Ever since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, returning abortion law to the states, leftists have been scaring women with false tales of denial of healthcare. Political analyst Bethany Mandel explains why this is not only wrong but dangerous.

Margaret (not her real name) is a board certified OB-GYN practicing in a Catholic, pro-life hospital system in Michigan. Ever since the Dobbs decision this summer, abortion politics have made it harder to do her job. In particular, as she explained to me, messaging from pro-choice campaigners and politicians has left patients thinking that laws that restrict abortion also restrict the ability of doctors to provide medical care for miscarriages, ectopic pregnancies or life-threatening complications of pregnancy.

The weekend after the Dobbs decision came down, Margaret witnessed a woman put in danger by medical professionals because of this misinformation and their misunderstanding of the abortion laws in her state. She says that in a local (non-Catholic) hospital, a woman arrived in the emergency room with a clearly unviable pregnancy of unknown location, and the decision was reached to administer methotrexate, a drug that breaks down fetal tissue, in case that the pregnancy (too small to see images of) was present in her fallopian tube. This kind of pregnancy, called an ectopic pregnancy, can rupture and endanger a woman’s future fertility and even her life. But, as Margaret explained, “the ER staff were reluctant to administer it because they heard the 1931 law that made abortion, even in the case of rape and incest, illegal was in now place after the fall of Roe [which had invalidated the 1931 law], and they were afraid of criminal prosecution.”

Margaret said she and her colleagues “were asked by the head of the department to ‘hold off’ on administering medication until they could figure out a legal policy.” Doing so, she said, meant the patient “has fewer options… Doing nothing is doing something.” Eventually, another doctor in the ER gave the shot because she said it was clearly not an abortion, ignoring the higher-up’s request.

She lamented that “the messaging has been so strong that it’s even coming from medical communities and physicians [working in primary care and emergency rooms]. They are living in this kind of fear that if they do the right thing for patients having miscarriages… [they] would go to jail.” As Margaret explains, “that’s just false… If it’s confusing to people in other fields of medicine, OB-GYNs [should recognize] the differences between providing care in life-limiting and life-threatening situations, where my goal is to maximize whatever life can be saved in those situations, [verses that of an abortion where] the expressed goal of the procedure is to ensure that the pre-born individual comes out of the procedure not alive.”

Mandel says, “Margaret’s story is part of an emerging pattern.” That pattern is one of misinforming doctors and women alike. The doctors who do understand are afraid of being ostracized or worse.

“With one exception,” she says, “none of the doctors I spoke to felt comfortable going on the record with their real names.” One of those doctors is “concerned that people in our profession are starting to be affected more by politics than their training.” That has a lot to do with “media misrepresentation of Dobbs’ consequences,” as well as “people who want to score political points at the expense of the truth and women’s emotional and physical health.”

Mandel concludes:

The biggest losers are women [and] the medical providers more interested in truth and providing the best care they can. This isn’t just a story about a coordinated and intentionally misleading propaganda campaign. It’s also evidence of how truth and free speech in the medical community can be, and have been, silenced by agenda-driven and powerful professional associations. Thanks to the power over “misinformation” they were able to capture during the pandemic, the word has lost all meaning. The progressive stranglehold over what we can call “the truth” didn’t just stop with the conclusion of the pandemic emergency, and it won’t end with their post-Dobbs abortion campaign.

Read the whole thing here.