Those who support abortion want Pro-Lifers to feel guilty for doing what is right: protecting innocent children.
A recent ProPublica article attempts to blame Pro-Life laws for a reported rise in deaths from ectopic pregnancy. This claim is misleading. Texas law clearly allows life-saving care for women, and the real danger to women is being ignored—abortion pills.
An ectopic pregnancy occurs when a preborn child implants outside the uterus, most often in the fallopian tube. Sadly, there is no way for the child to survive. In these tragic cases, the situation is not a question of whether the child will live, but whether the mother will face life-threatening complications if not treated.
Texas law recognizes this reality. The law allows physicians to act to save the mother’s life. These cases are not considered abortion because the intent is not to end the life of the child, but to preserve the life of the mother. Even before the fall of Roe v. Wade, Texas clarified that treatment for ectopic pregnancy and miscarriage is not abortion.
In 2025, Texas passed the Life of the Mother Act to further reinforce these protections. The law clarified that doctors do not need to wait until a condition becomes immediately life-threatening, and expanded the definition of ectopic pregnancy. If a serious risk is foreseeable, physicians are allowed to act. It also ensured that doctors and hospital legal teams are trained to properly apply the law.
Despite these clear protections, ProPublica claims that confusion in the law is causing delays in care. This is not supported by the law itself. The Texas Medical Board has made clear that physicians who follow evidence-based medicine and standard emergency protocols face minimal legal risk. The problem is not the law, but misinformation about the law.
That misinformation has consequences. When liberal media outlets misrepresent legal protections, they create unnecessary fear among physicians and hospital administrators. This confusion can lead to hesitation in providing care, which puts women at risk. Blaming Pro-Life laws only worsens the problem.
At the same time, ProPublica downplays a growing and serious threat to women’s health: abortion pills.
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Abortion advocates are actively shipping abortion pills into states like Texas that have chosen to protect Life. These drugs are often obtained online, without any in-person visit, ultrasound, or physician evaluation. Women may not even know they have an ectopic pregnancy before taking these pills.
Telehealth abortion pills are extremely dangerous—not only to babies they aim to kill, but to the women who take them. Abortion pills do not treat ectopic pregnancy. If a woman takes these drugs while experiencing an ectopic pregnancy, the condition can go undiagnosed and untreated until it becomes life-threatening.
The current situation did not happen overnight. When abortion pills were first approved in 2000, they came with strict safety requirements, including multiple in-person doctor visits. Even those safeguards cannot eliminate the dangers of abortion pills, but they at least provided opportunities for doctors to identify serious risks and protect women. Over time, the Obama and Biden administrations removed these safeguards. By 2021, abortion pills could be mailed without an in-person visit, making them available in every zip code. Abortion pills should not be legal, but until they are no longer available, restoring basic medical safeguards is a necessary step toward protecting women. Sadly, Republican leadership has refused to reinstate even these protections.
As a result, abortion pills are now the most common method of abortion in America. At the same time, oversight has decreased. The FDA does not require comprehensive reporting of complications, relying instead on limited self-reporting. This lack of accountability makes it harder to track the full impact on women’s health.
ProPublica claims that online screening is enough to protect women. This claim can be traced back to a 2004 study tracking the prevalence of ectopic pregnancy after the administration of abortion pills (long before pills by mail). There is also a 2021 study from the UK where women seeking abortion pills had a phone or video call with a doctor, and those deemed at risk were made to attend an in-person visit.
But simple questionnaires cannot reliably detect serious conditions like ectopic pregnancy or other risk factors. It is made worse by abortion pill vendors encouraging women to lie about taking these drugs, leading to complications being reported as a miscarriage rather than an abortion side effect. This does not protect women or provide them with clear, needed care, but protects the abortion industry from scrutiny and makes normal pregnancies appear more dangerous than they truly are.
This approach puts women in danger. It removes the medical safeguards that were originally required for a reason.
Once again, abortion advocates are using women as human shields to push for more abortion. Instead of addressing the risks posed by unregulated abortion pills, they shift blame onto laws that protect both women and preborn children.
Texas law is clear. Women facing life-threatening conditions, including ectopic pregnancy, are allowed to receive critical care. When doctors fail to provide appropriate treatment, the issue should be addressed through medical accountability, not by weakening laws that protect preborn babies.
Expanding abortion will not save lives. It will only increase the number of women exposed to unsafe practices and the number of babies killed in the womb.
Media narratives that misrepresent Pro-Life laws put women at risk of death. They create confusion, discourage proper medical care, and distract from the real risks facing women today. Women deserve honest information and quality medical care. They are not pawns to be used in political messaging.
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