In a op-ed published by STL Today, a woman named Kristina Stierholz made a false claim that she had an ‘abortion’ when she underwent emergency surgery for an ectopic pregnancy 34 years ago. However, the treatment for an ectopic pregnancy is not an induced abortion.
She wrote, “I recently realized that I had an abortion 34 years ago. I didn’t know at the time. It was a strange change of mind and a strange re-thinking of my past.”
This is a change of mind, but it was inaccurate in law and caused confusion among the masses pro-abortion group and media outlet is moving This confusion has tricked many women into believing that they, too, have had abortions — when in truth, they never intended to directly kill their unborn children.
What happened
In 1989, Stierholz was recently married and pregnant. She admitted that she wasn’t sure if she would “keep the baby” for financial reasons so she didn’t tell anyone but her husband that she was pregnant. She explained, “My father was stridently pro-life. He was a doctor and belonged to several organizations that worked to limit the availability of abortions. We had many arguments about this and he was unmoved on the subject.
But before she could choose to abort her baby, her gynecologist told her she might have miscarried. After her stomach began to “swell,” Stierholz went back to the doctor. It was discovered that she was “bleeding from my fallopian tubes into my abdomen.” Stierholz was sent to the ER for emergency surgery for an ectopic pregnancy.
“Before I took a taxi to the emergency room, I finally called my parents to let them know what was going on. My father is a wreck of concern. After multiple misfires in the emergency department, it was midnight and I was lying on a hospital gurney waiting for the surgical theater to become available when my doctor told me my dad had called him. I don’t know how he found it in the hospital. He just wanted to know I was going to be safe,” she wrote.
Doctors performed surgery and were able to repair the fallopian tube. Her parents were relieved, she said, and her father sent “the biggest fruit basket I’ve ever seen to my doctor’s office.” He and his wife had three children.
“My father died later, his beliefs about abortion unchanged,” she wrote. Her father knows the truth: the operation for ectopic pregnancy is unforced abortion.
The fall of Roe v. Wade
Thirty-two years later, after the reversal of the Roe v. WadeStierholz said he “understood that I had had an abortion before.”
She adds, “I wouldn’t have said that before. My pro-life dad never considered an abortion. The operation was at midnight to ‘save the mother’s life.’
“I’m trying to imagine my scenario if it happened in Texas right now. […] Do they need affidavits and court rulings to allow me to terminate that dangerous pregnancy?” she wondered. She asked what her father would think of this “new definition.”
But surgery for an ectopic pregnancy wasn’t an induced abortion in 1989 — and it’s not an induced abortion today either. So, the answer — would she be able to terminate her pregnancy in such a scenario in Texas today? – is yes. As Live Action News has reported multiple times, pro-life state laws (including those in Texas) do not prohibit treatment for ectopic pregnancies or miscarriages, which are not forced abortions.
Medical definition of abortion
Definitions you look good together. And in the case of abortion, there is a big difference between the medical definition of abortion and the legal definition of abortion. Medically speaking — and all the way to Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary is concerned – abortion is “the termination of pregnancy after, accompanied by, resulting in, or closely followed by the death of the embryo or fetus: such as: spontaneous expulsion of a human fetus during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, b: involuntary expulsion of a fetus of man.”
Medline Plus defines abortion as:
a procedure to terminate a pregnancy. This can be done in two different ways:
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- Medical abortion, which uses drugs to end a pregnancy. Sometimes this is called “medical abortion” or “abortion with pills.”
- Procedural abortion, a procedure to remove the pregnancy from the uterus. This is sometimes called a “surgical abortion.”
By these definitions, even a natural miscarriage is classified as a “spontaneous abortion.” But legalit is not an abortion.
Legal definition of abortion
Legally speaking, pro-life laws that protect preborn children from abortion do not strictly refer to the removal of an embryo or fetus from the uterus (or in this case the fallopian tube), but to rather a procedure or drug cocktail (the abortion pill) that is specifically used to cause the death of a preborn child before or during birth. Criminalization of abortion legal means it is against the law deliberately and directly cause of death of the preborn child, more specifically known as a induced abortion.
As the doctors have already declared, an induced abortion is not medically necessary to save the mother’s life. This is true for the treatment of ectopic pregnancy where the goal is to save the life of the mother, when the embryo dies not on purpose but as a tragic result of an operation meant to save his mother.
Most pro-life laws, including the Texas Heartbeat Act, define abortion as (emphasis added):
[…T]he acts of using or prescribing an instrument, drug, medicine, or any other substance, device, or method with intent to cause the death of an unborn child of a woman known to be pregnant. The term does not include birth control devices or oral contraceptives. A deed is not abortion if the act is done for the purpose of:
(A) save the life or preserve the health of an unborn child;
(B) remove a dead, unborn child whose death was caused by an involuntary abortion; o
(C) remove an ectopic pregnancy.
Note that the law clearly states, “An act is not an abortion if the act is done with the intent to […] remove an ectopic pregnancy.” Stierholz’s operation was not an abortion according to the law. It does not carry the “intent to cause the death” of his preborn child.
Even Planned Parenthood knows this. But, a month later Roe v. Wade was retracted, the abortion giant scrubbed information about ectopic pregnancy from its website stating, “Treatment for ectopic pregnancy is not the same as abortion…. The medical procedures for an abortion are not the same as the medical procedures for an ectopic pregnancy.”
As Live Action researcher and Live Action News contributing writer Carole Novielli explains, “Planned Parenthood has just cleaned up its website in light of the media’s attempts to convince women that ectopic pregnancy treatments and other life-saving procedures are actually abortions.”
Why would Planned Parenthood suddenly change and let women believe that surgery for ectopic pregnancy is an abortion — after Roe fell? Because the media is full of stories aimed at scaring women into believing that abortion is health care (like treatment for miscarriages and ectopic pregnancies) and that women will die without it.
But it’s all a manipulation to keep abortion facilities open and profitable.
No, Kristina Stierholz, you did not have an induced abortion. You lost your child in a medical tragedy — a very different act than killing an undelivered person.
The DOJ jailed a pro-life grandmother this Christmas for protesting the killing of preborn children. Please take 30 seconds to TELL CONGRESS: STOP DOJ FROM TARGETING PRO-LIFE AMERICANS.
