Republicans Want Women to Have C-Sections Instead of Emergency Abortions

A Wisconsin bill introduced today is part of a broader trend

Don’t ever let them tell you that the cruelty and punishment isn’t the point.

Today, Wisconsin Republicans introduced a 14-week abortion ban that would only allow for care when women’s lives are at risk. But even in those emergency cases, doctors wouldn’t actually be able to give their patients abortions—instead, women would be forced to undergo c-sections or vaginal deliveries.

Assembly Bill 975 dictates that unless it would increase a woman’s risk of dying or cause “irreversible physical impairment of a major bodily function,” doctors providing emergency care to those 14 or more weeks into pregnancy must “terminate the pregnancy in the manner that, in reasonable medical judgment, provides the best opportunity for the unborn child to survive.”

We’ve seen this language before, and we know exactly what it means: forced vaginal labor and cesarean sections. In fact, Wisconsin Republicans tried to pass a similar bill last year. Senate Bill 343 redefined abortion to exclude procedures “not designed or intended to kill the unborn child, including an early induction or cesarean section performed due to a medical emergency.” Republicans claimed that the bill would “clarify” the state’s abortion ban, and make it easier for doctors to help women with life-threatening pregnancies.

In truth, the legislation would have forced doctors to traumatize and endanger women whose health and lives were already at risk. After all, there’s quite a big difference between a ten minute abortion and major abdominal surgery or a vaginal delivery.

Why, then, would anyone support such legislation? Why put women through hell when their pregnancies aren’t even viable to begin with? As I said at the Senate briefing this week—none of it makes sense unless you understand that their goal has never been to help women or babies. It’s about forced pregnancy and childbirth, period.

This specific mandate, however, is part of a calculated anti-abortion strategy that goes far beyond Wisconsin. Anti-choice groups are desperate to divorce abortion from health care. They want to convince Americans that abortion is never necessary to protect or save someone’s life and health, so for years they’ve been pushing legislation that would force women to undergo c-sections or vaginal labor in lieu of safer and easier abortions.

The Charlotte Lozier Institute, for example—one of the nation’s largest and best-funded anti-abortion groups—explicitly recommends that treatment for emergency abortions “be done by labor induction or c-section,” which they call “medically standard.” The group also makes this claim in defense of abortion bans, which they say do allow pregnant women’s lives to be saved, but that “induction or cesarean section may be a more appropriate method of separation” because it “shows greater respect for the human dignity of the fetus, even if she is too young or sick to survive.”

Respect for women’s human dignity isn’t mentioned. That’s because it’s not something they’re concerned about. They’d rather women undergo unnecessary surgeries and traumatic deliveries than admit abortions are sometimes necessary to save a person’s health and life.

I wrote a bit about this disturbing trend in The New York Times, and just how far the anti-abortion movement is willing to go in order to stop treating abortion as healthcare. I reported, for example, how the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists recommends that when women have a massive placental abruption, they should be made to labor for up to 24 hours, and be treated with blood transfusions rather than be given an abortion—all in order to deliver “an intact fetal body.”

What’s even more horrifying is that these efforts are working. Idaho’s law dictates that doctors ending life-threatening pregnancies must do so in a way that provides “the best opportunity for the unborn child to survive,” aka cesareans or vaginal deliveries. And a Louisiana woman whose water broke just 16 weeks into her pregnancy was made to spend hours delivering a nonviable fetus rather than being given an abortion. The woman not only hemorrhaged and lost close to a liter of blood, but her doctor reported in an affidavit, “she was screaming—not from pain but from the emotional trauma she was experiencing.”

They would rather women suffer—horribly and needlessly—than be given easy, safe and appropriate abortion care. How is this pro-family? How is this pro-life?

In Wisconsin, Democratic Gov. Tony Evers said today that he will veto Republicans’ bill. I’m grateful for that, of course. But we know that this legislation not going anywhere doesn’t make it any less dangerous: Republicans are telling us, again and again, exactly the future they want for women.

State Sen. Kelda Roys tells me, “in a way this bill is more heinous than the blanket bans” because “it underscores that the cruelty is intended.” Republicans have thought carefully about their language. “They know that women are going to die and be harmed, and they’ve chosen to be even more brutal and dangerous,” Sen. Roys says.

Not to mention, offensive: Wisconsin Republicans are going to hold a hearing for the bill on Monday—the anniversary of Roe v. Wade.