The Anti-Abortion Movement Wants to Replace Emergency Abortions With Riskier Procedures

Doctors in some states that have banned abortion are already increasingly performing C-sections instead of emergency abortions, even though C-sections are far riskier and more invasive.

By Kylie Cheung  |  July 23, 2024 | 5:30pm
Photo: Getty Images AbortionPolitics
The Anti-Abortion Movement Wants to Replace Emergency Abortions With Riskier Procedures

In June, the Supreme Court ruled that, for now, Idaho doctors can perform stabilizing emergency abortion care in Moyle v. U.S. However, the justices ultimately sent the case back to the U.S. 9th Circuit of Appeals, where litigation is ongoing. And now, as we await a new ruling, anti-abortion researchers are seemingly using this time to try and push back on the idea that emergency abortions are ever necessary.

In a new paper published this month in Medical Research Archives, these researchers—including James Studnicki and OB-GYN Dr. Ingrid Skop of the anti-abortion Charlotte Lozier Institute—claim that, in lieu of emergency abortions, doctors should perform c-sections, even though c-sections are far riskier and more invasive. These are the same researchers who submitted a since-retracted “study” pushing the lie that medication abortion is unsafe, cited in a different SCOTUS case this summer. 

If Skop’s name sounds familiar, she’s the same anti-abortion doctor (now serving on Texas’ maternal mortality committee) who recently said abortion bans shouldn’t offer rape exceptions, because nine and 10-year-old victims can safely give birth. On top of being a monstrous thing to say, it’s also medically inaccurate. Further, Skop and Studnicki’s “research” and policy recommendations, which falsely claim there’s no such thing as abortions out of “medical necessity,” are even cited in the far-right Heritage Foundation’s now-infamous Project 2025, which outlines a plan to impose a national abortion ban. That should probably tell you everything you need to know about their trustworthiness.

“[M]any physicians argue that it is almost never necessary to end the life of a child directly and intentionally by an abortion procedure,” Skop and Studnicki wrote in their new paper. “[W]hen a pregnancy endangering the life of the mother requires termination, a direct ‘dismemberment’ dilation and evacuation (D&E) abortion may be unnecessary, as delivery can usually be performed with a standard obstetric intervention such as labor induction or cesarean section (if indicated).”

When asked for comment about their policy recommendations, which are at odds with the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists’ position on emergency abortions and c-sections, Skop and Studnicki sent States Newsroom a “fact sheet” suggesting these two procedures are equally invasive. 

“I have a hard time even understanding this claim that a C-section is equally invasive and morbid to abortion procedure,” OB-GYN and complex family planning specialist Dr. Nisha Verma told the outlet. (Verma is also an ACOG fellow.) “That’s a major abdominal surgery. We are making a large incision in the abdomen, making incisions in the tissue below the skin, pulling apart the muscles, going into the abdominal cavity, the peritoneal cavity, cutting open the uterus and removing a pregnancy.” Verma called c-sections “far more complicated,” “dangerous,” and confusing than abortion—all for “the same end goal” to end a nonviable, unsafe pregnancy.

Verma continued, “If the patient wants to get pregnant again, after a D&E [dilation & evacuation abortion] procedure, they can start trying a month later, whereas after a c-section, you have to wait months to be able to safely start trying again without as much risk of your uterus rupturing in the next pregnancy.” C-sections also come with a greater risk of hemorrhaging, impaired future fertility, and other complications than abortion.

Per States Newsroom, several states that have banned abortion and threatened doctors in violation with prison time have already seen a rise in riskier, more complicated c-sections instead of emergency abortions to circumvent legal risk—at the expense of patient safety. In March, a report from Physicians for Human Rights, the Center for Reproductive Rights, Lift Louisiana, and Reproductive Health Impact, interviewed dozens of doctors in Louisiana (where the state’s abortion ban threatens abortion providers with up to 15 years in prison and $200,000 in fines) and found a sharp rise in c-sections over emergency abortions. One researcher told NPR she’d heard from a doctor who said they did this “to preserve the appearance of not doing an abortion.”

The consequences of this drastic shift in how pregnancy-related care is being rendered in states that have banned abortion are dire: “There are going to be deaths that didn’t have to happen. There are going to be severe complications that didn’t have to happen,” a doctor cautions in the report. A different report from 2017 found a correlation between more state-level abortion restrictions, leading to less available reproductive care broadly, and higher maternal mortality rates.

One doctor who was surveyed for the report called this practice “absolutely ludicrous,” explaining: “The least safe thing that we do, no matter if it’s early in pregnancy or full-term at your due date, is a c-section.” Another OB-GYN told NPR, “I want to emphasize that this is not what’s in the best interest of the patient. This is what’s in the best interest of… the physician in protecting themselves from criminal prosecution.”

 
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