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| Photo Credit: AP. |
WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists said Thursday that a Republican-led proposal to ban abortion nationwide after 15 weeks would endanger the health of women and have severe consequences for physicians.
“If passed
and enacted, this bill would create a nationwide health crisis, imperiling the
health and lives of women in all 50 states,” according to a preliminary
analysis of the bill by Jennifer Klein, the White House Gender Policy Council
chairwoman, that was obtained by The Associated Press. “It would transform the
practice of medicine, opening the door to doctors being thrown in jail if they
fulfill their duty of care to patients according to their best medical
judgment.”
President
Joe Biden himself said at a fundraiser that some GOP efforts to ban abortion
were more extreme than his own Catholic faith.
“I happen to
be a practicing Roman Catholic. My church doesn’t even make that argument,” he
said, referring to abortion bans that leave “no exceptions. Rape, incest. No
exceptions.”
Catholic
teaching is that abortion is prohibited, though life-saving surgery for the
mother is permitted, even if it means the baby will die as a result. The
measure introduced last week by Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., proposes a
nationwide ban that would allow for rare exceptions.
The federal
legislation has almost no chance of becoming law in the Democratic-controlled
Congress. GOP leaders did not immediately embrace it and Democrats are pointing
to the proposal as an alarming signal of where Republicans would try to go if
they were to win control of the Congress in November.
Many in the
United States had believed the constitutional right to abortion, established by
the Supreme Court almost 50 years ago, could never be overturned. But that
protection was stripped away this year by the court’s conservative majority,
and advocates are leaving nothing to chance.
A majority
of those questioned in a July poll by the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs
Research said Congress should pass a law guaranteeing access to legal abortion
nationwide.
Vice
President Kamala Harris urged Democratic attorneys general at a meeting Thursday
in Milwaukee to keep fighting for abortion rights in the states. She singled
out Wisconsin’s Josh Kaul, who is up for reelection in November, for filing a
lawsuit to challenge the state’s 1849 law banning abortion, with no exceptions
for rape or incest.
“Josh, our
administration has your back,” she said to applause.
Clinics in
Wisconsin stopped performing abortions after the Supreme Court ruling
overturning Roe v. Wade as the legal fight plays out over whether the state law
is in effect. Republican lawmakers have rejected two attempts by Democratic
Gov. Tony Evers, also on the ballot, to repeal the law.
The American
College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, a nonprofit organization
representing more than 60,000 physicians nationwide, sent a letter to the White
House on Thursday outlining its concerns about the proposed law.
The group
took issue with the “arbitrary gestational age limit” because it was “not
grounded in science and medical evidence and would dramatically interfere with
the ability of patients to receive timely medical care, including prenatal
care, miscarriage management, and abortion care.”
The
organization argued that doctors would become less skilled because if the bans
were in effect, their training would be altered to comply with law. The letter
said doctors feared the bans already in place in several states following the
overturning of abortion rights will “have deadly consequences, further
exacerbating the worsening maternal mortality crisis, within which 80% of
deaths are preventable.”
The White
House said the Republican proposal could have a chilling effect, with the
prospect of doctors unwilling to care for patients any more. Doctors could also
face criminal charges for performing an abortion to safeguard the health of the
mother, offering miscarriage care, providing an abortion to a pregnant woman
whose baby has no chance of survival, or treating a rape victim who has not
fully completed reporting requirements.
Associated
Press Writer Scott Bauer in Madison, Wisconsin and Aamer Madhani in New York
contributed to this report. Follow AP’s coverage of abortion at
https://apnews.com/hub/abortion