Chris Lange, FISM News
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As part of its ongoing effort to lay the groundwork for challenges to state abortion bans, Planned Parenthood recently altered language on its website to blur the lines between ectopic pregnancies and abortion.
According to a report from The Hill, Planned Parenthood removed a sentence on its website that specifically distinguished the treatment for an ectopic pregnancy from abortion.
Following last month’s Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade, abortion advocates have asserted that abortion bans in some states would prevent women from getting life-saving medical treatment for ectopic pregnancies.
The pre-altered language on the website read: “Abortion is a medical procedure that when done safely, ends a pregnancy that’s in your uterus. Ectopic pregnancies are unsafely outside of your uterus (usually in the fallopian tubes), and are removed with a medicine called methotrexate or through a laparoscopic surgical procedure.”
The revision omits the language about abortion ending a pregnancy in the uterus and replaces it with nomenclature about the location of an embryo in the case of an ectopic pregnancy.
Another sentence that previously stated that “The medical procedures for abortions are not the same as the medical procedures for an ectopic pregnancy,” was altered to read: “The medical procedures for terminating a pregnancy in the uterus are usually different from the medical procedures for terminating an ectopic pregnancy.”
National Review writer Alexandra DeSanctis Marr called out Planned Parenthood over the revised language, suggesting that the country’s largest abortion provider is manipulating and misrepresenting medical facts in a deliberate attempt to promote misinformation for its own gain.
Until just last week, even the website of Planned Parenthood explicitly stated that ectopic-pregnancy treatment is not an abortion. But then the abortion business erased that clarifying information in an effort to perpetuate the tide of misinformation, intentionally blurring the lines between actual health care aimed at saving a mother’s life and abortion procedures, which intend to cause the death of an unborn child.
Planned Parenthood Vice President of Communications and Culture Adrienne Verrilli said the update was necessary to prevent information from being “twisted” by pro-life advocates in a statement cited in the Hill report.
Verrilli added that, while treatment for ectopic pregnancy “may differ from abortion care, many patients and health care providers fear potential civil and criminal penalties around the treatment of pregnancy outcomes — including but not limited to ectopic pregnancy — because of the egregious overturning of Roe v. Wade. As a result, patients experiencing an ectopic pregnancy may have life-saving treatment delayed or denied due to providers’ fears of facing legal or criminal repercussions.”
Democratic lawmakers have also made reference to ectopic pregnancies in their invectives against state abortion restrictions. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) recently said Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who concurred with the opinion overturning Roe, had “decided half the country should risk death if they have an ectopic pregnancy within the wrong state lines” in a tweet.