“TikTok docs” don’t know what they’re talking about
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TikTok docs don’t always know what they’re talking about.
Note when I say “TikTok doc” I mean more broadly any medical professional (not limited only to MDs) with a significant presence on any social media platform (not limited to TikTok). “TikTok doc” is just shorthand for medical professionals who are Very Online.
Medical professionals sharing directly with the online public can be a great phenomenon. They can give all kinds of insight and information that we may not be able to get during in-person appointments with our own often overworked doctors and nurses. The TikTok doc phenomenon is not per se a problem.
It can be a problem, though, when a TikTok doc starts opining outside her area of expertise, and her followers don’t notice the difference. This happens regularly in the abortion debate. Here I collect several examples with SPL video responses.
Nurse anesthetist: Roe v. Wade outlawed elective abortion after viability.
Laura P, CRNA (certified registered nurse anesthetist) claims “[Under Roe v. Wade] abortion was only legal after the age of viability in cases where the mother’s life was at risk or in cases of fatal genetic abnormality.”
In fact Roe allowed states to regulate abortion later in pregnancy, but didn’t require them to. Roe v. Wade didn’t require any limits on abortion.
Ophthalmologist: All abortions are necessary to save the mother’s life.
Dr. Vicki Chan suggested any nonzero increased risk to someone’s health is enough to justify abortion as self-defense.
The US maternal mortality rate is poor compared to other first world countries: in 2022 it was 22.3 deaths per 100,000 live births. This comes to 0.02% risk of death with pregnancy. We always want to decrease that number, but 0.02% risk of death is not typically considered enough to kill someone else in self-defense.
OBGYN: Texas medical residents don’t learn miscarriage care, ectopic pregnancy care, etc
Dr. Eve Espey claimed Texas medical residents can’t learn “trauma informed care, diagnosing pregnancy complications in the first trimester and in the second trimester. They miss learning miscarriage care, ectopic pregnancy care, pregnancy of unknown location, I mean the list goes on and on.”
But Texas medical residency programs clearly require learning all of this and more.
[Read transcript – Do Texas medical residents learn to provide miscarriage care?]
Is later abortion “a thing”?
I end up responding to a specific selection of these kinds of videos. I don’t usually see the original videos on my own; instead SPL followers send them to us across our platforms and ask us to respond. The videos they send most often are TikTok docs opining about later abortion. I don’t know if we’re sent these videos because these folks talk about later abortion a lot, or because SPL is known for our work deconstructing myths on later abortion.
Either way, though, there are a lot of TikTok docs out there who will authoritatively and confidently spout straight nonsense. Note they have no reason to know any more about elective later abortion than the layperson. Later abortions without medical indication are performed in “all trimester” abortion clinics, not hospitals. TikTok docs who have never worked in such a clinic are speaking outside their area of expertise.
Here are several examples.
OBGYN: “There are no OBGYNs out there who are going to perform an abortion on a viable baby.”
– Dr. Annie Frenkel (original video)
The Atlantic article The Abortion Absolutist explains that Dr. Warren Hern has said at least half and sometimes more of the women who come to his clinic for later abortions (up until 32 weeks) do not have devastating medical diagnoses. We talk about that and more sources here:
Gynecologist: “There is no such thing as abortion after the age of viability except in cases where the fetus can’t survive.”
– Dr. Karen Tang (original video)
Pro-abortion activists disagree. Websites such as whonotwhen.com and laterabortion.org push back against the “Fetal Diagnosis Myth” (the myth that women seek later abortions mainly in cases of severe fetal impairment or when there physical health is at risk) and list clinics across the country that provide abortions after viability for any indication (not just medical indications).
L&D nurse: “Late-term abortion is not happening. It’s called having a baby.”
– Jen Hamilton (original vid)
She elaborates: “It would allow for people who have babies who are not going to survive on the outside, like babies who are anencephalic or who have some sort of genetic disorder that’s not going to allow them to be alive, it would allow them to be born and pass away. That’s what that is.”
There are parents who receive adverse prenatal diagnoses and want to induce labor early to be able to meet and say goodbye to their very wanted babies. As an L&D nurse, Jen has no doubt witnessed this heartbreaking scenario many times.
But these situations do not describe the whole of later abortion.
Jen Hamilton is a much larger account than SPL. As I write this she has nearly 4 million TikTok followers; we have 14,000 or so. Typically accounts much larger than us don’t respond to our content, which makes sense to me. I struggle to even read much less respond to the comments and videos SPL is tagged in. I’m sure it becomes impossible as the account gets larger.
That’s why I was pleasantly surprised when, well over a year later, SPL followers again sent me a Jen Hamilton video, I again responded, but this time Jen replied. In brief, here is the back and forth:
L&D nurse: “People have no clue what they’re talking about” and “You’re making it black and white”
– Jen Hamilton
Jen suggested third trimester abortions are only performed for wanted pregnancies with catestrophic prenatal diagnoses. I responded suggesting she call one of these later clinics herself and see if such a diagnosis is a requirement to get an abortion (it’s not). To my surprise, she replied to me, but unfortunately it was only to continue to discuss adverse prenatal diagnoses. I responded once more trying to get her to acknowledge that these abortions are also performed on healthy fetuses carried by healthy women. She didn’t reply again. You can read a detailed explanation of the exchange here (A discussion of later abortion with Jen Hamilton, L&D nurse) or watch the four relevant videos in order here:
Jen: “People have no clue what they’re talking about.”
My response:
Jen: “You’re making it black and white.”
My second response:
While many of the claims about later abortion come from medical professionals in fields related to reproductive health, sometimes even that’s not the case. Here an ophthalmologist (eye doctor) repeats the same myths.
Ophthalmologist: “Aborting an otherwise healthy baby does not happen.”
– Dr. Vicki Chan (original video)
“At an abortion clinic that performs these procedures, nobody is pretending (as moderate pro-choice people like to believe) that this is just early induction of labor because abortion is just ‘termination of pregnancy.'”
Remember doctors are just people.
They have experience and knowledge that can help us make more informed decisions in aspects of our lives related to their areas of expertise. But several important caveats:
- Medical opinions are relevant to medical questions, not necessarily to all forms of inquiry (e.g. philosophy, law, bioethics).
- An expert’s opinions are relevant within their area of expertise. An L&D nurse in a hospital has no particular expertise on later abortions done in abortion clinics. An ophthalmologist has no particular expertise on reproductive health in general.
- Even within their area of expertise, an expert’s opinion is just an opinion. They have particular knowledge we should consider, but they aren’t omnipotent or infallible.
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