Calculated Cruelty (Part III)
Calling nonviable pregnancies 'disabled children'
I’m pretty hard to shock. Doing this work every day can make you jaded, and when it comes to anti-abortion hi-jinx, I feel like I’ve seen it all. That was until yesterday, when I came across one of the most unconscionable headlines I’ve seen in 20 years of writing. In a piece outlining why women should be forced to carry nonviable pregnancies to term, anti-abortion activists proclaimed, “Disabled Lives Matter.”
That’s right, women who end lethal pregnancies are “discriminating against people with disabilities.”
I’ve reported on this kind of language before. We’ve read in it places like Fox News, for example, where exceptions for fatal fetal abnormalities are described as “abortion exceptions for unborn babies with disabilities.” We’ve even seen it used in response to Kate Cox’s story, with anti-abortion activists claiming she “murdered” her “disabled” child.1
Rhetoric like this isn’t just a horrific appropriation of disability rights, but a real and deliberate cruelty directed at those in the middle of traumatic health and life crises. I’ll use the word again: unconscionable.
Unfortunately, this language isn’t an anomaly or a one-off offense—it’s part of a much broader strategy that I’ve been tracking for months.
In October, I uncovered a quiet but well-funded conservative campaign to force women to carry nonviable pregnancies to term. Launched by a coalition of some of the country’s most powerful anti-abortion groups, this initiative is dedicated to eradicating exceptions for fatal fetal abnormalities. In states where that exception remains, the goal is to pressure and trick women into remaining pregnant—even when there’s no chance for the fetus’ survival.
Read Part I of this ongoing investigation here:
Conservatives are desperate to keep this campaign under wraps—especially after Cox’s story garnered so much national media attention and sympathy. In a moment when Americans are already horrified by abortion bans, Republicans can’t afford to let voters find out that they’re working overtime to turn women into ‘walking coffins’.
That’s why the groups behind this effort are hiding behind language like ‘prenatal diagnosis counseling’ or ‘perinatal hospice care’—manipulating women in their most vulnerable life moments under the guise of offering real help. Referring to fetuses with lethal conditions as “disabled children” is similar; they want to use language that sounds credible and medical.
This effort to shroud anti-abortion cruelty has already made it into legislation; bills in multiple states use all of these terms. And despite Republicans’ promises that the legislation will help women who’ve been given devastating diagnoses, it actually only compounds their suffering.
After all, these mandates would force patients with lethal pregnancies to sit through biased and shame-based counseling with anti-abortion activists claiming to be experts. These so-called ‘prenatal counselors’ have not only been trained to tell women that they can’t trust prenatal tests and that they might be ending a healthy pregnancy—but that even if the fetus’ condition is fatal, giving birth to a dead or dying baby is emotionally beneficial.
That’s the rub: anti-abortion groups trying to force patients to carry nonviable pregnancies to term need Americans to believe that it’s in women’s best interest. Voters are already horrified by what abortion bans have done to women. The only way anti-choice lawmakers and lobbyists can move forward with an initiative this extreme is by hiding the truth—not just with innocuous sounding language, but with fake studies.
I’ve written before about the anti-abortion movement’s tactic of trying to seem scientifically credible. Because their claims about abortion have been widely debunked for years, activists and lawmakers have spent a lot of time and money to establish their own ‘research’ organizations and push out their own ‘experts’.
Groups like the Charlotte Lozier Institute, for example, provide so-called researchers to testify in favor of abortion bans, and have published a glut of dubious studies on everything from why abortion is never necessary to save someone’s life, the to the supposed-danger of abortion medication. (Two of those studies on mifepristone were just retracted by their publisher.)
In fact, you can usually tell what the anti-abortion movement is going to target next based on whatever new ‘study’ they have coming out. And this week, the conservative Family Research Council released a study showing that women with lethal pregnancies benefit from ‘perinatal hospice’ services. (One of the study’s authors? The same guy who wrote that “disabled lives matter” in support of forcing women to carry doomed pregnancies to term.)
Now, perinatal hospice services—those provided by experts and medical professionals, not crisis pregnancy centers—can be a vital service when offered to patients as one of a wholistic set of options, including abortion. But anti-choice legislators and groups are suggesting that these services are women’s only option.
I’ll have more on this particular study soon—it’s already clear that there are issues with it. For one, the ‘researchers’ don’t provide their data, just cherry-picked statistics that back up anti-abortion beliefs. They also deliberately leave out key facts: For example, the study’s authors say “a significant minority (36 percent) said that the experience of carrying the pregnancy to term made them more ‘prolife’,” but they don’t tell us how many women reported becoming more pro-choice.
Also, the services women found most helpful—like the 89% of women who were glad to receive photos or mementos—can be given to patients no matter how their pregnancy ends. But anti-choice groups don’t want women who have abortions to be able to access those same keepsakes. Surely if the point was helping and comforting women, you would want this service offered to anyone who wanted it, right?
But as you all know by now—the cruelty is the point. That’s why these groups want women to carry doomed pregnancies to term, that’s why they won’t offer abortion patients anything other than shame, and that’s why they’re using language about ‘disabled children’.
It’s always been about punishment.
For more on the anti-abortion campaign to force patients to carry lethal pregnancies to term, read Part I and Part II.
I refuse to link to these stories.
My brother was born with a very rare condition that affects 1 in 100MM men. He was severely disabled: couldn’t walk, talk, or feed himself. His body produced uric acid - and he suffered tremendously from the day he was born until his untimely death at 7 years old. His care bankrupted our family. My father became an alcoholic, my mother was absent from grief. I raised myself from the age of 13. These people have no idea, no concept of the money it costs or the intensity it creates. To this day, I never had children because I was terrified of history repeating. My mother told me that had she known, she would have terminated the pregnancy - because no parent or family should be forced to have a front row seat to their child’s suffering.
In a late in life career change, I worked as a medical assistant, primarily in abortion care. A few patients’ charts were flagged with a discrete post it that said FA (fetal anomaly). We were very tender with them, had ink pads and parchment paper for footprints, made genetic testing available for those who wished to delve deeper. The doctors would break protocol to allow partners in the procedure. It was, and is, part of the continuum of care. To subject these people to a “maternity” charade is beyond mere cruelty to sadism.