Exclusive — Pro-Life OBGYN: Professional Medical Organizations 'Promoting Abortion Above the Health of Women'

WASHINGTON, District of Columbia — Dr. Christina Francis, an OBGYN and CEO-elect of the American Association of Pro-Life OBGYNs (AAPLOG), told Breitbart News that American professional medical organizations are “promoting abortion above the health of women.”

In a conversation at the 50th annual March for Life in the nation’s capital, Francis said that many of America’s professional medical organizations, such as the American College of OBGYNs (ACOG), “have become politicized” and have “become essentially political action committees [PACs].”

AAPLOG was formed in 1973 inside ACOG after ACOG filed an amicus brief in support of abortion in the Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton cases. Francis said since then, ACOG has become “more and more politicized — promoting abortion above the health of women, not supporting any even common-sense abortion restrictions.”

Now its own organization, Francis said “AAPLOG stands in the gap not only for our members who are being pressured by their professional organizations to go along with this political ideology, but also for our patients because we do believe that the patient-physician relationship should be protected.”

“Every major medical organization promoting abortion and ignoring the medical evidence that’s out there, and what the medical evidence tells us is that elective abortion — the intentional ending of a fetal human being’s life — carries zero health benefits for women,” she continued. “And there are multiple documented harms — well-documented harms to women from abortion — including an increased risk of pre-term birth, and an increased risk of adverse mental health outcomes.”

Adverse health outcomes from abortion is a hotly debated topic among medical professionals. Many of the pro-abortion medical organizations have outsized institutional power, and present counters like the American Psychological Association’s (APA) assertion “restricting access to abortion likely to lead to mental health harms.”

The APA, an organization that also actively promotes the medically dubious care model of “transitioning” children with gender dysphoria, wrote in response to the leaked draft opinion overturning Roe that it was “deeply concerned regarding the emerging possibility that the U.S. Supreme Court will eliminate the constitutional right to obtain an abortion.”

APA president Frank C. Worrell, Ph.D., said “there is no research to indicate that abortion is a cause for subsequent mental health diagnoses. … Psychological science suggests that the inability to obtain an abortion increases the risk for domestic abuse among those who are forced to stay in contact with violent partners, putting them and their children at risk.”

However, AAPLOG points out in its own research that there are significant psychological complications from abortion, adding that “it is clear with the incomplete records available in the U.S., the political nature of abortion, and the ideological commitment of many academic researchers to legal abortion, that the question of comparative safety of abortion to childbirth is unlikely to be answered in our country.”

Francis said that abortion-promoting medical organizations are “choosing to ignore the science” in their advocacy.

“The link between abortion and pre-term birth is supported by more than 160 studies over the last five decades,” Francis continued. “And yet, this summer, when I testified in front of a House committee, a representative of ACOG said that ACOG denies that there’s a link between abortion and pre-term birth. So, they’re just choosing to ignore the medical evidence in favor of supporting this political agenda.”

When asked if the motivations behind the push from the American medical establishment are ideological or monetary, Francis said, “I think it’s both.”

“I mean I think there’s a definite ideology that’s pushing this pro-abortion narrative, but certainly abortions can be lucrative for physicians,” she said. “They’re often times relatively quick procedures and a lot of insurance doesn’t cover it, so, you know, a lot of abortions are cash-pay.”

“But I think it’s interesting because yes, they can be lucrative, but if that was the motivating factor for physicians to do them, you would think that more physicians might do them. But, in fact, what we see is that in practicing OBGYNs in private practice, 93 percent of OBGYNs do not perform abortions, and yet they could,” she continued. “I think that speaks to the fact that we go into OBGYN to care for two patients at once, and we know that intentionally ending the life of one of them is not consistent with the oath that we took to protect our patients.”

Breccan F. Thies is a reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow him on Twitter @BreccanFThies.