By Sarah Neely
Almost as soon as Roe v Wade was overturned in 2022, the abortion lobby started pushing a new narrative: abortion and miscarriage are interchangeable.
The swell of misinformation that followed tried to convince American voters that any limit on abortion would immediately result in women being denied treatment for miscarriages or other pregnancy complications. Never mind the medical fact that a miscarriage is the early, unintentional death of a child in the womb, while an abortion requires action from outside the womb to intentionally kill a child. Not a single state has ever made miscarriage management illegal.
This false narrative continues with a relentless push for the removal of nearly all safety standards for abortion pills, fueled by endless claims from every abortion group imaginable that chemical abortion can be done at home with little to no oversight from a medical professional.
Safe. Casual. Just another day in the life of a modern woman. But if you find yourself in trouble, just go to the nearest emergency room, and tell them you’re having – you guessed it – a miscarriage, because “the treatment is the same,” they say. Miscarriage and abortion are interchangeable.
This is incredibly dangerous advice from a group that swears it’s only trying to protect women. Operation Rescue knows from hundreds of documented abortion injuries that minutes lost trying to discover the truth of a patient’s abortion complication can, and has, cost women their lives.
How a doctor might choose to manage a miscarriage versus a failed chemical abortion with sudden complications can be very different.
But the abortion industry has never been interested in preserving anyone’s life. And, as this dangerous narrative takes root in our culture, the applications of such bad ideology are growing more and more bizarre.
Recently, a blog post written by Missouri-based photographer Alexandria Mooney has been floating around the internet. The post is titled, “I’m an Abortion Photographer.”
Just reading the headline, you might assume this woman is present for actual abortions, which she presumably photographs…for the mother. Any seasoned pro-life activist would find this hard to imagine for a plethora of reasons. I have never heard of an abortion clinic allowing anyone other than patients and staff into the operating room – many don’t even allow mothers to bring a friend into the lobby. Some do not allow mobile phones. A photographer would likely be out of the question.
And to take photos of aborted babies being held by their moms? Abortionists don’t generally return the body of an aborted child. Instead, they are disposed of as medical waste. Some have been put down drains and garbage disposals, some burned up in incinerators. Many of the photos we do have of abortion victims were taken by pro-lifers in the years following Roe, and abortion advocates despise them for it, often claiming the photos are doctored. Many pro-life activists have been spit on, screamed at, assaulted, threatened with arrest (or actually arrested) just for holding a photo of an aborted baby.
All of this makes Mooney’s headline claiming she is an abortion photographer seem pretty incredible, and certainly suspect.
However, once you begin to read, it becomes clear that this woman is really photographing babies delivered by c-section or induced labor, arriving in their family’s arms either stillborn or only able to live a few minutes or hours. Mooney is calling this harrowing experience “abortion.”
As a mother who has held her premature baby in her arms and watched her leave this world due to circumstances I could neither change nor control, the idea of using that almost unfathomable experience to give abortion some kind of sacred credibility is beyond words. Doesn’t the abortion lobby endlessly remind us that abortion is a “choice”?
Moreover, Mooney supports this dark comparison with misinformation – the same misinformation the abortion lobby, the media, the Biden administration, and presidential candidate Kamala Harris have been ruthlessly pushing since the summer of 2022.
False statement #1 – “Babies are being aborted at 9 months gestation and I am there to photograph it.”
Mooney claims her clients hire her to take photos of their babies being “aborted” at nine months. However, just a few lines after this shocking announcement, she writes, “These families, along with their doctors and care providers, collectively choose to induce labor or schedule a cesarean section so that families can meet their baby alive…”
The key word here is “alive.” In a late-term abortion, a baby is only born alive if the procedure fails. In fact, during a late-term abortion, a digoxin injection is used to stop the baby’s heart before labor is induced. The whole purpose of an abortion is to kill a child.
Choosing an early delivery to save the life of a mother or give a child some small chance at life, even if only for a few minutes, is an entirely different act. The intent is to uphold life, not to destroy it, even if a natural death follows tragically after.
Mooney does not seem to understand this stark contrast. She adds a comment that what she photographs is “sometimes” labeled as an abortion “on paper.” Perhaps she is alluding to miscarriages, which can be defined as “spontaneous abortion.” Again, the key word is “spontaneous” – meaning outside of anyone’s control. Not chosen. Not scheduled. Not done with clear intent to end a life.
False Statement #2 – “…[S]omeone who is 9 months pregnant walking into an abortion clinic wanting to rid their body of the healthy baby they’ve been carrying for nearly a year because suddenly they don’t want it… .This doesn’t happen ever.”
Mooney makes the same bold (and very inaccurate) declaration that has resounded from countless pro-abortion politicians this entire election cycle: Late-term abortions are not happening – and, if they are, it’s only for really serious medical complications.
During the presidential debate last month, Kamala Harris point-blank denied that abortions were happening in the seventh, eight, or ninth month of pregnancy. However, Operation Rescue conducted a survey earlier this year to identify how many abortion facilities in America offer abortion at 23 weeks and beyond – 23 weeks being the very cusp of the third trimester. The total is 58 facilities across 18 states – a pretty large number for something “not happening.”
Just three weeks ago, Lydia Taylor Davis of Students for Life posted a video of herself calling a late-term abortion clinic to ask if she could schedule an abortion at 34 weeks. The only reason she offered for wanting the abortion was that her boyfriend was out of the picture – not a medical emergency, fetal anomaly, or any other dire complication. She presented as a woman who just didn’t want to be pregnant anymore.
Not only did the clinic have no problem scheduling the appointment, the clinic staffer confirmed that this was not uncommon. When Davis asked, “So, I’m not, like, a rare situation? Y’all help women this late in pregnancy all the time?” The staffer answered without any hesitation, “All the time.”
False Statement #3 – “When we take those choices away from families, as a total abortion ban would do… .”
Taking up the same distorted narrative as “limiting abortion will eliminate miscarriage management,” Mooney makes the statement that an abortion ban would deny families the ability to choose the early deliveries she photographs. Once again, choosing an early delivery is not an abortion.
When my water broke at 17 weeks, and my husband and I were told that our daughter only had a 30% chance of survival, we were given three options at what’s considered one of the best hospitals in the country: abortion, early delivery, or expectant management.
The reason there were three options, and not two, is because I could have chosen to deliver my little girl right then, held her in my arms for as long as she was alive, and let her pass with her father and mother right beside her. Or, I could have chosen an abortion at 17 weeks, likely a Dilation & Evacuation (D&E). That means my cervix would have been dilated and my child would have been painfully dismembered as special tongs tore her from me, piece by piece. Her head would have likely been crushed last, very typical of a D&E.
Two vastly different outcomes from two vastly different options.
Despite endless efforts to pretty it up or downplay the horrors, abortion cannot be redeemed. It is a brutal act of violence that destroys an innocent life. Pro-abortion politicians, media pundits, Instagram influencers, and even misguided photographers can keep trying to convince us that it’s something better, cleaner, kinder – that it’s the same sort of ‘common’ tragedy as a miscarriage might be. That narrative is a dangerous fiction propped up by countless lies that do not empower women, uphold motherhood, or gain justice for the innocent.
Don’t be taken in by the outrageous headlines. The truth matters, and so do the lives of innocent children in the womb. In just a few weeks, every American will have the chance to choose between a candidate who is wildly misrepresenting and advocating for abortion on demand versus a candidate who has called out abortion extremism and acted to save lives. If we, as Americans, want any chance at all to stem the tide of child-killing in our nation, it’s not a hard choice.
This report may be republished with inclusion of the following acknowledgement: “This article was originally published by Operation Rescue, a leading pro-life, Christian activist organization dedicated to exposing abortion abuses, demanding enforcement, saving innocent lives, and building an abortion-free America. The author, Sarah Neely, is Project Coordinator for Operation Rescue.”
