FACT CHECK: What Oregon’s Abortion Industry Leaders Say vs. The Truth About Abortion

(Oregon Right to Life) — If you want to know how radical the abortion industry is, you don’t have to dig very deep. Very often, you just need to listen to the words of the industry leaders themselves.

During a legislative committee hearing right here in Oregon late last month, representatives of the abortion industry spoke about expanding abortion access to accommodate abortion tourism. They also affirmed that abortion providers in our state perform their services “under the law” for anyone who asks for them. That means abortion on demand throughout every stage of pregnancy.

READ: Legislative Committee Hearing Spotlights Oregon’s Abortion Extremism

Below, check out some of the major claims made by the speakers with the truth about abortion, pro-life laws, and maternal health.

Claim 1: The overturning of Roe v. Wade has impacted access to abortion, IVF, maternity care, and contraception. Closures of abortion facilities in states with abortion limits create “health care deserts that harm all patients.” Women are forced to travel long distances, including out of state, for necessary treatment.

The facts:

• Now that Roe v. Wade has been overturned, the federal government can no longer prohibit elected officials from enacting laws about abortion that represent the values of their constituents.
  • That means states can finally pass laws that protect innocent unborn lives.
  • However, no state prohibits miscarriage treatment or other necessary, life-saving care for pregnant women. 
  • IVF, maternity care, and access to contraception have not been banned in any state.
  • Pro-life pregnancy resource centers, which outnumber Planned Parenthood facilities nationwide, provide robust, life-affirming maternity care resources.
• And it’s important to point out: abortion is not health care. 
  • Real health care seeks to preserve health or cure diseases. But the sole purpose of abortion is to end the life of a growing human being. And abortion frequently causes serious emotional, psychological, and even irreversible physical harm to women. 
• Meanwhile, Oregon abortion facilities are profiting from performing abortions for women traveling from out of state.

Claim 2: Abortion gets all the attention in the media, but it’s really just one of many things Planned Parenthood does.

The facts:

• It’s true that Planned Parenthood provides other reproductive services or products, including STI testing and contraception.
• However, claims that only a small percentage of its services are abortions (3% is the statistic typically provided), is highly misleading and has been debunked by left-wing sources Slate and the Washington Post.
  • In reality, Planned Parenthood misleadingly reports its services to support the claim that abortion is not their main business.
    • That means that, as Live Action points out, a woman who receives an abortion and also gets an STI exam, contraception, and/or other services, will be counted as having received numerous separate services – even though the abortion was the primary reason she went to the facility.
• The data show that Planned Parenthood is fundamentally an abortion business.
  • Last year, Planned Parenthood facilities performed roughly 40% of the nation’s abortions.
  • Abortions make up over 95% of Planned Parenthood’s pregnancy resolution services nationwide, according to the organization’s annual reports. 
  • And The Weekly Standard found that about a third of Planned Parenthood’s clinic revenue comes from performing abortions.

Claim 3: Abortion providers in Oregon provide abortions “under the law” for any patient who asks for them. Planned Parenthood never turns patients away.  

The facts:

• Both of these claims are undoubtedly true. 
• Abortion is legal in Oregon for any reason up to the moment of birth.
  • There are no laws that limit abortion in any way, not even to require seeing an ultrasound or undergo a mandatory waiting period. 
  • In Oregon, Planned Parenthood and Oregon Health and Science University will perform abortions late in pregnancy.
    • Planned Parenthood in Portland performs abortions through 24 weeks gestation (post-viability) according to Abortion Finder.
    • OHSU will abort up to 35 weeks, per Abortion Finder… at that age, the unborn are fully developed and can easily survive outside the womb.
• And statements that Planned Parenthood in Oregon does not turn patients away are very concerning.
  • Coercion and sexual abuse are very often behind the decision to abort, a fact that cuts directly against the abortion industry’s false claims that access to abortion is about “choice” and bodily autonomy.
  • Last year, an abortion facility in Bend reportedly performed an abortion for a 15-year-old girl who had been taken to Oregon from Idaho by her 18-year-old boyfriend and his mother.
    • The girl was reportedly “happy” with the pregnancy, though her boyfriend was not.
    • The boyfriend has since been charged with rape, and he and his mother face charges of second-degree kidnapping. 

Claim 4: Oregon’s abortion facilities need to be better equipped to care for women. Mothers and babies need quality healthcare to ensure their current and ongoing well-being.

The facts:

• Pro-life advocates wholeheartedly agree that women and babies should have access to high-quality healthcare.
  • Excellent maternal, prenatal, and neonatal care is essential to supporting women and families and curbing maternal and infant morbidity and mortality.
• But abortion is the opposite of high-quality healthcare. It wrongly treats pregnancy like a disease, destroys innocent human life, and it causes devastation to women and families.
• Claims that contraception and abortion are necessary to reduce maternal mortality ignore the fact that maternal mortality was already very high in the U.S. under Roe v. Wade, when abortion was fully legal nationwide.
  • European countries with current abortion limits do not experience such high rates of maternal mortality.
    • The comparison indicates that other factors, not abortion access, are at fault for comparatively high mortality rates in the U.S.

Claim 5: Oregon Health and Science University “is leading the way in Telehealth [abortions] and improving access to all 36 counties around our state.”

The facts:

• Chemical abortions prescribed through telehealth appointments have rapidly become the most common way women in America get abortions, accounting for over 60% of abortions last year.
• It is no doubt true that OHSU has a big role in ensuring that women have access to the chemical means to end the lives of their unborn babies in the womb.
• But advocates of medication abortion fail to talk about the real risks.
  • A 2009 study from Finland found that chemical abortions were associated with an adverse reaction rate four times that of surgical abortions, including an increased risk of hemorrhage and incomplete abortion.
  • Per the FDA, roughly 85% of women who take the abortion pill regimen report at least one adverse reaction.
    • Up to 8% of women reportedly experience bleeding for more than 30 days
    • Between 2.9–4.6% visit the emergency room after taking the drugs, though contributing circumstances may exist.
  • In 2022, two Georgia women died after taking the abortion pill when they suffered incomplete abortions and contracted sepsis.

Oregon Right to Life advocates for the most vulnerable human beings whose right to life is denied or abridged under current law. We work to reestablish protection for all innocent human life from conception to natural death.

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At Oregon Right to Life, we recognize that abortion ends the life of a genetically distinct, growing human being. We oppose abortion at any point of gestation. In rare cases, a mother may have a life threatening condition in which medical procedures intended to treat the condition of the mother may result in the unintended death of her preborn baby. At the same time, ORTL recognizes that modern medical practice has and will continue to increase the ability to save both the life of the mother and the baby. Read this and all our position statements here.