Eleven anti-abortion medical and health policy organizations launched a nationwide campaign Tuesday calling on other healthcare professionals, along with state and federal health agencies, to combat medical misinformation about pregnancy care following the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

The effort is a response to abortion rights advocates and prominent Democratic politicians, including Vice President Kamala Harris, who have elevated the idea that a permissive elective abortion policy is necessary to treat pregnancy emergencies, such as ectopic pregnancy and miscarriages.

The American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, the American College of Pediatrics, and several other organizations published what they called a Women’s Healthcare Declaration on Tuesday, calling these arguments against state-level abortion bans medical misinformation.

“Together we are calling our colleagues to join us in advocating for the empowerment of all of our patients and to restore to our profession the medical ethics of never intentionally harming our patients and to always act for their good,” Dr. Christina Francis, president of AAPLOG, told reporters at a press conference Tuesday.

Since the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision in June 2022, more than 20 states have implemented restrictions on abortion, including 13 that have entirely banned the procedure except in certain circumstances, such as rape, incest, or to save the life of the mother.

Although all states with anti-abortion gestational age restrictions allow doctors to treat emergencies, such as miscarriages and ectopic pregnancies, there has been confusion among both medical professionals and patients regarding the legal status of care during pregnancy emergencies.

“Treatment of pregnant women with medical emergencies should not be falsely equated with the desire to expand access for induced elective abortion,” said Dr. Courtney Draper, an emergency medicine physician and signatory of the declaration. “The Women’s Health declaration helps to provide this clarity elucidating the record to empower physicians to confidently provide the care their patients deserve.”

The case of Amber Nicole Thurman, who died in Georgia in August 2022 from not receiving care from medical professionals after suffering complications from the abortion pill mifepristone, was reported in September and has become one of the most high-profile examples of medical confusion with respect to abortion restrictions. 

Thurman died in the hospital due to not being quickly treated for an infection following complications from self-administered abortion pills approximately nine weeks into her pregnancy with twins. 

Harris, in particular, has elevated Thurman’s story as an example of how what she calls “Trump Abortion Bans,” or anti-abortion laws enacted post-Dobbs, are harmful to women’s health. Harris has addressed that Georgia state law would have allowed Thurman’s physicians to treat her complications.

Although the Women’s Health Declaration does not reference Thurman’s case specifically, the document calls for both greater regulation of abortion medications as well as improving awareness in the medical community about the legal ability of doctors to treat pregnancy emergencies.

Doctors on the panel said professional medical associations are typically responsible for informing doctors about state law and translating legal expertise into actionable information for trained medical professionals. However, the most powerful medical groups have not issued best practice guidance on state-level anti-abortion laws.

Of the OB-GYN specialty in particular, Francis said there has been a “very conspicuous silence” from the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, which advocates abortion access and does not support any gestational age limits on abortion. 

Francis said the purpose of the declaration was to ask the other professional medical organizations in the field to “set aside their differences and to agree that we need to be providing clear information, accurate information, about state laws to physicians.”

Despite the political salience of abortion during the contentious election season, the doctors on the panel stressed the importance of overcoming policy differences on elective abortion in the name of medical accuracy.

“ACOG and APPLOG, who I represent, may have very different positions on the issue of induced abortion, but we should all be able to agree that women deserve access to emergency care when they need it and that physicians should feel free to act,” said Francis. 

ACOG did not respond to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment on the declaration. 

The Women’s Health Declaration stresses that physicians and other healthcare professionals ought to treat two patients in pregnancy, the mother and the child, and that this code of medical ethics is the inspiration for anti-abortion state laws.

“Intentionally ending the life of our fetal patients is not healthcare,” said Francis. “Pregnancy is not a disease.”

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The physicians on the panel stressed, however, that treatment of a pregnancy emergency that results in the death of the unborn child is not the moral equivalent of an elective-induced abortion since the intention from the outset is not to end the life of the child.

“Every life-affirming physician is prepared to intervene to save the life of their pregnant patient, including situations that require separating mom and baby when we face a choice between saving mom but losing baby and losing both,” said Draper.