Anti-Abortion Proponents Are Trying To Redefine ‘Abortion’ To Suit Their Agenda

After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade, one might think that anti-abortion proponents could slow down or even pause their work to rob half the population of their basic human rights, but nope! This was only the beginning for them and the anti-abortion agenda continues, from introducing tons of new bills restricting and banning abortion access to already working to expand the ban to things like contraception and IVF.

One especially disturbing tactic that’s been on the rise is an attempt to redefine what “abortion” even means. We recently saw the President and CEO of Americans United for Life argue before Congress that a 10-year-old rape victim who recently had to travel out of state to receive an abortion didn’t actually get an abortion. She absolutely did, but this woman claimed that if the pregnancy was threatening her life, then that makes it an exception to state law, and if it’s an exception to the law, then it’s not actually an abortion—which, again, yes, it is.

That logic is absurd, but this argument is nothing new. In fact, this kind of language is even written into a number of state laws and statutes. Texas’ official state health and safety code, for instance, reads: “An act is not an abortion if the act is done with the intent to: (A)save the life or preserve the health of an unborn child; (B)remove a dead, unborn child whose death was caused by spontaneous abortion; or (C)remove an ectopic pregnancy.”

We’re seeing a major revival of this sort of argument, with claims that some abortions—those deemed nice and necessary enough to be tolerated by anti-abortion advocates—aren’t really abortions at all.

These semantic gymnastics are, unsurprisingly, being embraced by people who consider themselves “pro-life” and need to justify their own abortions. The New York Times ran an especially confounding op-ed recently with the abhorrent headline: “In a Post-Roe World, We Can Avoid Pitting Mothers Against Babies.” The author described the process of finding a doctor that would treat her with the sensitivity she desired while undergoing a necessary procedure to remove an ectopic pregnancy (when the fetus grows outside of the uterus)—which, by the way, is an abortion. While her reasons for getting an abortion might be different from another person’s, access to safe, legal, and compassionate medical care is what every person seeking an abortion for literally any reason deserves.

The medical processes a person undergoes to remove an ectopic pregnancy or a miscarriage, or in other life-threatening circumstances, are abortions. They’re the exact same procedures, the same medications. Calling them something else doesn’t change that, it’s simply an attempt to further disparage abortion, to convince people that abortion is not healthcare (which it very much is) by separating the same process into different categories. It’s also dangerous.

Ever since the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v Wade was leaked, we’ve been hearing claims that abortion bans will not affect people experiencing ectopic pregnancies and other life-threatening emergencies. Fox News recently went so far as to call warnings to the contrary “disinformation.”

Not every state even has the kind of exemptions we’ve been talking about here, but even in those that do, pregnant people who are experiencing life-threatening emergencies are very much being affected by this sudden ban on abortions. Because no matter what language is baked into these laws, that is still the procedure people in those situations need. We know that medical providers are delaying or refusing treatment because of the extreme confusion around what is and isn’t legal. This is also affecting people who aren’t even pregnant, as stories pile up of pharmacists refusing to fill prescriptions for medications that might be considered “abortifacients,” even if they were prescribed for completely unrelated, even life-saving reasons.

Trying to insist that some abortions aren’t actually abortions doesn’t help protect anyone, it just puts so many more people in danger.

(image: Alex Wong/Getty Images)

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Vivian Kane

Vivian Kane (she/her) is the Senior News Editor at The Mary Sue, where she's been writing about politics and entertainment (and all the ways in which the two overlap) since the dark days of late 2016. Born in San Francisco and radicalized in Los Angeles, she now lives in Kansas City, Missouri, where she gets to put her MFA to use covering the local theatre scene. She is the co-owner of The Pitch, Kansas City’s alt news and culture magazine, alongside her husband, Brock Wilbur, with whom she also shares many cats.

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