Letter to the Editor
Jeanne Strubbe argues that abortion is never healthcare and grounds that claim in religious belief. If faith is the standard being invoked, then honesty and consistency must apply fully, not selectively.
In medicine, “abortion” is a clinical term. It refers to the termination of a pregnancy before viability, meaning before a fetus can survive outside the uterus with reasonable medical support, generally around 22 to 24 weeks of gestation, depending on medical circumstances. That definition includes miscarriages, ectopic pregnancies, and procedures necessary to save a woman’s life. An ectopic pregnancy occurs when a fertilized egg implants outside the uterus, most commonly in a fallopian tube. Such pregnancies are never viable and will become life-threatening without medical intervention. I have experienced two pregnancy losses, a miscarriage and an ectopic pregnancy. Both were medically classified as abortions. If abortion is never healthcare, then neither was the care that kept me alive.
If someone insists on defining one word to make a moral argument, they are obligated to define both. “Healthcare” is defined as care provided to preserve physical, mental, or emotional well-being. Treating hemorrhage, infection, ectopic pregnancy, and pregnancy loss meets that definition exactly. Redefining “abortion” while refusing to apply the same rigor to “healthcare” is not moral clarity. It is rhetorical manipulation.
Why is this important? Since the overturning of Roe v. Wade, at least nine states have enacted or proposed abortion laws that created confusion or concern among medical professionals regarding the treatment of ectopic pregnancies and active miscarriages. In several states, legislators either failed to clearly exclude ectopic pregnancy from abortion bans or relied on vague “medical emergency” language that did not align with clinical practice. In some cases, lawmakers demonstrated a fundamental misunderstanding of ectopic pregnancy itself. The result has been documented hesitation, delayed care, legal uncertainty for clinicians and even death of women seeking healthcare. This confusion is not theoretical. It is the predictable consequence of writing ideology into medical law without fully understanding the medicine and the definitions of words.
Pregnancy is not a single moral event. It is a complex biological process that routinely requires healthcare to preserve life.
Religious certainty does not resolve this complexity. Scripture does not clearly define life as beginning at conception, nor does it equate pregnancy loss with murder. Biblical law distinguished between the loss of a pregnancy and the death of a woman. Jewish and early Christian ethics prioritized the life of the mother when pregnancy endangered her. The modern claim that abortion is always murder is not timeless theology. It is a political construction layered onto faith.
The data further undermines the narrative being advanced. There is no credible public-health evidence that abortion is used as routine birth control. Unplanned pregnancies are tracked by contraception use and failure, and abortion is classified as a pregnancy outcome, not a contraceptive method. Nearly 93 percent of abortions occur in the first trimester. Abortions later in pregnancy are rare and overwhelmingly tied to severe medical complications.
A faith that claims to value life cannot erase women’s lives, medical realities, and lived experiences in service of absolutism. Declaring abortion is “never healthcare” does not prevent miscarriage, ectopic pregnancy, or maternal death. It only replaces compassion and truth with absolutism that medicine, data, and faith itself do not support.
Christina Butler
South Jacksonville, IL
