By Ben Johnson

Something startling happened this week: White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre’s remarks proved true and insightful. As usual, this came as an unintended side effect.

KJP, who got promoted to “senior adviser” to President Joe Biden while maintaining her role as press secretary until the end of the administration, badgered Fox News reporter Peter Doocy for questioning the administration’s response to American victims of Hurricane Helene.

On Monday, Doocy asked about the Biden-Harris administration statements that it had run low of resources to care for U.S. citizens, contrasting them with announcements the administration had showered new foreign aid packages on foreign nations from Ukraine to Lebanon. “President Biden is fond of saying, ‘Show me your budget, and I will tell you what you value.’ If he has got money for people in Lebanon right now, without Congress having to come back, what does it say about his values?” Doocy asked.

Karine Jean-Pierre responded by calling his question “dangerous” and storming out of the room. FEMA had done a heckuva job, she claimed, but “people want to do disinformation, misinformation, which is dangerous — which is dangerous — because then, when folks on the ground hear that, they may not want to ask for the help that they need, that is there for them.”

We will note in passing that she has regularly cast any opposition to the Biden-Harris administration’s agenda as potentially perilous. The White House spokesperson previously said it is “dangerous” for Doocy, in the aftermath of two assassination attempts, to ask the Democrats to tone down rhetoric accusing the 45th president of posing an unproven-yet-existential threat to “Our Democracy.”

The deeper issue is this: Karine Jean-Pierre said lying about the unavailability of a resource costs lives, because it discourages people from seeking it. Yet every prominent figure on the Left — including Karine Jean-Pierre — has falsely claimed that state pro-life laws make it illegal for doctors to care for women suffering from miscarriages, ectopic pregnancies, or other life-threatening conditions.

“We know that at least two women — and those are only the stories we know — here in the state of Georgia died, died because of a Trump abortion ban,” incumbent Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris claimed without proof in Atlanta last month. “Under the Trump abortion ban, her doctors could have faced up to a decade in prison for providing Amber the care she needed.”

At his disastrous vice presidential debate with Senator J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), Tim Walz’s rambling abortion response referred to Amber Thurman, who died from abortion pills, while blaming pro-life laws for “women not getting the care, physicians feeling like they may be prosecuted for providing that care.”

In fact, earlier Monday’s press briefing, Karine Jean-Pierre said:

“[W]omen in Texas could still be denied critical emergency medical care because of the state’s dangerous and extreme abortion bans. We have seen and heard the horrific stories of women being denied the care they need because of these laws. … They are creating chaos and confusion for women and doctors. … The stories we hear of women being denied care they need in emergency situation is completely unacceptable. … It is important for people to be very aware of what’s at stake here. It is important for us to continue to voice what we’re seeing here: women being denied care and their lives being put at risk. … [I]t is important to call this out. It is important to say how dangerous this is.”

The truth is that not a single state pro-life law punishes doctors for treating women who have suffered a miscarriage or ectopic pregnancy. In a miscarriage, the child has already died; abortion takes the life of a new, unique, separate, and distinct human being. The “party of science” would do well to heed these facts from Biology 101.

Continually conflating miscarriages with abortion weaponize compassion for women into support for abortion. But it also has the effect of confusing mothers who might otherwise seek care. Democratic misinformation about pro-life laws may discourage doctors from providing lifesaving miscarriage care. Pro-life advocates have repeatedly asked the Left to desist its post-Dobbs disinformation to no avail:

• “These rhetorical games put women’s lives at risk and need to stop,” Dr. Ingrid Skop, the vice president and director of medical affairs at the pro-life Charlotte Lozier Institute, told me via email last month. “As an OB-GYN who’s spent nearly 30 years caring for women and babies, I am saddened and troubled by reports of mothers not receiving the care they require. Under the laws of Texas and all other pro-life states, doctors are advised to exercise their reasonable medical judgment to determine if a woman needs to be delivered of her unborn child in order to protect her life. Texas law allows this intervention and does not require delay in necessary care for ectopic pregnancy, miscarriage, or a life-threatening complication,” she said. “Yet no matter how many times we correct the record, pro-abortion activists continue spreading misinformation, confusing physicians and the general public.”

• Mary Szoch, director of the Center for Human Dignity at Family Research Council, told me last month, “The media has an obligation to stop saying that they’re not allowed to” carry out lifesaving care under lifesaving pro-life statutes. “ProPublica said that a D&C is illegal in Georgia. That is just false information, and they need to be held accountable for that.”

• The spokeswoman of the pro-life group which opposed Ohio’s Issue 1 last November, Kelsey Pritchard of Protect Women Ohio Action, said last year, “Pro-abortion activists in Ohio are spreading shameless misinformation about the 22-week and heartbeat laws, causing confusion amongst the public that puts women’s lives at risk.”

• Project 2025, which the Harris-Walz campaign has tried to turn into a proxy for Donald Trump’s muted-to-nonexistent national pro-life agenda, states, “Miscarriage management or standard ectopic pregnancy treatments should never be conflated with abortion.” 

Karine Jean-Pierre has exposed that Democratic officials know spreading misinformation discourages people from seeking help. Pro-abortion politicians should know its misinformation campaign about pro-life protections discourages pregnant mothers from seeking genuine reproductive health care. And they know this falsely casts aspersions on protective pro-life laws, amounting to a blood libel against pro-life advocates.

With KJP’s admission, one must conclude the Obama-Biden-Harris-Walz abortion Borg values winning the 2024 election over saving women’s lives.

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.