The anti-abortion extremists at the Media Research Center have been so successful as spreading their narrative that they now have to do cleanup for it. Because miscarriage also results in a dead fetus and the procedures used to treat it are the same as an abortion, the MRC has been trying to distinguish between the two by portraying abortion as a thought crime. Chief anti-abortion extremist Tierin-Rose Mandelburg got mad at Chrissy Teigen over saying what she originally considered to be a miscarriage was actually an abortion, and she was also angry at people who pointed out that the miscarriage that happened to anti-abortion activist Jessa Duggar Seewald could also be considered an abortion, given that the procedure she underwent as part of the miscarriage is exactly the same as an abortion. So, the MRC has been lashing out over people pointing out the fact that anti-abortion laws endanger proper care during and after a miscarriage. For instance, a June 2023 post by Alex Christy complained:
MSNBC’s Joy Reid held a literal roundtable panel discussion on Tuesday’s The ReidOut to mourn the one-year anniversary of the demise of Roe v. Wade. Panelists included Vice President Kamala Harris who not only naturally told MSNBC’s they wanted to hear, but in a role reversal became the interviewer when she told OB-GYN Dr. Ivey that pro-lifers are making it impossible to treat miscarriages.
At one point in the discussion, Reid declared that instead of urging her children to exercise some self-control, she would not let them attend college in a red state, “If my children were — they’re out of college now, but if they were still choosing colleges, I would not let them choose a red state, I’m just being honest. I wouldn’t let them choose a state that banned abortion.”
Christy then insisted that Texas’ anti-abortion law really did provide for miscarriage care:
Texas law is very clear. It states that “An act is not an abortion if the act is done with the intent to… remove a dead, unborn child whose death was caused by spontaneous abortion.” “Spontaneous abortion” is just the medical term for a miscarriage.
[…]Texas’s law has an “exception for medical emergencies” section and elsewhere states that a medical emergency does not necessarily need to be life-threatening. What you can’t do in Texas is simply abort a baby in the name of convenience like Reid wants. MSNBC should stop spreading fake news.
In practice, though, Texas’ law is still murky to the point that doctors fear giving proper miscarriage care lest they be charged with a crime. And the MRC is a fan of that murkiness and that fear; last fall, it cheered that the Texas Supreme Court forbade a woman from legally abort her “20-Week-Old Preborn Daughter” — which had deformities and would be unlikely to survive outside of the womb and endanger the mother’s life and future fertility — in the state, then tried to shame the mother for going out of state to get the needed procedure. Remember, shaming women is a part of the arsenal of anti-abortion activists. It wasn’t until after that case got publicized that the Texas Medical Board felt moved to offer a little clarity on what medical exceptions qualify under the state’s anti-abortion law.
Meanwhile, Tim Graham played the thought-crime card in a Sept. 24 post:
On Thursday night’s All Things Considered, NPR aired what someone might call a heart-tugging pro-life story. But NPR wouldn’t. They are “pro-choice,” meaning that an unborn baby is a loved human being when that’s what the mother decides it is. When the woman decides it’s like a tumor that must be removed, there is no humanity to be identified.
Anchor Mary Louise Kelly presented the latest part of NPR’s series “My Unsung Hero” from the Hidden Brain podcast team, “about people whose kindness left a lasting impression on someone else.”
Heather Harper told of her fifth pregnancy in 2016, which ended in a miscarriage. “My doctor had me come in for an ultrasound and my worst fears were confirmed when we saw on the screen, our little baby with no movement in his heart,” Harper recalled. “I had to be induced and deliver his body.”
[…]That’s a really touching story of how many people who suffer the loss of an unborn child never forget the pain of losing a human. On the other hand, NPR has typically championed abortion as a precious right.
Last November, our culture analyst Tierin-Rose Mandelburg reported on NPR playing audio of an actual abortion:
The implication, of course, being that the mother deserved all the scorn and contempt Graham and Mandelburg could muster.
Christy returned in a Jan. 3 post to complain that “The View” pointed out the potentially dangerous restrictions in the Texas anti-abortion law:
The Wednesday edition of ABC’s The View kicked off with a discussion of a recent federal court ruling that left a Texas pro-life law intact which did set well with the assembled quintet as the fearmongering went from accusations that women will die, that doctors will have to violate the Hippocratic Oath, that women will not be able to get treatment for ectopic pregnancies, to pro-lifers being upset that women are having sex outside of marriage.
[…]Texas never banned treatment for ectopic pregnancies—even the Texas Tribune grudgingly admitted that in 2022—but just to be crystal clear in a way even The View can understand, the state recently passed a law that took effect in September explicitly declaring that treating an ectopic pregnancy is not an abortion.
In fact, the new law — an tacit admission that Christy’s earlier insistence that the “Texas law is very clear” wasn’t exactly true — still allows for doctors to be prosecuted for such treatment, which acts as a deterrent to proper medical care.
Elise Ehrhard spent a Feb. 22 post complaining that a TV show pointed out the ambiguity:
Last night, Chicago Med promoted the dangerous lie that women who miscarry might get arrested and be denied medical care in a pro-life state.
This insidious falsehood has been pushed in liberal establishment media to deliberately create fear in women who do not know the truth about state pro-life laws, none of which ban treatment for miscarriage.
In the episode, “I Make a Promise, I Will Never Leave You,” a pregnant woman named Kaitlin (Katie Anne Moy) arrives at the hospital in a state of septic shock after a long trip from an unnamed rural area. Her husband Eric (Rammel Chan) tells the OB/Gyn, Dr. Hannah Asher (Jessy Schram), that Kaitlin’s water broke at 15 weeks gestation, but doctors were “afraid” to treat her and “she didn’t wanna get arrested.”
[…]This plotline is the sort of fearmongering peddled by abortion activists to scare pregnant woman. Not a single abortion ban in the United States prevents treating a pregnant woman in this situation. Abortion activists and their media fluffers push this disinformation so often that it is they, not pro-lifers, who place women’s lives in danger by creating false hysteria.
Again, they aren’t “lies” or “disinformation” or “false hysteria.” Anti-abortion laws in several states are indisputably vague on miscarriages, and the case of the Texas woman who was denied an abortion for a deformed fetus shows that women can and will be prosecuted for having an thought-crime abortion. Still Ehrhard concluded by huffing:
Sadly, there may be women who see this episode and falsely believe such a storyline could happen to them. It’s cruel to mislead women this way, but Hollywood has been working hand in hand with the abortion movement for decades to deceive women. Last night’s episode was just the latest manipulation.
If Ehrhard and her fellow anti-abortion activists wanted to eliminate the possibility of such alleged “manipulation,” they could make sure that state laws clarify the medical exceptions and protect doctors and mothers who undergo needed procedures. But they won’t do that — they need the fear and ambiguity to advance their narratives. And that makes anti-abortion activists the manipulators.