Podcast recap: “Do Pro-Life Laws STOP Miscarriage & Ectopic Pregnancy Care?” with AAPLOG
Dr. Christina Francis, CEO of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG) invited me back onto AAPLOG’s Observations podcast for another “reverse interview” for another round of our recurring reverse interview series, where I get to ask her the questions instead of the other way around. This time we tackled a claim we hear constantly: that pro-life laws push doctors to withhold care for miscarriage and ectopic pregnancy. We walked through what normal, medically necessary waiting periods actually look like, then applied that framework to two real cases that made national news.
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Key Takeaways
- Waiting a few days for repeat blood work or a follow-up ultrasound before diagnosing an ectopic pregnancy or a missed miscarriage is standard medical practice, not evidence that a law is blocking treatment.
- In Emily Waldorf’s case in Arkansas, the hospital’s own actions, like sending her home to possibly deliver alone and reportedly withholding antibiotics, had nothing to do with anything Arkansas’s law actually restricts.
- States that require continuing medical and legal education on what abortion laws do and do not prevent, like Texas and South Dakota, appear to be reducing the kind of confusion that delayed care for patients like Waldorf.
Summary
“There is no emergency.”
That is how Dr. Francis described a patient whose missed miscarriage looks recent, with minimal bleeding and no signs of infection. Both ectopic pregnancy and missed miscarriage often require repeat blood work or ultrasounds before doctors can even confirm a diagnosis, let alone choose a treatment. Waiting to be sure, or to let a family process devastating news, is not negligence. It is standard care, and I described going through exactly this kind of wait with my own pregnancy losses.
“This is not a person you send home.”
That is Dr. Francis’ verdict on Emily Waldorf’s case in Arkansas, where hospital staff wanted to send a dilating, 17-weeks pregnant patient home and reportedly withheld antibiotics while explicitly blaming the state’s anti-abortion law, a law that, according to the pro-choice attorney who intervened, permitted exactly the treatment Waldorf needed.
Florida Representative Kat Cammack’s ectopic pregnancy delay followed a similar pattern. Dr. Francis argued that hospitals over-interpreting these laws often fail patients in ways the law never touches at all, which is part of why she does not think legal confusion explains the whole story.
“Nobody wants this.”
That is the common ground I keep coming back to. Whatever people believe about elective abortion, nobody wants a law that sends a pregnant, dilating patient home from a hospital. Mandatory legal and medical education on what these laws actually say, like the laws Texas and South Dakota have passed, is a response that pro-life and pro-choice advocates alike should be able to support. I go further and suggest more punitive measures against hospitals or specific doctors who fail so utterly to provide medically necessary care that the laws explicitly allow.
Interview Chapters
- 1:18 – Dr. Francis hands hosting duties to Monica Snyder
- 3:37 – Framing normal care that can look abnormal to patients
- 5:07 – Diagnosing a possible ectopic pregnancy
- 7:39 – Surgery versus methotrexate for a confirmed ectopic pregnancy
- 12:26 – Pregnancy of unknown location and diagnostic aspiration
- 16:59 – Diagnosing a missed miscarriage and why doctors may recommend waiting
- 22:11 – Monica describes her own missed miscarriage
- 28:41 – Three standard treatment options for miscarriage
- 32:55 – Introducing the Emily Waldorf and Kat Cammack cases
- 34:09 – Recapping the Emily Waldorf case in Arkansas
- 38:00 – Correcting the record on retained placenta and hemorrhage risk
- 42:51 – What Arkansas’s law allowed, and why hospitals overreach beyond it
- 54:20 – Texas and South Dakota’s mandatory physician education laws
- 58:42 – Kat Cammack’s ectopic pregnancy story in Florida
- 1:05:47 – Finding common ground and AAPLOG’s education resource
Additional Resources
- Secular Pro-Life analyses
- AAPLOG’s medical education videos on obstetric practice in states with abortion restrictions
- Previous AAPLOG episodes where I “reverse interviewed” Dr. Francis:
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