does not cite any data in her article to back that claim.
The ‘women will literally die due to abortion restrictions’ argument is popular in the abortion movement but has little factual backing establishing any correlation between the two.
Former Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards attempted to push the correlation between maternal mortality and abortion restrictions in January 2017. She cited a statistic arguing that maternal mortality doubled in Texas after the state cut funding to Planned Parenthood in 2011.
However, the statistics in Texas have been attributed to flawed data.
The fact-checking website Snopes.com took on that claim in August 2016, calling the correlation between maternal death and defunding Planned Parenthood “unproven.” They concluded that “researchers did not demonstrate a direct correlation between reproductive health laws in Texas and the maternal mortality rate.”
Amazingly, Hogue went on to imply, without evidence, that restrictions on abortion access are related to high infant mortality rates and bad infant care.
“Extreme abortion bans are being pushed in a handful of other states across the country. Mississippi, which has the highest infant mortality rate and the worst overall care for infants and kids in the country, just passed one of the most restrictive abortion laws in the country,” she wrote. “The actions of the modern-day GOP lay bare its truth: it is engaged in a coherent, consistent and intentional strategy aimed at the ultimate goal of criminalizing abortion and punishing women. And if the collateral damage happens to be the actual lives, health and well-being of women and families, so be it.”
As for the heartbeat bill in Georgia, Gov. Kemp has brushed aside a threatened boycott from Hollywood over the legislation.
“I can’t govern because I’m worried about what someone in Hollywood thinks about me,” Kemp told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “I ran the last two years on these issues, and I got elected with the largest number of votes in the history of the state of Georgia, and I’m doing what I told people I would do.”