#Charlotte Lozier Institute

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Jessica Valenti at Abortion, Every Day:

Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita says that abortion reports aren’t medical records, and that they should be available to the public in the same way that death certificates are. While Rokita pushes for public reports, New Hampshire lawmakers are fighting over a Republican bill to collect and publish abortion data, and U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville has introduced a bill that would require the Department of Veterans Affairs to collect and provide data on the abortions performed at its facilities. Just last week, Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly vetoed legislation that would have required abortion providers to ask patients invasive and detailed questions about why they were getting abortions, and provide those answers in a report to the state.   All of these moves are part of a broader strategy that weaponizes abortion data to stigmatize patients and to prosecute providers. And while most states have some kind of abortion reporting law, legislators are increasingly trying to expand the scope of the data, and use it to dismantle women’s privacy.

Rokita’s ‘advisory opinion’, for example, argues that abortion data collected by the state isn’t private medical information and that in order to prosecute abortion providers, he needs detailed reports to be public. In the past, the state has issued reports on each individual abortion. But as a result of Indiana’s ban, there are only a handful of abortions being performed in the state. As such, the Department of Health decided to release aggregate reports to protect patient confidentiality, noting that individual reports could be “reverse engineered to identify patients—especially in smaller communities.” Rokita—best known for his harassment campaign against Dr. Caitlin Bernard, the abortion provider who treated a 10-year-old rape victim—is furious over the change. He says the only way he can arrest and prosecute people is if he gets tips from third parties, presumably anti-abortion groups that scour the abortion reports for alleged wrongdoing. He wants the state to either restore public individual reports, or to allow his office to go after abortion providers without a complaint by a third party. (Meaning, he could pursue investigations against doctors and hospitals without cause.)

Most troubling, though, is his insistence that women’s private abortion information isn’t private at all. Even though individual reports could be used to identify patients, Rokita claims that the terminated pregnancy reports [TPRs] aren’t medical records, and that they “do not belong to the patient.” [...] As I flagged last month, abortion reporting is becoming more and more important to anti-choice lawmakers and groups. Project 2025 includes an entire section on abortion reporting, for example, and major anti-abortion organizations like the Charlotte Lozier Institute and Americans United for Life want to mandate more detailed reports.

[...]  As is the case with funding for crisis pregnancy centers and legislation about ‘prenatal counseling’ or ‘perinatal hospice care’, Republicans are advancing abortion reporting mandates under the guise of protecting women. And in a moment when voters are furious over abortion bans, anti-choice lawmakers and organizations very much need Americans to believe that lie. We have to make clear that state GOPs aren’t just banning abortion, but enacting any and every punitive policy that they can—especially those that strip us of our medical privacy. After all, it was less than a year ago that 19 Republican Attorneys General wanted the ability to investigate the out-of-state medical records of abortion patients. Did we really think they were going to stop there?

@jessicavalenti writes a solid column in her Abortion, Every Day blog that the GOP's agenda to erode patient privacy of those seeking abortions is a dangerous one.

[prettyvintageafternoon]

Hello, everyone.

This is a friendly reminder that cesarean sections are not standard care for miscarriage management, and anybody who is saying that c-sections are safer than abortion procedures is spreading medical misinformation.

The people who do perpetuate lies like this are trying to normalize unnecessary c-sections being done on patients instead of abortions because of headlines like these.

Doctors are beginning to do c-sections on their patients instead of conducting abortion procedures in order to avoid liability in abortion-prohibitive American states.

That is not normal.

C-sections are major abdominal surgeries. They are not just "give birth vagina-free" solutions, especially not for a patient who is about to die from childbirth. C-sections are last resorts for a pregnant patient to successfully give birth. Period.

The only people who suggest otherwise are anti-abortion groups, like The Charlotte Lozier Institute.

Are c-sections always bad? No.

Obstetric medicine has improved and that is a good thing.

Does that mean that it's okay to suggest a c-section for a patient whose situation does not demand it? Absolutely not.

[secularprolifeconspectus]

Hey I have an upcoming debate

Can you give me some GOOD scientifically backed arguments against abortion with sources?

Tysm <3

Here's one I wrote for PAAU.

All the sources should be hyperlinked.

My concern is that I don't know if by "scientifically-backed" you simply mean its evidentiary claims are verified, or if you're suggesting that science alone can answer whether elective induced abortion is ethical. Because it can't, and that's a common bad assumption I've seen both pro-choice and pro-life advocates make. You must ground your argument in philosophy.

That being said, science is on our side. The best repositories of research and data on abortion I can think of are The Abortion Debate Index by Secular Pro-Life and Charlotte Lozier Institute.

My blog is a resource for abortion-critical theory; if you read through it, you'll learn lots about what's wrong with feticide, but not necessarily why feticide is wrong. If you need more help explaining the latter, Equal Rights Institute is awesome.

And then there's the wonderful intersection of science and philosophy that biologist Maureen Condic inhabits; here's three (1, 2, 3) of my favorite articles by her. She can answer in-depth why life begins at fertilization; however, I find her explanation of personhood to have holes. Fortunately, I've got a masterpost of philosophers who have written excellent articles on that.

So just remember: it is foundational to any argument against feticide that we establish a shared understanding that embryos are distinct living human organisms. However, THAT IS NEVER THE END OF THE ARGUMENT. Just because a human is alive doesn't necessarily mean they're a person, and while the burden of proof does lie on the pro-abortionists to defend why prenates are the sole class exceptional to the rule that all humans are people, we must be prepared to explain how personhood begins at fertilization. That is ultimately the anti-abortion argument; it is necessary to defeat bad-faith arguments about bodily autonomy, and to make any credible argument that prenates have equal rights to protection and care. Our ethical authority depends on this.

And if you do need help with autonomy arguments, I've already responded to those here, here, and here. Hope that helps!

[mariacallous]

Scientific publisher Sage Journals has retracted three papers on abortion—including a controversial 2021 study on mifepristone, the medication at the center of a US legal battle.

The 2021 study found that mifepristone, one of two pills used in a medication abortion, significantly increased the risk of women going to the emergency room following an abortion. The study, along with another retracted paper from 2022, was cited by US District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk in the April 2023 ruling that invalidated the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the drug.

Mifepristone was approved in 2000 by the Food and Drug Administration, the federal agency that evaluates the safety and efficacy of drugs, and has been used by at least 5.9 million women in the US since then. The drug blocks a hormone called progesterone that’s needed for a pregnancy to continue. It’s used alongside another pill, misoprostol, to induce an abortion within 10 weeks of pregnancy.

The three retracted studies were published in the journal Health Services Research and Managerial Epidemiology in 2019, 2021, and 2022. In July 2023, Sage issued an “expression of concern” about the 2021 paper, saying it was launching an investigation into the article.

According to Sage, a reader contacted the journal with concerns about misleading presentations of data in the 2021 article on mifepristone. The person also questioned whether the authors’ affiliations with pro-life advocacy organizations, including the Charlotte Lozier Institute, present conflicts of interest that the authors should have disclosed in the article.

In a retraction notice published on February 5, Sage said an independent reviewer with expertise in statistical analyses evaluated the concerns and concluded that the article's presentation of the data in certain figures leads to an inaccurate conclusion. The reviewer also found that “the composition of the cohort studied has problems that could affect the article's conclusions,” according to Sage.

As part of the publisher’s investigation, Sage said, two subject matter experts conducted an independent post-publication peer review of the three articles and found that they “demonstrate a lack of scientific rigor.” In the 2021 and 2022 articles, the reviewers found problems with the study design and methodology, errors in the authors’ analysis of the data, and misleading presentations of the data. In the 2019 article, the experts identified unsupported assumptions and misleading presentations of the findings.

“The retractions are not scientifically warranted as is easily demonstrable to any trained, objective scientist,” James Studnicki, the lead author on all three studies, told WIRED via email.

Studnicki, the vice president and director of data analytics of the Charlotte Lozier Institute, shared with WIRED a copy of a point-by-point rebuttal he and his coauthors submitted to Sage in response to the retractions.

In the 2021 study on mifepristone, Studnicki and his coauthors used data from Medicaid claims of 423,000 medication and procedural abortions between 1999 and 2015. Of those, over a quarter visited a hospital emergency room within 30 days of the abortion. During the study period, they found that emergency room visits associated with medication abortion rose much faster when compared to rates following a surgical abortion.

In his ruling last year, Kacsmaryk wrote that anti-abortion doctors and medical groups had legal standing to sue over mifepristone’s approval because “they allege adverse events from chemical abortion drugs can overwhelm the medical system and place ‘enormous pressure and stress’ on doctors during emergencies and complications.”

Ushma Upadhyay, a public health social scientist at UC San Francisco who studies medication abortion, says she has had concerns about the 2021 study since it was first published. “In my mind, the largest problem with the paper is that it conflates emergency department visits with serious adverse events,” she says. A serious adverse event related to medication abortion includes requiring a blood transfusion, needing a major surgery, or being admitted to the hospital—none of which the study looked at.

In their response to Sage Journals, the paper’s authors argue that emergency room visits are a “broad proxy indicator” for abortion-related complications. But Upadhyay says it’s to be expected that some people visit the ER after getting a medication abortion, since the pill regimen causes bleeding. Especially since patients often take the medication at home and may not live near an abortion provider, they may go to the ER if they have questions about side effects or to confirm that the abortion was successful, she says.

Decades of research has shown that mifepristone is safe and has a low rate of serious complications. The FDA has recorded 32 deaths following its use but cautions that these events “cannot with certainty be causally attributed to mifepristone” because not enough information is known about the patients’ health and care they received.

The 2022 study, which was based on the same dataset as the 2021 paper, found that patients who have medication abortions and subsequently visit the emergency room are frequently misclassified as miscarriage patients, which conceals abortions. The study was also cited in Kacsmaryk’s ruling last year.

The 2019 paper looked at abortion providers and their hospital admitting privileges—meaning formal agreements between providers and hospitals that allow them to directly admit patients to the hospital. It found that half of abortion providers in Florida lacked such privileges, which the authors argued raises safety concerns about their medical qualifications. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists has said that admitting privileges are not tied to patient care or a clinician’s competence.

After Kacsmaryk’s attempt to reverse mifepristone’s approval in April last year, the US Supreme Court granted a stay to keep the drug available. The high court is expected to hear the case next month. Until then, the drug's future remains uncertain.

[partisan-by-default]

The move worries reproductive justice advocates who say the state’s abortion ban – among the strictest in the US – has placed pregnant women’s lives in jeopardy. The appointment could undermine the committee’s ability to accurately examine the impact of the law on deaths during and in the immediate aftermath of pregnancy, they say.

“This appointment speaks volumes about how seriously certain state leaders are taking the issue of maternal mortality,” said Kamyon Conner, executive director of the Texas Equal Access Fund, an abortion assistance group that advocates for reproductive health equity. “It is another sign that the state is more interested in furthering their anti-abortion agenda than protecting the lives of pregnant Texans.”

Dr Ingrid Skop, a San Antonio-based OB-GYN, has long been vocal about her views on abortion.

Skop serves as vice-president and director of medical affairs for the national anti-abortion research group Charlotte Lozier Institute and is a member of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists. She is also a plaintiff in a US supreme court lawsuit seeking to revoke the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the key abortion drug mifepristone, which she argues is “dangerous” despite years of evidence showing the drug is safe. She has authored a number of research papers that were ultimately retracted for misleading errors.

[mongowheelie]

Meet the anti-abortion group using white coats and research to advance its cause

Flawed research

[nando161mando]

Texas doctor who said nine-year-olds can safely give birth appointed to maternal mortality committee

Skop – who has called the supreme court’s overturning of Roe v Wade “a victory in the battle but not the end of the war” – has argued in favor of forcing rape and incest victims as young as nine or 10 to carry pregnancies to term.

Skop serves as vice-president and director of medical affairs for the national anti-abortion research group Charlotte Lozier Institute and is a member of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists. She is also a plaintiff in a US supreme court lawsuit seeking to revoke the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the key abortion drug mifepristone, which she argues is “dangerous” despite years of evidence showing the drug is safe. She has authored a number of research papers that were ultimately retracted for misleading errors.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Jessica Valenti at Abortion, Every Day:

It can’t be easy for a Republican to read abortion polls these days. I imagine their stomach drops every time a new one comes out. Because while support for abortion rights has always been strong, now it’s downright astronomical: Americans overwhelmingly want abortion to be legal for any reason and available at any point in pregnancy. Even as the GOP tries to grasp onto the hope that voters still want some kind of restriction, more polls arise to burst that bubble—showing that over 80% of Americans don’t want the government to be involved at all. You’d think that when faced with this stark political reality, Republicans might consider changing their abortion policies to be more in line with what the country wants. We know stories of raped children and women going septic don’t move them, but if anything could bring a tear to the GOP’s eye it’s lost elections. Instead, Republicans made a political calculation anyone could have seen coming: they’re trying to stop Americans from voting on abortion. After all, it doesn’t matter what the polls say if voters don’t have a choice to begin with.

[...] These kinds of attacks on democracy are happening across the country. Conservative lawmakers and activists have opened up a Pandora’s box of dirty tricks in every state where abortion is on or heading towards the ballot. [...]

When tricking voters doesn’t work, anti-abortion activists are turning to intimidation. In Montana, pro-choice petitioners report being followed around and videotaped, a tactic meant to scare off anyone considering signing in support. A Florida anti-abortion group launched a website urging people to “report the precise locations” of pro-choice petitioners so that their activists could rush down to harass them. And in Arkansas, 79 signature-gatherers were just doxxed by an anti-abortion group who published their names and cities of residence. Since then, organizers say, the harassment and threats have escalated—with people telling petitioners, “I'’m going to find you and kill you.” Remember, these are just the petitions to get abortion on the ballot; they’re not even campaigning for the amendments themselves yet. While abortion rights supporters across the country are having their lives threatened, Republican politicians are insisting that they’ve ‘softened’ on abortion.

The GOP knows that they can’t stop every election or suppress every voter, and they certainly can’t change those pesky polls. So instead of taking post-Roe victory laps, Republican candidates are quietly removing language about their ‘pro-life’ bonafides from their campaign websites. And rather than standing firmly behind the policies they fought for decades to enact, the GOP is talking about exceptions, ‘compassion’, and—most infuriatingly—supporting “the will of the people.” Republicans have used that phrase dozens of times over the last few months in a transparent attempt to paint unpopular abortion bans as something voters support. “The will of the people” has shown up everywhere from Donald Trump’s abortion talking points and interviews with anti-abortion leaders to Eagle Forum legal briefs. Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds even dropped it last month when responding to the news that the state Supreme Court would allow a 6-week abortion ban to go into effect. Over 60% of Iowa voters want abortion to be legal.

Jessica Valenti wrote an excellent piece how the GOP seeks to circumvent the will of the people every time an abortion rights referendum comes up on the ballot by pushing dirty tricks and intimidation tactics.

[tocitynews]

Texas Health Department Appoints Anti-Abortion OB-GYN To Maternal Mortality Committee –Associated Press reporting

Skop, who has worked as an OB-GYN for over three decades, is vice president and director of medical affairs for the Charlotte Lozier Institute, an anti-abortion research group. Skop will be the committee’s rural representative.

Skop has said medical associations are not giving doctors the proper guidance on the matter. She has also shared more controversial views, saying during a congressional hearing in 2021 that rape or incest victims as young as 9 or 10 could carry pregnancies to term.

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, which says abortion is “inherently tied to maternal health,” said in a statement that members of the Texas committee should be “unbiased, free of conflicts of interest and focused on the appropriate standards of care.” The organization noted that bias against abortion has already led to “compromised” analyses, citing a research articles co-authored by Skop and others affiliated with the Charlotte Lozier Institute.

Earlier this year a medical journal retracted studies supported by the Charlotte Lozier Institute claiming to show harms of the abortion pill mifepristone, citing conflicts of interests by the authors and flaws in their research. Two of the studies were cited in a pivotal Texas court ruling that has threatened access to the drug.

[tattooed-alchemist]

Skop serves as vice-president and director of medical affairs for the national anti-abortion research group Charlotte Lozier Institute and is a member of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists. She is also a plaintiff in a US supreme court lawsuit seeking to revoke the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the key abortion drug mifepristone, which she argues is “dangerous” despite years of evidence showing the drug is safe. She has authored a number of research papers that were ultimately retracted for misleading errors.

Skop – who has called the supreme court’s overturning of Roe v Wade “a victory in the battle but not the end of the war” – has argued in favor of forcing rape and incest victims as young as nine or 10 to carry pregnancies to term. “If she is developed enough to be menstruating and become pregnant and reach sexual maturity, she can safely give birth to a baby,” Skop told the House oversight committee in 2021. Pregnancy at such a young age is shown to carry significant health risks, including pre-eclampsia and infections.

[ear-worthy]

Mock Trial Podcast: Should SCOTUS Restrict Access To The Abortion Pill?

On May 9, 1960–64 years ago today - the FDA approved the world's first commercially produced birth-control pill. Timed to that anniversary, nonpartisan public radio show Open to Debate is releasing a mock trial on the question "Should Courts Restrict Access to the Abortion Pill?"

The Open To Debate podcast plays a critical role in our society today.The mission of Open to Debate is to restore critical thinking, facts, reason, and civility to America’s public square. Open to Debate is a platform for intellectually curious and open-minded people to engage with others holding opposing views on complex issues.

The full episode was released on May 9th (look for it here, on NPR stations, or via the Open to Debate podcast). Below are three clips on YouTube:

• Watch: Conscience vs. Complications in Medication Abortion

• Watch: Legal Remedies for Medication Abortion Policies

• Watch: Personal Perspectives on Abortion Rights

In a post-Roe v. Wade world, mifepristone, a medication that 63% of women undergoing an abortion use, is under consideration by the Supreme Court. Mifepristone was approved as a two-drug regimen for use up to seven weeks of pregnancy and initially required in-person clinical visits, but changes by the FDA were made in 2016 and 2021 to expand accessibility via telehealth and the length of its administration. FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine seeks to address whether the FDA's approval process was thorough and whether the drug should continue to be available.

Those in favor of restrictions argue that the FDA approved mifepristone without adequate consideration of long-term health impacts, failing to adhere to stringent regulatory standards. They also consider restricting access to abortion pills a moral imperative, forcing some doctors to treat patients for a procedure against their beliefs.

Arguing in favor of restrictions is Catherine Glenn Foster, Senior Fellow in Legal Policy at the Charlotte Lozier Institute. She has worked on topics from euthanasia and assisted suicide to abortion and maternal health, health and safety regulations, conscience protections, and constitutional aspects of the right to life and has authored and testified on numerous domestic, foreign, and international legislation and initiatives, appearing on multiple occasions before the Senate, the House, and other federal and state bodies.

Those against restrictions point out the approval was based on extensive research and clinical trials, which should not be undermined without substantial scientific evidence. They also argue access to mifepristone is essential for women's health, providing a safer alternative to surgical abortion and enabling privacy and autonomy in healthcare decisions.

Arguing against restrictions is Julia Kaye, Senior Staff Attorney at the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project. She was lead counsel in two lawsuits that led the FDA to allow patients to obtain mifepristone through telehealth and pharmacy dispensing. She has also led or co-counseled litigation in numerous states challenging abortion bans, mandatory abortion delay requirements, laws preventing qualified nurse practitioners and midwives from providing abortion or birthing care, and other political interference with patients’ health and autonomy.

 Listen to Open to Debate wherever you get podcasts, or watch the video version at opentodebate.org. 

[lcrtl]

A prominent OB-GYN from Texas debunked the claim that abortion drugs are safer than Tylenol during a U.S. Senate committee hearing Wednesday. Dr. Ingrid Skop, a practicing OB-GYN and vice president and director of medical affairs at the Charlotte Lozier Institute, said women deserve to know the truth about the risks of mifepristone, an abortion […]

[loulou1943]

A prominent OB-GYN from Texas debunked the claim that abortion drugs are safer than Tylenol during a U.S. Senate committee hearing Wednesday. Dr. Ingrid Skop, a practicing OB-GYN and vice president and director of medical affairs at the Charlotte Lozier Institute, said women deserve to know the truth about the risks of mifepristone, an abortion […]

[the-doneverly55]

It’s true that many women use abortion for birth control. Yet the percentage of women who sacrifice their own children to maintain a lifestyle shocked even me. An analysis of state abortion statistics by Charlotte Lozier Institute revealed an appalling, widespread practice of women using abortion as a means of birth control. Not all states […]

[cheerfullycatholic]

Full article about when life begins; https://lozierinstitute.org/a-scientific-view-of-when-life-begins/