(LifeSiteNews) – Another former abortionist turned pro-life doctor is making the case that the most powerful argument for legal abortion, situations in which it is supposedly necessary to save the lives of pregnant women, is a “false flag operation” not rooted in medical fact.
Dr. John Bruchalski is the founder of the pro-life, faith-based medical practice Tepeyac OB/GYN and the nonprofit Divine Mercy Care. He “performed abortions believing he was helping women” during his medical training, but “[a]fter a spiritual awakening, he realized abortion was not achieving freedom, health, and happiness for women. Dr. Bruchalski stopped performing abortions, returned to the faith, and felt God’s call to start a medical practice that truly helped women.”
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Writing Tuesday at The Federalist, Bruchalski attests that for all the severe and life-threatening complications women can face during pregnancy, “intentional feticide is never necessary even in the worst-case scenarios,” and instead the “medical goal should be to care for both patients and to get them both as far along in the pregnancy as possible as long as the mom and baby are doing well.”
He cites the example of a “mother’s amniotic sac break[ing] prematurely at 14 weeks,” for which abortion may be presented as an option, but both patients can instead “be treated with antibiotics and close observation and even have a good chance of stabilization. If they make it to 22 weeks or more, the baby has a good chance of survival outside the womb.”
He grants that many circumstances may necessitate delivering a baby before he or she can survive outside the womb or indirectly end the baby’s life, such as chemotherapy or treatment of an ectopic pregnancy, but stresses that such treatments are not abortion; they do not entail direct, intentional violence on the child for the purpose of ending his or her life.
“These women are and have been thoroughly cared for and treated for their pregnancy complications before, during, and after Roe v. Wade,” Bruchalski says. “But abortion advocates want you to think these cases are compromised in post-Roe America and bundled up in the wrongly dubbed ‘rights’ they are fighting for, in order to keep the abortion-on-demand culture alive.”
In fact, he stresses, “[e]lective abortions become more dangerous the further along in pregnancy, and that’s when the majority of these health complications arise. Abortions after 24 weeks cause massive fluid shifts, which can push the mom into heart, lung, or kidney failure. If the mother’s life is in immediate danger, a C-section takes one hour. A direct abortion after 24 weeks can take two to three days. The argument cannot be made that an abortion is necessary because it is faster than delivery.”
Bruchalski quotes Dr. Byron Calhoun, a high-risk OB-GYN in West Virginia, who regularly handles such cases and agrees “it is never necessary to kill the baby to save the mother’s life.”
READ: Fake news about pro-life laws killing women helped defeat Kansas pro-life amendment
The doctor’s professional opinion echoes that of Dr. Anthony Levatino, who performed more than 1,200 abortions but left the industry and converted to the pro-life cause following the death of his daughter, and Dr. William Lile, an OB/GYN and pro-life public speaker who maintains the ProLifeDoc website.
The specter of women dying in childbirth due to being denied abortions is one of abortion activists’ most potent talking points, which has taken on special urgency for abortion activists now that Roe v. Wade is no longer in effect and states may directly prohibit the practice. They have successfully used such fears to help defeat some pro-life ballot initiatives, despite being unfounded not only medically, but as a matter of law.
Every state with pro-life laws currently on the books explicitly makes exceptions for medical treatment to save the life of a mother, regardless of whether that treatment is classified as abortion. Further, the vast majority of abortions have never been sought for medical reasons, but for social, career, or financial considerations.
View LifeSite’ regularly updated, state-by-state map of abortion laws here.