In a column last week titled “The Anti-Abortion Movement’s Contempt for Women Is Worse Than I Imagined,” New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg cited me as an example of the titular contemptuous pro-lifers:
Some in the anti-abortion movement insist that the doctors refusing to treat [women having a miscarriage] are mistaken about what the laws in their states say. “To the extent that doctors or attorneys are confused about whether necessary women’s health care is forbidden under pro-life laws, the fault lies in large part with pro-abortion activists, who have been intentionally muddying the waters,” tweeted Alexandra DeSanctis Marr, a writer for National Review and the co-author of “Tearing Us Apart: How Abortion Harms Everything and Solves Nothing.”
If that was the case, one might think abortion opponents would be eager to see their laws clarified. After all, the suffering caused by mismanaged miscarriages doesn’t serve the cause of fetal life.
While I appreciate that Goldberg saw fit to mention my new book, I was less appreciative of her selective quoting of my Twitter feed to bolster her argument. She saw no trouble, apparently, with using a single tweet supposedly to prove her point, yet she declined to include other recent tweets of mine on the same topic, including this one: “By all means, lawmakers should leave no room for confusion about medical emergencies or miscarriage care. But even when they do so, abortion supporters aren’t satisfied, because their goal isn’t clarity. Their goal is to stoke fear and confusion and undermine pro-life laws.”
As it turns out, Goldberg not only did an injustice to me by ignoring my actual views on the topic but she also did an injustice to her readers by misrepresenting pro-life laws as they pertain to miscarriage management. As I catalogue in a lengthy article on the homepage today, every state abortion restriction contains explicit exceptions for instances when a mother’s life is at risk and/or defines abortion explicitly to exclude treatment for a miscarriage. It isn’t pro-lifers or pro-life laws stirring up confusion and uncertainty about this; it’s Goldberg and her fellow abortion supporters.