Miscarriage Care for Women is Health Care, Abortion is Not

Today, the pro-life movement in Wisconsin is helping lead the charge in the effort to protect women’s access to true life-saving care: miscarriage management. Gracie Skogman, WRTL’s Legislative Director, submitted testimony in a State Senate committee today in support of Senate Bill 553, limiting the definition of abortions.

SB 553 affirms and clarifies the moral, scientific, and medical truth: miscarriage, ectopic pregnancy, stillbirth, and similar medical conditions are not abortions. Abortion is the intentional taking of an innocent human life. Care after miscarriage is compassionate and necessary care for a woman who has faced a heartbreaking loss.

During the election last year, abortion advocates used misinformation to blur the lines between abortion–the elective termination of a pregnancy–and miscarriage–the spontaneous loss of a pregnancy.

SUPPORT LIFENEWS! If you want to help fight abortion, please donate to LifeNews.com!

Obstetrician/Gynecologist Dr. Kristin Lyerly, who ran unsuccessfully for the 8th Congressional District in northeastern Wisconsin in 2024, said this about miscarriage management in 2023.

There is a spectrum of abortion care, from miscarriage, which is by definition a spontaneous abortion. If I had a dime for every patient who has said to me, “I didn’t have an abortion, I had a miscarriage,” well, it was an abortion. That’s what it says on your record because that’s actually the medical term. Technically an ectopic pregnancy, treating an ectopic pregnancy is an abortion. There’s cardiac activity. It’s not in a viable place where it can live and grow, and become a baby in the future, but technically that’s an abortion. 

But the problem goes deeper even than misleading messaging.

“Unfortunately, there is so much misinformation circulating that some doctors may genuinely be confused about their ability to treat certain pregnancy conditions,” Genevieve Marnon, Legislative Director of Right to Life of Michigan wrote last year. “[It] appears some medical associations and hospitals have been suspiciously remiss in educating doctors on the legality of providing abortions in life-threatening emergencies. This lack of clarity is unacceptable.”

The purpose of SB 553 is to address that lack of clarity for Wisconsin mothers, doctors, hospitals and the public and to restore dignity to women experiencing the tragedy of a miscarriage, as the bill’s authors emphasized in the Senate hearing today.

“Women deserve accurate facts and information,” Skogman’s testimony to the Senate Committee on Licensing, Regulatory Reform, State and Federal Affairs affirmed. SB 553 helps codify that clarification for women and their doctors.