Ingrid Skop, M.D., FACOG

Articles highlighting poor quality medical care in pro-life states have raised concerns that state laws are preventing pregnant women from obtaining necessary emergency care. However, all pro-life state laws allow doctors to treat women with pregnancy emergencies, no law requires “imminence” before a doctor can intervene, and every pro-life state permits doctors to treat women suffering from miscarriages or ectopic pregnancies. Doctors who fail to provide patients with necessary emergency treatment therefore may be committing malpractice.

Post-Dobbs, pro-life states’ efforts to protect life have been met with pushback, including widespread claims that the laws are contributing to hospital closures and driving doctors away. A close look at the data shows that these claims are unjustified. Pro-life states continue to train medical students, recruit future doctors, and position themselves for further growth.

Consistent with national trends for ED visits, both the number and acuity of ED visits following pregnancy outcomes are increasing. ED visit acuity following chemical abortion is persistently and significantly higher than for surgical abortion or live birth.

While both induced abortion and natural pregnancy loss have been associated with subsequent mental health problems, population-based studies directly comparing these two pregnancy outcomes are rare. This study compared mental health morbidity after an induced abortion to natural loss. Only the abortion cohort experienced significant increases in mental health services use following the first pregnancy outcome.

Although induced abortion is often referenced as health care, a critical examination shows that there is little objective evidence that this statement is true.

CLI Director of Data Analytics Dr. James Studnicki and Director of Medical Affairs Dr. Ingrid Skop recently published their paper "Is Induced Abortion Evidence-Based Medical Practice?" in the journal Medical Research Archives. In the paper, Studnicki and Skop argue that there are objective criteria by which a given medical practice can be judged "evidence-based," and that abortion fails to meet these criteria.

CLI's VP of Medical Affairs Ingrid Skop, together with Calum Miller, MD, and Kevin Duffy, MPH, recently published an article in Issues in Law & Medicine arguing that decisions by the FDA to pull back regulations on the abortion drug mifepristone in part relied on "flawed studies with significantly undercounted complications" from the U.K.

Recently CLI scholars Ingrid Skop, M.D. and Mary Harned, J.D. published a rebuttal in Issues in Law & Medicine to a series of misleading statements made in an article that appeared in the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology.

The false claim that abortion is 14 times safer than childbirth arose from a 2012 journal article by two vocal abortion advocates, Elizabeth Raymond and David Grimes. Despite being debunked in the dozen years since, it continues to be repeated by pro-abortion media advocates. This issue of On Women's Health explains numerous reasons this statement is false and not data-driven.

It is a scientific fact that the embryo or fetus within the mother’s womb is a distinct human being, and, consequently, abortion ends the life of that human being.