Just before Election Day, when pro-abortion measures were defeated in three states, but sadly were passed into law in seven others, a couple of headlines were published that were put out to help fear monger people into supporting these measures. One of said headlines said, “She said she had a miscarriage — then got arrested under an abortion law.” The other said, “A Woman Dies After Being Told It Would Be A ‘Crime’ To Intervene In Her Miscarriage At A Texas Hospital.”
According to The National Catholic Register:
As the Register reported on Oct. 21, media coverage and pro-abortion campaign ads in recent months have fed a misleading narrative that pro-life laws in states like Georgia and Texas prohibit doctors from providing medical care to women experiencing a miscarriage, ectopic pregnancy or other pregnancy-related emergency. Yet new reports of additional cases that purportedly support these claims keep popping up — most recently in a nearly 6,000-word article in the The Washington Post, detailing the story of a Nevada woman charged with manslaughter, and another report on a Texas case published by ProPublica.
The question is whether or not these stories are actually true or is there some sort of concerted effort being made by radical pro-baby murder advocates to shape a narrative that will scare women into supporting their cause?
The Nevada case concerns a then-26-year-old woman named Patience Frazier who was charged with manslaughter in 2018 after she admitted to taking substances to end her pregnancy after the state’s 24-week abortion limit. Authorities found the remains of her infant son, who she named Abel, buried on her property. Frazier did not want to carry her pregnancy to term, but she didn’t seek an abortion, she said, because she didn’t have a car and couldn’t get to a clinic.
Frazier confessed to attempting to murder her own child in the womb by taking a massive quantity of cinnamon after hearing that doing so could cause an abortion. No research exists to support this wild claim. It’s also important to note that a toxicology lab found Abel’s remains contained both marijuana and methamphetamine.
“Frazier reported feeling heaving cramping and said the baby came out not breathing. She said she cradled him and cried, then buried him. The babysitter had reported that Frazier’s belly went from very pregnant to flat — suspecting she had done something to end the pregnancy. She showed a screenshot of Frazier’s Facebook post apologizing to her son. ‘I’ve been holding it in in hiding it, but I can’t anymore,’ Frazier had written. ‘I’m so sorry Abel. I’m sorry I’m a horrible person,'” the report stated.
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The search warrant cited “suspicious circumstances related to a possible unreported birth, death, and clandestine burial of an infant.”
The abortion law that was in effect at the time — and still is right now — was adopted before Roe v. Wade was overturned by SCOTUS, allows for abortion up to 24 weeks. This is the point during gestation that a child could survive outside of the womb with proper medical treatment.
Although the state’s abortion law doesn’t allow women who seek abortions after 24 weeks to be prosecuted, authorities charged Frazier under a 1911 state law that prohibits “taking any drug, medicine or substance, or any instrument or other means” to have an abortion after 24 weeks, which can result in a manslaughter charge punishable by up to 10 years in prison. Her own mother testified in court that she was taking drugs and other toxic substances, trying to end the pregnancy, although Frazier denied that.
The Washington Post article tells of Frazier’s tragic life of abuse, beginning as a young child up until her arrest, living with a man 20 years her senior with a drug habit, whom she feared would kick her out due to the pregnancy.
“We do say it’s not appropriate to injure a baby’s life outside the womb, yet we allow ending the life of a baby at the same age in utero,” Dr. Ingrid Skop, vice president and director of medical affairs for the Lozier Institute said of abortion laws. “It’s tragic that she was unaware that there were pregnancy centers that would have accompanied her and helped her and so many couples that would have loved to adopt her baby. Most adoptions are open these days. She could have had a relationship with her child. There are so many other ways it could have been resolved.”
In another case, a woman by the name of Josseli Barnica died as the result of a serious infection after she visited a Texas hospital seeking emergency treatment while undergoing a miscarriage. Doctors delayed giving her proper treatment because they claimed the abortion law prevented them from taking any action until the baby’s heartbeat stopped.
Barnica very much wanted her second child, but a miscarriage at 17 weeks was in progress when she arrived at the hospital on Sept. 3, 2021. At the time, the Supreme Court had not yet overturned Roe v. Wade. The Texas abortion ban had just gone into effect, which required physicians to confirm the absence of a fetal heartbeat before intervening unless there was a “medical emergency.” This past September, after being directed to do so by the state Supreme Court, the Texas Medical Board released guidance telling doctors that an emergency didn’t need to be “imminent” in order to warrant intervention. In Barnica’s case, an ultrasound confirmed the baby’s head was in the open cervix and she had low amniotic fluid. For 40 hours, her uterus remained exposed to bacteria. Three days after Barnica delivered, she died of an infection.
An obstetrician, Dr. Kathleen Raviele, spoke with the NCR and said that she is in agreement with over a dozen other medical experts who stated that in the kind of situation Barnica was in, the proper course of treatment would have been to speed up the delivery to prevent infection and revealed that Texas law does not prevent that form of treatment. In other words, it was doctoral incompetence that led to Barnica’s untimely death.
“The woman had an incompetent cervix,” Raviele went on to explain. “Any loss of pregnancy before 20 weeks is considered a miscarriage. It was poor obstetrical care that caused that woman’s death. If someone is at risk of an infection, you should monitor her labs and do cultures.”
As you can see, the media is only giving you part of the story in these cases because giving you the full truth will prevent a lot of individuals from buying into the fear mongering and voting to support measures that are being designed to kill babies in the womb.