We recently had Monica Snyder from Secular Pro-Life on our podcast to discuss these cases. I highly recommend listening to that episode if you haven’t already, as I consider this article to be a companion/response to the podcast. Really, I’m just running a highlighter over a theme that’s been on my mind for many months now: many of these tragedies aren’t the result of abortion restrictions; they’re the result of a broken system that pro-choice liberals already agree is broken.

Estimated reading time: 9 minutes

While there are definitely exceptions, most pro-choice people identify as liberal or leftist. More specifically, they might consider feminism, anti-racism, and support for socialized medicine as core values or philosophies. As a result, these folks are likely to hold at least some of the following beliefs:

• The American medical industry prioritizes profit over patient care
• The American medical industry, especially insurance companies, regularly kill people by denying them vital care or delaying care via bureaucracy 
• Medical providers are wildly under-resourced, understaffed, and overworked
• Women and racial minorities’ concerns and symptoms are disproportionally dismissed or downplayed by medical professionals
• The medical industry does not put adequate resources into researching and caring for maladies in female and non-white bodies, instead focusing on white males as the norm
• The lack of adequate social safety nets means that low-income workers often must choose between caring for their health and paying their bills

We don’t have to unpack whether these beliefs are right or wrong, or whether they’re exclusive to those on the political left (I imagine that for at least some of these, right-leaning folks agree on the problems, just not the proposed left-wing solutions). The point is that in non-abortion contexts, the majority of pro-choice people already believe that our systems, including healthcare, are broken in ways that kill people–especially women, and especially poor, non-white women. They’re already primed to understand that these problems go deeper than abortion restrictions.

On the pro-life side, regardless of deeper beliefs, we generally recognize that these tragic stories are the horrific symptoms of some other problem. To give a quick overview of just a few cases:

Nevaeh Crain – Nevaeh went to two different E.R.s experiencing serious symptoms. The first E.R. dismissed her out of hand without investigating her symptoms at all. The second E.R. sent her home, knowing that she was actively septic and not responding to their initial treatments. Nevaeh died because these hospitals did not take her symptoms seriously and did not meet even a basic standard of care.

Josselli Barnica – Josselli faced an inevitable miscarriage at 17 weeks, and her care team waited an absurdly long time to intervene with a D&C. Her care team cited Texas’s heartbeat law for this decision, and abortion advocates blame the law (which was grossly misinterpreted) for the delay that caused Josselli’s death. While these elements seem to be factors, a closer look reveals straightforward, gross malpractice on the part of the care team. After finally doing the D&C, her doctors didn’t even confirm a complete miscarriage, didn’t properly monitor her, and they sent her home with pieces of her dead baby still inside of her. Even worse, when she called to complain of symptoms, they dismissed her concerns instead of taking her seriously.

Yeni Alvarez – Yeni started experiencing complications with her pregnancy at only 7 weeks, and died from those complications at 31 weeks. Yeni’s doctors believed she needed to be hospitalized for hypertension, but Yeni could not afford the hospital stay or the time off of work she would have had to take to get treatment. Additionally, the rural hospital did not have the resources to provide the best care for a complex, risky pregnancy. Yeni explicitly did not want an abortion, and a lack of abortion access wasn’t what killed her—it was a lack of critical economic and healthcare support.

Pro-life advocates see these patterns of malpractice and lack of adequate support—even if we may not agree with pro-choice advocates about exactly how to fix them—because we’re already primed to find something other than the abortion restrictions to blame for these tragic deaths. Conversely, pro-choice advocates sometimes seem to forget the beliefs they already have about our broken healthcare system in order to center abortion rights. That’s a bit of an oversimplification—the average pro-choice person has a lot of understandable reasons for interpreting these stories the way that they do. But even though it’s not the only factor driving pro-choice people’s responses, I think it’s a big enough factor that it can help us answer an important question: what can we do to bridge this gap?

A lot of the work we do at Equal Rights Institute is about finding common ground, and helping pro-choice people see that the pro-life worldview actually isn’t all that incompatible with the beliefs they already hold. In this case, even if we can’t fully convince our pro-choice neighbors on full prenatal rights, I believe this is still critical common ground that we desperately need to dig into. We have the opportunity to connect with their existing beliefs about deficiencies in our systems and work together to solve those deficiencies. 

The Practical

I want to be clear that the pragmatic reasons for emphasizing this common ground don’t hold a candle to the principled, moral reasons (more on that later). But it’s still worth thinking a bit about the practical benefits of helping pro-choice people see this particular piece of common ground. 

For one, it can help you build rapport in a dialogue. If your pro-choice friend brings up one of these cases, you have the chance to speak their language and highlight something they value. Genuine expressions of anger and frustration over how these women were failed can go a long way.

I’m left-leaning myself, so it’s a bit easier for me to emphasize my beliefs about how our systems failed these women. I’m also someone who’s chronically ill and has experience with doctors basically diagnosing me with “having a uterus” and refusing to seriously examine my symptoms. Both of these things position me to make strong points that resonate with my liberal, pro-choice dialogue partners, and if either is true for you, I encourage you to lean into that.

For our more conservative friends, I suspect you have a lot of common ground here too. After all, even if liberals and conservatives tend to disagree on the solutions or root causes of problems, we still usually can agree that there is a problem. You don’t have to agree that every one of these tragic deaths was caused by medical racism, or that socialized medicine would solve everything. All you have to do is affirm that our current systems aren’t perfect, that this sometimes has tragic results, and you want to do what you can to address these problems at their source. And if you or someone you love has had any negative experiences with our healthcare system, and you’re comfortable sharing parts of that story, being vulnerable about how our imperfect systems have affected you can go a long way to a pro-choice person bringing their walls down and realizing that we’re on the same team.

There’s a second practical benefit to leaning into this common ground: if we can work together to address the root causes of maternal mortality and significantly reduce the amount of unnecessary deaths, we remove one of the most powerful weapons the abortion lobby is wielding against us. 

These terrible outcomes and the way they’re being reported in the media is one of the biggest barriers to winning support for our cause. Fear is an incredibly powerful political tool. Even people who consider themselves pro-life are being persuaded away from legislating against elective abortion because they’re (rightfully) concerned about how these laws could impact lifesaving, completely morally justified care.

The Principled

Of course, the most important reasons that it’s so critical for us to highlight this common ground are principled, moral reasons. 

None of these women had to die. In some cases, their babies didn’t have to die either.

There are real people, real families, who have been devastated by the loss of their loved ones. Not to mention the terrible pain and fear these women must have experienced as they were dying. They deserved proper medical care, and they deserve to be respected as more than political chess pieces. We need to honor them by doing everything we can to prevent this from happening to somebody else.

We’re pro-life because we believe humans matter. Many of us have religious beliefs that assign near-infinite worth to the human person. This shouldn’t just be about politics for us. We care about the lives of pregnant people just as much as we care about the children they carry.

This being the case, we must find ways to reach across the aisle and work with our pro-choice opponents on reducing maternal mortality. We need to be careful not to dismiss real medical malpractice and preventable deaths as mere pro-choice talking points, just like pro-choice people need to not pass off broader issues of medical malpractice as a pro-life laws problem.

The Practical, Again

I’m not going to prescribe any specific policy solution; that’s above my paygrade. What I will say is that this situation is literally life and death for thousands of real humans, both in terms of their immediate medical care, and in terms of the long-term viability of pro-life legislation. When the stakes are this high, we all—pro-life and pro-choice—have an obligation to put down our polarized, partisan tendencies and address the situation in a sober, serious way.

Most people reading this aren’t leaders with policy influence, and figuring out our part in this can be daunting. I want to leave you with some practical things you can do:

• Investigate efforts to decrease maternal mortality in your state, and find at least one policy or effort you can publicly support
• Are you an older mom with a strong spine and experience navigating doctors’ appointments? If you’re already close with a younger woman who’s pregnant for the first time, you can offer to attend appointments with her as a peer advocate, especially if she’s having difficulty getting doctors to hear her concerns. Or if she’d rather attend alone, help her write a birth plan, research and prepare specific questions for her next appointment, or practice with her exactly what she’s going to say. (Sidenote: my colleague Emily says this content creator helped her a lot during her own pregnancy. She has tons of helpful videos on how to ask good questions of your OB/GYN and decline procedures you don’t want during pregnancy!) 
• And, of course, have dialogues with your pro-choice friends that highlight our shared concerns for these moms. Even if we can’t fully bring them to our side on abortion, we can still build powerful coalitions with each other to protect women and children.

Let’s find common ground with our pro-choice friends and save some lives together. It requires gently breaking down some emotional walls on both sides, but it’s worth it.

The post Critical Common Ground in Medical Tragedies originally appeared at the Equal Rights Institute blog. Subscribe to our email list with the form below and get a FREE gift. Click here to learn more about our pro-life apologetics course, “Equipped for Life: A Fresh Approach to Conversations About Abortion.” 

The preceding post is the property of Ellen Campbell (apart from quotations, which are the property of their respective owners, and works of art as credited; images are often freely available to the public,) and should not be reproduced in part or in whole without the expressed consent of the author. All content on this site is the property of Equal Rights Institute unless the post was written by a co-blogger or guest, and the content is made available for individual and personal usage. If you cite from these documents, whether for personal or professional purposes, please give appropriate citation with both the name of the author Ellen Campbell) and a link to the original URL. If you’d like to repost a post, you may do so, provided you show only the first three paragraphs on your own site and link to the original post for the rest. You must also appropriately cite the post as noted above. This blog is protected by Creative Commons licensing. By viewing any part of this site, you are agreeing to this usage policy.

The post Critical Common Ground in Medical Tragedies appeared first on Equal Rights Institute Blog - Clear Pro-Life Thinking.

Tomorrow, Vice President JD Vance will be headlining the March for Life rally, and I’m really concerned about what that says about our movement.

You see, the March for Life isn’t like voting. I can understand a pro-life person looking at the two options available in the 2024 presidential election, and making the pragmatic decision to vote for the candidates who had the best chance of protecting prenatal lives. Elections are often a lot like trolley problems, where there are no perfect options that involve no one being hurt.

The March for Life, on the other hand, is our biggest opportunity to represent our cause to the world. We have the opportunity to spotlight our best aspects, while also signaling to an administration that’s been wobbly on core pro-life issues like the Hyde amendment, IVF, and early abortion restrictions that we’re more than just a guaranteed voting block that will give them a rally stage and accolades for doing the bare minimum.

Photo by Gage Skidmore

Estimated reading time: 10 minutes

But right now, that’s exactly what we’re doing. We’re handing the Trump Administration the rally stage and accolades for doing…honestly less than the bare minimum. 

In October of 2025, the Trump Administration greenlit the distribution of a generic version of the abortion pill. 

On October 16th, 2025, the Trump Administration announced actions it’s taking to expand access to and lower costs of IVF.

On January 6th, 2026, Trump called for lawmakers to be “flexible” on the Hyde Amendment, suggesting that they should compromise on letting taxpayer money be used to fund abortions. 

In December of 2025, the Trump Administration quietly refunded tens of millions of dollars to Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers, which just finally hit the news cycle on January 12th because the ACLU dropped their lawsuit against the administration. 

And just four days later, the March for Life excitedly announced that Vice President JD Vance would be the keynote speaker at this year’s March for Life Rally. 

The March for Life is the most publicity we can get outside of news outlets blaming abortion restrictions for the deaths of pregnant women. Platforming the Trump Administration at our biggest event right now, given its recent actions, sends the message that we have at best wishy-washy standards for what it means to be and act pro-life. 

I’m not saying that we shouldn’t work with the Trump Administration or that we shouldn’t be grateful for the things the Administration has done over the past two terms to further the pro-life cause. I am saying that we should hold our politicians accountable rather than celebrating them regardless of what they do or say.

We’re allowed to criticize our own side.

So one reason I’m concerned about giving JD Vance our movement’s biggest platform right now is that it signals to the Trump Administration (and to other people who are watching) that we will give them our unconditional, full-throttled support and celebration even if they’re extremely wishy-washy on core pro-life issues. There’s another reason I’m deeply concerned that is in some ways harder to talk about, but I think it really needs to be said.

Especially when pro-life protections are under attack, it’s a natural instinct to close ranks to protect “our side” from all criticism. However, this is not a sustainable practice in the long term. We must be able to identify when we’re sick, even with a minor illness, and work together to figure out the best plan of treatment. When you talk to the people in your community, whether that’s fellow pro-lifers or your pro-choice friends, you don’t have to hold your pro-life leaders and politicians on a pedestal. We’re all fallible humans, and we’re going to make unwise decisions sometimes. You can and should speak up when the behavior of our leaders concerns you; I want to simply lay out a series of facts that concern me about JD Vance.

On October 14, 2025, a Young Republicans group chat was leaked. I’ll walk through some facts about the chat, and then look at the Vice President’s comments on it. The name of the group and some of the rhetoric around the incident might lead a person to believe that this chat was mostly teenagers and young college students, but the reality is that several of the people involved were between the ages of 24 and 35. Additionally, these were people of influence within the Republican political sphere– leaders of Young Republicans chapters, and even a state senator.

Here are just a few quotes from the leaked group chat. Please note that I’m going to be censoring the worst of it, but the original messages were not censored.

“I was about to say you’re giving nationals to [sic] much credit and expecting the Jew to be honest”

“Everyone that votes no is going to the gas chamber. And everyone that endorsed but then votes for us is going to the gas chamber” 

“Can we fix the showers? Gas chambers don’t fit the Hitler aesthetic”

“If your pilot is a she and she looks ten shades darker than someone from Sicily, just end it there. Scream the no no word.”

“I’d go to the zoo if I wanted to watch monkey play ball.” (In reference to an NBA game)

“RAPE HAYDEN” (in reference to a rival Young Republicans leader)

“Minnesota – f****ts Arkansas – inbred cow f**kers Nebraska – revolt in our favor; blocked their bind and have a majority of their delegates Maryland – fat stinky Jew … Rhode Island – traitorous c***s who I will eradicate from the face of this planet.” (in reference to Young Republicans groups in other states)

There were over 200 instances of slurs against gay, black, and disabled people. Black people were called “monkeys” and “watermelon people.” One member called rape “epic.”

On the whole, I’m actually pleased with the overall conservative response to this behavior. Many Young Republicans leaders denounced these messages, and two of the involved Young Republicans chapters were either suspended or disbanded. 

What I’m not impressed with is the Vice President’s response to this incident. He downplayed it as kids making harmless jokes.

“The reality is that kids do stupid things, especially young boys. They tell edgy, offensive jokes. That’s what kids do. And I really don’t want us to grow up in a country where a kid telling a stupid joke – telling a very offensive, stupid joke – is cause to ruin their lives.”

I’m an advocate for restorative justice, and I don’t believe in ruining anyone’s life. I think all the people involved with these awful comments should be able to learn from their bad behavior, repent of it, and live peacefully with their families. But it’s honestly disgusting that he thinks incessant use of slurs and jokes about sexual assault are just normal kid behaviors that don’t need further scrutiny. When we as the pro-life movement give JD Vance our biggest platform, we communicate to people watching that his normalizing what happened in that group chat isn’t a big deal to us, and by extension that what was said in that group chat isn’t a big deal to us either.

Ask yourself, if you saw your teenage son saying these things, would you shrug that off with no consequences? How much worse is it that we can’t even hold grown adults in positions of leadership and influence to any standards, and that our President’s second in command scolds anyone who tries to?

Frankly, there are even more examples I could give of actions and statements from the Vice President and the administration that a lot of Americans—including a lot of conservatives—find highly reprehensible, but this one example ought to be enough to give us pause. Even if you ultimately disagree with me, I hope you can see why I find this story deeply concerning. 

And I think this matters.

If we want to keep unborn children from being stripped of their legal protections, we need people to see us as morally upright, logically consistent, genuinely interested in human flourishing, and loving towards women. By accepting Vance as the headliner for our movement’s biggest event, we’re proudly tying ourselves to a man and administration associated with shrugging off vile rhetoric, expanding access to the abortion pill and IVF, and reinstating taxpayer funding to Planned Parenthood. And all of this—everything I’ve mentioned—these are only things that have happened since October. These are things that today’s pro-choice people remember, that can and will be tied back to us by our movement’s choice to align ourselves wholeheartedly with the Trump Administration. 

I’m not saying that what JD Vance has said or done is a “cause to ruin his life.” I am saying that we shouldn’t be deliberately holding up JD Vance as the representative of the pro-life movement. 

Now what.

Most of you reading this are regular, grassroots pro-lifers who have no say in who speaks from the March for Life rally stage. You’re also not responsible for every gross thing someone who calls themselves pro-life says, does, or excuses. But I do want you to remember that you’re allowed to criticize your own side, and you can and should demand more from those representing us.

1) Platform the best of us in your own conversations and posts

I believe that the pro-life movement can and must do better than holding up JD Vance as our number one representative. We have many people within our ranks who represent the best of us–pregnancy center directors, life-affirming physicians, advocates for pregnant women’s rights in schools and workplaces. These are typically the kind of speakers you’ll find at your local 40 Days for Life rallies and state marches for life. Show up and cheer them on. Share their videos on social media. Highlight the work they’re doing to help real women in your community to your friends and family. 

2) How we present ourselves matters

You might not have any say in who takes the stage this weekend, but you have a say in how you present yourself as a pro-life advocate. Be kind and gracious. Reject cruelty. Love your neighbor. Lift up people who demonstrate high moral character. Make positive arguments for your positions instead of just denigrating the other side. You are a representative of our movement, and your representations can have a tremendous impact on your local community.

3) Still go to the March for Life

Given the timing of this post, everyone who’s planning to attend the march in person is already in DC freezing their toes off. But for the sake of argument, would I advocate for anyone to boycott the march based on a flawed man getting the spotlight? I believe the answer is no. Maybe skip the rally in favor of a smaller concurrent event, or maybe refrain from cheering for someone you find objectionable, but still go. This is the largest gathering of pro-lifers you’ll attend, and you’ll never have a better opportunity to find people who share your values, whether that’s with one of the “alt” pro-life groups or a gathering of folks from your specific faith tradition. You can hold a sign that advertises your vision of what you want our movement to be. You can look around at a sea of regular people who don’t do this work full time, and consider whether our power comes from national organizations and politicians or from all of the people like you who support us with their time, money, and prayers.

If you’ve made it this far, thank you. I especially appreciate you if you read through all of this while also disagreeing with portions. These are difficult times, and your thoughtful consideration is part of shaping us into a healthier, more sustainable movement.

The post We Need Better Representatives originally appeared at the Equal Rights Institute blog. Subscribe to our email list with the form below and get a FREE gift. Click here to learn more about our pro-life apologetics course, “Equipped for Life: A Fresh Approach to Conversations About Abortion.” 

The preceding post is the property of Ellen Campbell (apart from quotations, which are the property of their respective owners, and works of art as credited; images are often freely available to the public,) and should not be reproduced in part or in whole without the expressed consent of the author. All content on this site is the property of Equal Rights Institute unless the post was written by a co-blogger or guest, and the content is made available for individual and personal usage. If you cite from these documents, whether for personal or professional purposes, please give appropriate citation with both the name of the author Ellen Campbell) and a link to the original URL. If you’d like to repost a post, you may do so, provided you show only the first three paragraphs on your own site and link to the original post for the rest. You must also appropriately cite the post as noted above. This blog is protected by Creative Commons licensing. By viewing any part of this site, you are agreeing to this usage policy.

The post We Need Better Representatives appeared first on Equal Rights Institute Blog - Clear Pro-Life Thinking.

I was on Twitter yesterday between when he was shot and when he was pronounced dead, looking at how people were responding, and I saw exactly what I expected. There were a few left-leaning people saying really ugly things—celebrating that he got shot, or saying that he deserved it. There were some right-leaning people saying ugly things about left-leaning people as a whole—that they’re all celebrating this, that shooting people for their ideas is what the left does. But the vast majority was left-leaning and right-leaning people both saying that nobody deserves to be a victim of political violence, naming Charlie’s and his family’s humanity, and hoping he would survive.

We have real, weighty disagreements with one another in this country—on abortion, and on any number of other extremely important things. It’s important not to minimize or ignore that. But it’s also vitally important to see what we do have in common. If you lean right politically, hear a fellow conservative say: Left-leaning people abhor shooting people for their political beliefs just like we do. That’s not a left thing or a right thing, that’s a human thing.

There are a few crazy people on the left who like political violence, and a few more who say things that sound like they like it because they want to be edgy and get views. There are also a few crazy people on the right who like political violence, and a few more who say things that sound like they like it because they want to be edgy and get views. Don’t let the crazy people pit the rest of us against one another. We have enough things to be divided over without adding this one vital thing that we’re actually on the same side on.

The post What We All Have In Common originally appeared at the Equal Rights Institute blog. Subscribe to our email list with the form below and get a FREE gift. Click here to learn more about our pro-life apologetics course, “Equipped for Life: A Fresh Approach to Conversations About Abortion.” 

The post What We All Have In Common appeared first on Equal Rights Institute Blog - Clear Pro-Life Thinking.

It’s not hard to see why Americans overwhelmingly believe access to IVF is a good thing. I mean, Trump is right; IVF means that more couples can have more babies! What’s the problem with that?! So pro-choice people (and even some pro-life people) are incredibly confused why Trump’s Executive Order just 30 days into his presidency didn’t make us pop the champagne. 

By us, I mean Rebecca, Emily, and our awesome ERI Affiliate Groups who researched and brainstormed how to effectively respond to the bewildered looks we’ve been getting on college campuses. Rebecca and I co-wrote this article, but really the credit goes to our awesome Affiliate Group members. The pro-choice train of thought we all thought through together goes something like “Isn’t more babies exactly what pro-lifers want? But they don’t support IVF?! Oh, so it really IS just about controlling women’s bodies and sex lives after all…” Here’s what we found.

Estimated reading time: 16 minutes

The Executive Order

Rule number one. If a pro-choice person (or anyone for that matter) asks you about a thing or makes claims about a thing, go read the actual thing for yourself. 

During his campaign, Trump promised public funding or mandated insurance coverage for IVF, so I’ll be honest; when I first heard about Trump’s executive order, I (and I think a lot of other people, at least based on the pandemonium in my social media feed) automatically assumed he was making that happen. But, as I discovered upon reading it, this executive order accomplishes neither. To be clear, the IVF executive order actually accomplishes nothing. 

Here’s the important part: 

“Within 90 days of the date of this order, the Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy shall submit to the President a list of policy recommendations on protecting IVF access and aggressively reducing out-of-pocket and health plan costs for IVF treatment.”

We’re currently 98 days out from the Executive Order’s publishing, so it’s quite likely IVF will be back in the news in the very near future when Trump’s team reviews those policy recommendations and presumably picks one or more to try implementing.

So…What’s the Problem?

Ok, so the executive order’s first steps are moving slower than we initially thought. But still, why shouldn’t pro-lifers (and everyone!) be excited about it? Regardless of your stance on abortion, if people who want to get pregnant but are struggling with infertility have a way to be able to get pregnant, that’s great! Here’s the thing: the end doesn’t justify the means. The end, or goal, of IVF is awesome—helping people who are struggling with infertility. The means, how it gets to the goal, is the problem: long story short, it involves killing prenatal humans. 

Most people know that the goal of IVF is helping people get pregnant. A lot of people don’t know how it accomplishes that. Eggs are retrieved from the woman’s body, semen is retrieved from the man’s body, and the eggs are fertilized in a lab. Just like when the fertilization process happens in a woman’s body, as soon as fertilization is complete, you now have a human being—a living organism of the species homo sapiens. The embryo grows for 3-5 days in a lab, and is then implanted in the woman’s uterus. 

Here’s the catch: because the process is very expensive and has a relatively low success rate, doctors typically create more embryos than they plan to implant in the woman’s uterus. The remaining embryos, after growing alongside their siblings for 3-5 days, can be frozen for possible later use, donated to other couples (embryo adoption), donated to be used for research, or discarded—that is, killed. 

In theory, there is a way to do IVF that doesn’t involve the likelihood of ending up with extra embryos that are then discarded: you can create a smaller number of embryos, and transfer all the embryos who survive into the woman’s uterus, likely over the course of multiple cycles. But because a single cycle of IVF is so expensive, and because the failure rate is so high, that is prohibitively expensive and rarely practiced. In fact, in the wake of the Alabama Supreme Court’s ruling that frozen embryos can be considered children, some Alabama IVF clinics stopped operations entirely, and two pro-IVF fertility doctors published an interview saying that “discarding embryos is inherent to the IVF process.”

There are several pieces of the typical IVF process that we argue are obvious human rights violations, assuming we start from the premise that the prenatal humans involved are people like you and me with an equal right to be protected from violence.

1. Since even embryos placed in the woman’s uterus are far from guaranteed to survive implantation and the rest of pregnancy, 65% of the time doctors will place multiple embryos in the woman’s uterus, in order to increase the chances that at least one embryo will successfully implant. But doctors don’t want multiple embryos to successfully implant, because multiple pregnancies (twins, triplets, etc) have higher risks for both mom and babies. So if multiple embryos do successfully implant, doctors will sometimes “selectively reduce”—that is, abort—all but one or two of the embryos.
2. Selective reduction is less common than it used to be because the technology that allows doctors to determine which embryos are likeliest to implant has improved, therefore the odds of a singleton embryo successfully implanting have increased. That’s a double-edged sword, though—it means fewer humans are being killed in utero by selective reduction, but more humans are being killed (or frozen and very likely killed later) before the implantation process even begins.

It’s worth noting that when doctors freeze or discard (kill) “extra” humans in a lab, or selectively reduce (kill) “extra” humans in a woman’s uterus, they’re not flipping a coin to pick which ones to keep. They always assess the “quality” of the embryos—the perceived likelihood that they will be able to successfully implant in the woman’s uterus—and choose embryos that are very likely to be able to implant over other embryos, including embryos that are still quite likely, but a little less likely, to be able to implant. That’s called eugenics. Worse, doctors will often (about 60% of the time) wait a few extra days to implant so that they have time to do initial genetic testing and weed out embryos who test positive for genetic diseases or chromosomal abnormalities. It’s even legal in the US to select which embryos to implant based on their sex.

Killing people—or freezing them cryogenically to maybe use them at some unspecified point in the future or maybe eventually kill them if you don’t find a use for them— at all is really bad, but choosing which people to kill based on who’s weaker or has less desired traits adds an extra layer of dystopian dehumanization. And on a practical dialogue level, the eugenics concern can be helpful to bring up with pro-choice people because it’s often common ground: even if someone is comfortable with the idea of killing very young prenatal humans, they’re typically very uncomfortable with the idea of eugenics.

Here are some additional concerns some pro-lifers may have about the IVF process:

• Natural law concerns about separating procreation from sex;
• The concern that paying for eggs to be fertilized in a lab inherently commodifies human beings;
• The idea that using IVF is “playing God” by creating humans at our will and paying for their creation as our property;
• Both moral and medical concerns about how eggs and sperm are retrieved. (Eggs are typically retrieved via ovarian hyperstimulation caused by artificial hormone medications, which can have serious side effects on a woman’s body. Sperm are retrieved via masturbation.)

Regardless of what your view is on those or other secondary concerns, it’s important to clearly differentiate them from the primary, obvious human-rights-violation concerns. Catholics in the pro-life movement often do an excellent job at this with differentiating how they see abortion from how they see contraception: They clearly communicate that while their theological teaching prohibits using condoms, for example, they don’t think using a condom is a human rights violation and don’t think it should be against the law for other people—they just want the right to act in accord with their own consciences. And they clearly communicate that they see abortion as a very different category, because it is a human rights violation, and human rights violations are the kinds of things we should have laws about.

We need the same clear distinction-making when it comes to concerns about IVF. There are some concerns that are really, really clear: every pro-lifer should be against the killing of prenatal humans, including in the IVF process. And the killing of prenatal humans, including in IVF, should be illegal. PAnd then some pro-lifers (of all theological and atheological stripes) have other secondary concerns too. Different pro-lifers disagree about which of the concerns in the secondary boat are significant, how significant they are, whether they’re legal or merely ethical matters, etc. And we should absolutely talk about those secondary concerns and our disagreements about them. But we also need to be extremely clear and emphatic that the primary, obvious, agreed-upon concern is that IVF as it is typically practiced involves killing humans.

It’s also important to remember whenever you raise any of these concerns that we’re talking about real people—the embryos who are frozen and killed, yes, but also the parents who have used IVF to conceive, and their born children. It’s still important to clearly communicate our concerns about IVF, even though the topic might be emotionally painful for people who have personal experiences with it. But it’s also important to engage compassionately and clearly communicate our common ground: that infertility can be extremely emotionally painful, that it makes sense that people could feel desperate to conceive, that parents who have used IVF that involved killing embryos are not murderers, and that children and adults who were conceived through IVF are valuable people with meaningful lives.

“So if a couple can’t get pregnant, tough for them?” 

IVF, as it is typically practiced, is a human rights violation. It should be illegal. But that’s a really hard pill to swallow for most Americans. Based on our team’s thousands of conversations with pro-choice people, we firmly believe that the majority of pro-choice people come to their position from a place of compassion and genuinely desiring to help others. They don’t want women to be stuck in poverty. They don’t want children to be born into difficult circumstances. The average pro-choice person recognizes that pregnancy and parenthood are challenging, and they want to make sure that women are going in with their eyes open, freely choosing this lot in life, and with all the resources and support they need to succeed. I’m not saying that describes every single pro-choice person out there, but it’s the vast majority. Contrary to the stereotype I hear from a lot of conservatives, it’s rare that we meet someone who genuinely believes having children is always bad or that abortion should be encouraged.  

So if most pro-choice people are coming to their position from that place of compassion—if they are truly “pro-reproductive-freedom,” as Mini Timmaraju, the President of NARAL Pro-Choice America described herself when she and I had an abortion dialogue live on MSNBC—then they should be just as sad when a woman who wants to get pregnant can’t because IVF isn’t available as when a woman who wants an abortion can’t get one because abortion isn’t available. 

Oh wait, this gets even better: I just googled NARAL Pro-Choice America and discovered that it has formally changed its name to Reproductive Freedom for All. Thank you for making my point for me. That is their new name precisely because that is the message they’re finding resonates with average Americans. 

That’s why explaining the concerns we have about IVF is a tough task. Making IVF illegal (or majorly adjusting how it’s done in a way that makes it not kill humans but also makes it more expensive and less successful) takes away the “fundamental freedom to decide if, when, and how to have a family” that Mini Timmaraju claimed we all possess. Not to mention that about 10% of US couples have experienced fertility problems. The pro-choice person you’re talking with probably knows someone who has been through infertility or miscarriage, and if it comes across like our legitimate and serious concerns with IVF mean we lack compassion for that couple, then your argument is dead on arrival. It’s not logically false, but they’re really going to struggle to hear you when you seem to have a bad case of fetus tunnel vision. 

Luckily, there are medical treatments and strategies to help couples conceive that don’t kill unborn humans. This is why IVF can actually be easier to talk about than abortion. In a lot of painful and difficult situations where abortion feels like the best way out, I don’t have an easy solution, and I have to communicate compassion without one—I have to demonstrate to the pro-choice person that I genuinely want to do anything I can to help this woman in a legitimately difficult situation, but that I don’t think it’s okay to kill people to try to solve it. 

But in the case of infertility, we actually have a potential solution, and one that’s typically cheaper, easier, and more effective than IVF. Being able to talk about this alternative to IVF is extremely helpful for your dialogues, and it’s also just a good thing for people to know about anyway! 

Dos and Don’ts of Bringing Up NaProTechnology 

NaProTechnology is incredible. It’s basically a blanket term for understanding that infertility is a symptom, and if we can find its underlying cause, then we may be able to treat it, resolve it, and cause the symptom (the infertility) to go away. For example, hormone treatments can correct a woman’s low progesterone that’s preventing her from getting or staying pregnant. Identifying and correcting vitamin deficiencies can do the same. Surgeries can unblock fallopian tubes, correct uterine abnormalities, repair pelvic adhesions, and treat endometriosis. There is a long list of medical and surgical means available to correct the conditions causing infertility, and at a vastly lower cost than IVF. A single cycle of IVF can cost between $12,000 to $25,000 and is not covered by health insurance, while NaProTechnology, because it treats underlying women’s health issues, is typically covered (and costs vastly less in the first place). 

And the success rates are impressive. Artificial fertility treatments like IVF have a success rate of 31-33%. Using NaProTechnology after failed artificial fertility treatments has a success rate of 53%. And the success rate when NaProTechnology is the initial treatment of infertility is up to 80%! 

It’s cheaper, and it’s more than twice as successful. So why isn’t everyone talking about this?! 

I’ll be completely honest; I think it’s because NaProTechnology is often brought up in a very Catholic way that turns off non-Catholic people. Emily here, Catholic and Natural Family Planning enthusiast. Yes, NaProTechnology was created by a Catholic and aligns with Catholic teachings, and that makes me super excited and proud. It works in tandem with the Creighton Model of Natural Family Planning, both of which were developed by Dr. Thomas Hilgers, founder and director of the Pope Paul VI Institute for the Study of Human Reproduction. But that, tragically, is where we lose a lot of people. I don’t want to call out specific websites or people, but when I hear Catholics talk about NaProTechnology, 90% of the time it’s Catholic-ness is brought up within the first 5 seconds. 

“NaProTechnology respects God’s design for married love.” 

“NaProTechnology aligns with the teachings of the Catholic Church.”

How about “NaProTechnology holistically supports women’s health?” 

Or even “NaProTechnology is cheaper and more effective for helping women achieve pregnancy!” 

Cheaper, more effective fertility care for women—care that is non-violent, focused on supporting the entire woman, and treats the underlying cause of her infertility—should be something we can all get behind. And it’s not like Catholics are the only game in town here; the idea of getting to the root cause of health issues rather than just treating the symptoms has been around medical care for centuries, and some non-Catholic doctors already do things like identify and treat endometriosis that’s causing infertility. 

Catholic or not, wouldn’t it just be better for women’s health if we consistently tried to find out why she’s struggling to get or stay pregnant, and treat that underlying condition? NaProTechnology has up to an 80% success rate when it’s the initial treatment; artificial fertility treatments like IVF have a success rate of 31-33%. At the very least, shouldn’t women know that and be able to make an informed decision?

And shouldn’t we want to identify and heal whatever is going wrong in her body instead of ignoring it? Isn’t that supposed to be what women’s healthcare is all about?

Yes, NaProTechnology was created by a Catholic and aligns with Catholic teaching. I think that’s awesome, and I want more people to understand that the Catholic Church views women with great inherent dignity and is on the cutting edge of women’s healthcare treatments. But NaProTechnology is also just plain amazing for women’s health, and I think our conversations should start there.

Three Steps To a Productive Conversation about IVF

So when IVF headlines inevitably pop back to the top of your Instagram feed, you can have a productive conversation by focusing on three key areas. 

1. Show compassion: Just like discussing abortion, discussing IVF effectively requires unpacking an emotionally wrought topic—one that is tied up with people’s personal stories, tragedies, and vulnerabilities. Our first aim should be to demonstrate genuine compassion for people struggling to conceive and love for those already conceived via IVF. 
2. Keep the main thing the main thing: IVF, at least as it is currently practiced, involves killing prenatal humans. And the killing of prenatal humans, including in IVF, should be illegal. Pro-life people may have a variety of other serious concerns about IVF, and we should absolutely talk about those, but we must be extremely clear that the primary, obvious, agreed-upon concern is that killing prenatal humans is wrong and should be illegal. 
3. Offer a (cheaper, easier, more effective!) alternative: When someone is experiencing infertility, medical providers should provide holistic care; they should be digging in to find the underlying cause of the infertility in order to provide treatment, instead of attempting to circumvent the problem by plopping a tiny unborn human in her body and just hoping it survives—or worse, creating multiple tiny humans and killing the “extras” (or freezing them to plausibly be killed later). NaProTechnology, a method of holistic women’s healthcare, is not only an ethical way to treat infertility, but it has more than double the success rate of artificial fertility treatments at a fraction of the cost.

Let’s work together to provide effective, holistic medical care that doesn’t kill anyone in the process. 

The post Get Ready. IVF Confusion is Coming. originally appeared at the Equal Rights Institute blog. Subscribe to our email list with the form below and get a FREE gift. Click here to learn more about our pro-life apologetics course, “Equipped for Life: A Fresh Approach to Conversations About Abortion.” 

The preceding post is the property of Emily Geiger and Rebecca Carlson (apart from quotations, which are the property of their respective owners, and works of art as credited; images are often freely available to the public,) and should not be reproduced in part or in whole without the expressed consent of the author. All content on this site is the property of Equal Rights Institute unless the post was written by a co-blogger or guest, and the content is made available for individual and personal usage. If you cite from these documents, whether for personal or professional purposes, please give appropriate citation with both the name of the authors (Emily Geiger and Rebecca Carlson) and a link to the original URL. If you’d like to repost a post, you may do so, provided you show only the first three paragraphs on your own site and link to the original post for the rest. You must also appropriately cite the post as noted above. This blog is protected by Creative Commons licensing. By viewing any part of this site, you are agreeing to this usage policy.

The post Get Ready. IVF Confusion is Coming. appeared first on Equal Rights Institute Blog - Clear Pro-Life Thinking.

“PRO-LIFE LAW CAUSES HORRIFIC CHAIN OF EVENTS”

You’re strongly pro-life. You’ve taken the Equipped for Life Course, led a pro-life student or church group, or even currently work full time for an anti-abortion organization. But, you read the details, and for at least a moment, everything you believe starts to tilt. You’re no longer sure if you’re on the right side of this issue. 

Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

The first thing I want you to know is that this gut response is normal. It’s okay, and it reflects that you have empathy not only for the unborn, but for the person carrying them. As we mention in our pieces on avoiding Fetus Tunnel Vision, this empathy is a good thing. 

I most recently had this foundation-tilting experience upon hearing about Adriana Smith, the woman who was tragically declared brain dead after medical providers failed to diagnose multiple blood clots in her brain. Smith was 9 weeks pregnant at the time of brain death, and a pre-Dobbs Georgia law prevents her from being removed from life support while there’s any hope that her unborn child might survive.

The purpose of this article is not to present all of the details of this specific case or explain how media reporting has been misleading. Our friends at Secular Pro-Life have already done a fantastic job at that, and I recommend that you take a look at their coverage if you’re wanting to learn more. Instead, I want to take this opportunity to discuss what it means to be pro-life when you’re presented with a horrific edge case such as this one.

As someone who is deeply attached to the pro-life cause, there’s often an immediate impulse to get the “right” answer when presented with a rare situation such as Smith’s. Yes, Adriana Smith is a person deserving of dignity, and it is incredibly tragic that she died, but why not save the baby if we can? Can’t it be as simple as that? 

Maybe it could be that simple, but I have to admit that I find myself incredibly uncertain as I hear Smith’s mother describe the last three months.

“It’s torture for me. I come here and I see my daughter breathing, by the ventilator, but she’s not there.”

Doctors have discovered fluid on the baby’s brain, and he’s going to have been incubating in a body on life support for far longer than known successful cases of live birth after maternal brain death. Everything is awful and uncertain, and there’s still a long way to go until the baby reaches 32 weeks. All the while, medical expenses pile up.

I simply cannot wrap my head around the trauma of this situation as I clumsily try to reason my way through questions about “unplugging” vs. direct killing, how the tremendous burden on this family measures against the baby’s chance of survival, and how ethics and our laws intersect. A similar thing happens to me every time I hear about a medical team struggling to decide exactly how and when they should intervene when the mother is in danger. A lot of the more publicized cases may be clear medical malpractice, but in the less publicized cases— maybe ones you’ve experienced in your own community where doctors did intervene early— one might struggle with whether or not there was anything that could’ve been done to save both.

The question all of the above leads me to is this: can you be pro-life if you won’t definitively choose a “side” or are unable to confidently say what should be done in these edge cases? 

I think the answer is yes. If you are against legalized elective abortion— violent and direct killing of unborn children for no compelling medical reason—you’re far more pro-life than you are pro-choice, and I want you on my team even if we can’t all agree on the extra-hard, extra-rare cases. These horrific edge cases matter, and deserve to be discussed, but they shouldn’t keep us from working together to end elective abortion. 

Please don’t misunderstand me. I believe in objective morality. I believe that there is a right answer and a wrong answer to all of these cases, and that the unborn deserve real consideration. I am more than open to the idea that Smith’s son deserves the chance he’s getting, even at great cost. However, human judgement is often flawed, and the vast majority of us aren’t seasoned philosophers who can quickly do the moral math. Because of this, we need to give ourselves and our fellow advocates grace when confronted with these hard cases. 

Here’s the bottom line: This isn’t a purity test. It’s friends standing side by side doing their best to reason through something immensely difficult. Don’t be afraid of demonstrating intellectual humility and empathy. It won’t get your “pro-life card” revoked, and I’m convinced that this posture will make you far more relatable and reasonable to your pro-choice friends than twisting yourself into knots to avoid giving up an inch of ground.

The post Is It Okay to Find Edge Cases Challenging? originally appeared at the Equal Rights Institute blog. Subscribe to our email list with the form below and get a FREE gift. Click here to learn more about our pro-life apologetics course, “Equipped for Life: A Fresh Approach to Conversations About Abortion.” 

The preceding post is the property of Ellen Campbell (apart from quotations, which are the property of their respective owners, and works of art as credited; images are often freely available to the public,) and should not be reproduced in part or in whole without the expressed consent of the author. All content on this site is the property of Equal Rights Institute unless the post was written by a co-blogger or guest, and the content is made available for individual and personal usage. If you cite from these documents, whether for personal or professional purposes, please give appropriate citation with both the name of the author (Ellen Campbell) and a link to the original URL. If you’d like to repost a post, you may do so, provided you show only the first three paragraphs on your own site and link to the original post for the rest. You must also appropriately cite the post as noted above. This blog is protected by Creative Commons licensing. By viewing any part of this site, you are agreeing to this usage policy.

The post Is It Okay to Find Edge Cases Challenging? appeared first on Equal Rights Institute Blog - Clear Pro-Life Thinking.