Major OBGYN professional group says role of abortion is ‘settled science’
Jeremiah Poff
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EXCLUSIVE — The nation’s foremost professional organization for OBGYNs told a group of anti-abortion doctors that support for abortion in the profession was not up for debate.
The American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists had invited the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists to a debate at Duke University hosted by the Kenan Institute for Ethics’s Civil Discourse Project on whether or not “induced abortion” should be considered to be good medical practice.
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But in a statement responding to the invitation, which was shared with Washington Examiner, the national OBGYN professional organization’s president, Dr. Maureen Phipps, told the group of anti-abortion doctors that it “will not debate abortion as an essential part of reproductive health care.
“Rather,” Phipps wrote, “we will continue to affirm that the role of abortion in our patients’ lives is settled science.”
In an interview with the Washington Examiner, AAPLOG President Dr. Christina Francis said the organization’s response was notable because the foremost professional group for OBGYNs was essentially stating that support for abortion was not up for discussion in the profession, even though the vast majority of OBGYNs do not provide abortions.
“Stating that this is settled science ignores the fact that the vast majority of OBGYNs do not perform elective abortion,” Francis said. “But it also clearly ignores the vast majority of the medical evidence out there that shows that elective abortions do not improve the health outcomes of our patients, and in many cases, actively worsen the health outcomes. What ACOG is trying to do is make it appear that all OBGYNs feel this way, when that’s very clearly not the case.”
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists did not respond to a series of questions from the Washington Examiner about what the organization considers to be settled science or if it believes that doctors who oppose abortion have a place in the profession.
The organization includes a guide on its website for reporters on what kind of language it should use when writing about abortion. The guide says reporters should avoid using terms such as “elective abortion” or “fetal heartbeat.”
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Francis told the Washington Examiner that someone who believes “settled science” can apply to most things in the medical field “probably need to get out of medicine.
“Saying something is settled science hearkens back to people being so confident that the Earth was flat that they considered that settled science,” Francis said, “and the only way that we discovered that that wasn’t the case was through someone questioning that narrative, questioning that status quo, and looking for better answers.”