States Must Urgently Educate Public On Abortion Laws to Combat Misinformation: MEMO

‘We should all agree that putting women in danger for political purposes is wrong and should be put to an end’

By: Mary Margaret Olohan, originally published November 25, 2024, DailyWire

State lawmakers, governors offices, and health departments must urgently address abortion misinformation, a leading pro-life group said in a memo to state officials first obtained by The Daily Wire.

The memo addresses an abundance of pro-abortion misinformation perpetuated since the overturn of Roe v. Wade, when the power to decide abortion laws was returned to the states. The main lie, pushed by Vice President Kamala Harris and top Democrats, is that if a pregnant woman is miscarrying her baby, abortion laws “tie doctors’ hands from acting to save her life.”

Harris repeated this lie throughout the last election cycle, as did proponents of pro-abortion ballot amendments like Florida’s Amendment 4. Major media outlets like ProPublica published “tragic stories of deaths from abortion drugs and medical malpractice in an attempt to blame the loss of lives on pro-life laws in Georgia and Texas,” the memo stated.

“Pro-abortion groups have dishonestly publicized that pro-life laws protecting unborn children prevent pregnant women from receiving care in an emergency,” wrote Sue Liebel, state affairs director for Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America. “Whether it’s a ballot measure fight, candidate race or legislative battle, this has been the abortion industry’s number one talking point which many in the Democratic Party have adopted.”

SBA Pro-Life America’s research has found that every state abortion law allows for women to receive emergency care and for doctors to “continue to rely on their reasonable medical judgment.”

And the organization is calling for state lawmakers to follow the example of several pro-life states: South Dakota recently adopted a Med Ed law that directly educates medical professionals through training materials from the state’s Department of Health, with input from the state’s attorney general, medical professionals, and legal experts.

In Florida, the Agency for Health Care Administration released guidance after the state’s heartbeat law went into effect, emphasizing that doctors still had the ability to treat pregnant women facing medical emergencies. The agency also sent letters to every doctor in the state, launched a website, and more.

In Nebraska, the memo emphasized, the state health department issued a health alert to clarify it’s 12 week protections for the unborn when pro-abortion groups ran ads confusing the public about when pregnant women could receive care.

And in Texas, the state medical board adopted rules to protect women under the state’s life at conception law, SBA Pro-Life America emphasized, noting that Texas’s new rule highlighted the importance of doctors relying on their reasonable medical judgment and noting that the law “allows for intervention when a serious situation is foreseeable.”

“We urge state leaders to act in 2025 to initiate Med Ed solutions to protect the pregnant women of their state,” the memo stated. “We hope these efforts will gain bipartisan support as they did in South Dakota and in Arizona, where a Democrat attorney general made clear that women can continue to receive care under their 15-week law. Protecting pregnant women should not be a contentious issue. Republican or Democrat, pro-life or pro-choice – we should all agree that putting women in danger for political purposes is wrong and should be put to an end.”

Mary Margaret Olohan is a senior reporter for The Daily Wire, and the author of Detrans: True Stories of Escaping the Gender Ideology Cult.