Conservatives Are Coming for Prenatal Tests
2.28.25
Click to skip ahead: Conservatives’ Next Target looks at the attacks on prenatal testing. In the States, news from New Jersey, Ohio, Wyoming, and Florida. AED at BPL has video of my Brooklyn Public Library event. In the Nation, some quick hits. Care Denied, the latest on sepsis rates in Texas, and a resource for teenagers.
Conservatives’ Next Target: Prenatal Tests
Back in 2023, I wrote an investigation about the anti-abortion movement’s quiet campaign to force women to carry doomed pregnancies to term. This wasn’t just about banning abortions for fatal fetal abnormalities—which would be bad enough. It was a broad, calculated assault on legislation, medical norms, and patient care.
One of the most chilling aspects of this effort is the attack on prenatal testing. Conservatives don’t just want to ban abortion; they want to stop pregnant people from even learning about fetal abnormalities. After all, what better way to force someone to carry a nonviable pregnancy than by preventing them from finding out their diagnosis in the first place?
Similarly, anti-abortion groups have ramped up disinformation about prenatal testing—questioning its accuracy, exaggerating risks from procedures like amnios, and painting the 'prenatal testing industry' as a big business only interested in money. They’ve also lobbied to restrict access to these tests altogether.
I’m sorry to say that I’ve noticed that rhetoric ramping up over the last few months, with conservatives leaning even harder on lies about the supposed dangers of prenatal testing. Focus on the Family’s publication, the Daily Citizen, for example, published a piece this week declaring that “In-Utero Diagnosis Is Being Used to Push Abortion.”
The article cited a so-called ‘study’ from the National Catholic Bioethics Center, which claims patients diagnosed with fatal fetal abnormalities feel pressured into abortion. Both the study and The Daily Citizen—which put terms like “fatal fetal anomalies” and “non-viability” in scare quotes—insist that “there is no universally accepted definition of a lethal or fatal fetal anomaly” and that such diagnoses “aren’t reliable.”
Their proposed solution? They want doctors to stop using terms like “fatal,” “lethal,” and “terminal” entirely—arguing that if a physician calls a condition lethal, “it becomes lethal.” In other words, they want health care providers to lie to patients.
This is exactly what I warned about in 2023 when anti-abortion groups were pushing doctors to say “pre-viable” instead of “non-viable,” and “potentially life-limiting” instead of “fatal.”
I feel depressingly confident that we’ll see even more efforts like this soon—especially as infant deaths ramp up because of laws that force women to carry doomed pregnancies.
Read more about conservatives’ campaign to turn women into ‘walking coffins’ below, in my column about the new mommy wars. The short version? We’re about to see women pitted against each other over abortion—specifically, those who end nonviable or medically fraught pregnancies, and those who choose to carry to term:
In the States
Wyoming’s only full-service abortion clinics stopped providing care today, after the governor enacted a law mandating that clinics be licensed as surgical centers. While Wellspring Health Access won’t be providing abortions, they will be open and taking calls from patients. President Julie Burkhart said she wanted to make clear the clinic was “not abandoning people.”
In fact, Wellspring and others filed a lawsuit just hours after Gov. Mark Gordon signed the TRAP Law targeting abortion providers. I’ll keep you updated as I find out more, but in the meantime I know our thoughts are with Wyoming providers and patients today.
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy wants to launch a multi-million state campaign to recruit health care providers considering leaving anti-abortion states. As you know, doctors, nurses, and other providers are fleeing states with abortion bans in droves; they understandably don’t want to live and practice in a state where they could be jailed for giving their patients the standard of care.
Gov. Murphy says he wants $2 million of the state budget to go towards covering moving costs and loan forgiveness programs for health care providers willing to relocate to New Jersey. Under the program, the state’s health department would push out an outreach campaign targeted to medical students, residents, doctors, and even hospital administrators.
“If these health care heroes are going to be targeted by politicians elsewhere, we will always stand up for them and their ability to provide care,” Gov. Murphy said. New Mexico did something similar last year: In addition to taking out full-page ads out in Texas newspapers, the state bought billboards in the Medical Center area of Houston:
Florida is at it again: Republicans are trying to change the state’s wrongful death law to include embryos and fetuses. The Civil Liability for the Wrongful Death of an Unborn Child Act would allow people to sue for the wrongful death of an “unborn child,” effectively codifying fetal personhood in Florida.
If that sounds familiar, it’s because Florida Republicans tried to do the same exact thing last year. The effort failed largely thanks to public outrage: The state GOP made the mistake of pushing the legislation just as the country was fuming over the Alabama Supreme Court decision that said frozen embryos were “extrauterine children.”
Apparently Republicans think they have a better shot this time around. Something else interesting: As we’ve seen with so many other anti-choice legislators, the lawmakers behind this effort are pretending their bill isn’t about reproductive rights at all. Rep. Jenna Persons-Mulicka said the bill “has nothing to do with abortion.”
But as Kylie Cheung at Jezebel points out, when a Democratic legislator tried to introduce an amendment that would ensure the bill didn’t apply to abortion care, Republicans blocked the effort. It’s almost as if this is solely about abortion.
Ohio Democrats have introduced legislation to repeal abortion restrictions and put state law in line with Issue 1, the pro-choice amendment voters adopted in 2023. House Bill 128 would do away with mandates like TRAP laws and unnecessary ultrasounds.
Ohio Rep. Anita Somani told the Ohio Capital Journal, “I would hope that all of the stories of women dying because of restrictive abortion laws would help people understand what these restrictive abortion laws do.”
As you likely know, Ohio Republicans have been pushing back on any attempts to make abortion more available in the state, despite the will of voters. That’s not a surprise, of course—especially considering the unprecedented attacks on democracy in the state in the lead-up to the ballot measure vote.
Quick hits:
More on the Montana ‘trafficking’ bill that was tabled this week;
Ms. magazine on the Wisconsin Supreme Court race;
An Illinois Republican introduced legislation to ban abortion (obviously, it’s not going anywhere);
And city council members in San Antonio, Texas are trying to allocate money for abortion-related travel.
AED at BPL
I had the chance to talk to Planned Parenthood president Alexis McGill Johnson at the Brooklyn Public Library recently. If you came to the event, thank you! If you missed it, you can watch our conversation online here.
In the Nation
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has launched a campaign to raise the alarm on how abortion content is being removed or suppressed by social media platforms;
Glamour has a breakdown of the draconian anti-abortion bills proposed so far in 2025;
The 19th asks what Trump will do on EMTALA, the federal law requiring hospitals to provide life-saving abortion care;
And the Center for Reproductive Rights has been tracking new Trump appointees and their background on abortion rights at “Repro Red Flags: Agency Watch.”
Care Denied
PBS NewsHour has an important (and shareable) segment on the rise of sepsis among pregnant women in Texas. Earlier this month, ProPublica found that the deadly infection had spiked by 50% among women hospitalized for second-trimester pregnancy loss. Watch reporter Lizzie Presser talk about her investigation:
One of the groups that has been most targeted with abortion restrictions is teenagers, so I was glad to see this Teen Vogue profile of INeedAnA.com—along with an interview with its founder, Rebecca Nall:
“We've built a really personalized, and calm, and mobile friendly, and gender-inclusive user experience, on top of being the most comprehensive and updated database of abortion providers. When a user comes to our website, we ask them where they're located, what the first day of their last period was, and whether or not they're a minor. We don't collect any of that data. It only stays on the user's front-end. It was designed that way to protect people's privacy from the beginning.”
The site even has a guide for teenagers on how to access abortion, so please check it out and share with the teens in your life. In a moment when young people are under attack, it’s nice to have proactive resources like this.
Nailed it again. If we don’t know what’s wrong with an embryo or fetus, we’ll continue a pregnancy that may risk our own health and future and is filled with pain and suffering. It works the other way, too. There are some conditions that can be corrected in utero or for which doctors and families can prepare for in time for delivery. Perhaps those pregnancies could have had better outcomes with MEDICAL KNOWLEDGE!
SC state Rep. John McCravy, sponsor of all the abortion ban bills, says the abortion exception for fatal fetal anomalies allows us to “kill sick babies.” As if a fetus without a skull or brain is simply sick.