Aside: I'm sorry about the hurtful responses you received in response to the article. I am really baffled that anyone could read your writing on abortion and conclude that you are being insincere or misleading.
You wrote: "All current laws include either an explicit note about care for women whose children are ectopic or a life-of-the-mother exemption, though people are concerned that any ambiguity or uncertainty about the laws could disrupt care." I am really glad you're planning to write about this! I would really like to see pro-lifers engage meaningfully with the fact that a woman from Texas was denied an abortion for ectopic pregnancy and told to drive to New Mexico for treatment (https://www.reformaustin.org/womens-rights/texas-abortion-law-already-putting-people-in-danger/), not to mention cases like Savita Halappanavar and several woman in Poland who died of sceptic shock after being refused abortions. It is perhaps tempting to dismiss cases like this as medical malpractice and explain that the law didn't really prohibit treatment in those cases--but I think this ignores the fact that in the absence of laws restricting abortion, these tragedies would not have happened. What is it about the law that needs to be fixed in order to stop these cases from happening?
I think there is sometimes a thing that needs fixing in the law itself, and sometimes the issue exists with how the law is interpreted (esp by hospitals used to taking a maximally cautious approach). Outside the context of abortion, Dara Lind, an excellent beat reporter on immigration, frequently has to address rumors of enforcement actions that don't exist. She's often correcting misinformation shared in good faith, by people who feel that if there *might* be a threat, they best care for the vulnerable by amplifying it. But this can wind up terrorizing people or keeping them from activities that are not dangerous.
Here, too, I think there's an attempt to warn that people are worried life-saving care could be restricted, and they're right to ask about how law is implemented! But asserting that it *will* creates confusion that can lead to the law being applied badly. So, again, my goal is to do reporting on this and talk to people directly affected in hospitals and in training.
You may be right that the issue is hospitals taking a maximally cautious response, but I disagree with you that it's irresponsible to assert that laws being drafted now will result in harm to women. The laws being passed now don't seem different enough from those on the books in Poland or previously Ireland; unless you can give me a convincing reason why I'm wrong about this, I will assume that the same negative consequences will eventually follow.
Also, what do you view as the responsibility of pro-life legislators who are drafting laws for the maximally cautious medical environment of today? They are passing laws *today* so these laws need to be just in the medical system we have *today,* not an ideal future one that interprets the law exactly as they'd want.
Could you expand a bit more on what you mean by “creates confusion that can lead to the law being applied badly”? Especially the “applied badly” part. Any real or hypothetical examples in mind to illustrate this would be great!
Something can be legal to do, but if there's uncertainty about *whether* it is legal, people may hesitate or refrain from taking action the law does not prohibit. The more ambiguity (whether in the law or in coverage of the law), the greater the potential chilling effect.
Because right now in my mind the example would be hospitals or doctors who might refrain from providing the procedure you received, if they are not sure whether it is permitted under the law in a state post-Roe. Would that not also be a chilling effect you describe?
What gives me pause with your piece is your use of the word “deliver” in describing ectopic pregnancy, as this word is more associated with potential for live birth (whereas there is zero chance of this with ectopic) and thus adds to the cloudiness and chilling effect to the POV of caregivers wishing to be maximally cautious.
Thank you for your courage, and your witness of truth and vulnerability. Sharing your stories is an incredible act of love. I’m sure you were well aware of the smothering blanket of criticism you would receive, seemingly from all sides! Your ability to analyze and find the humanity behind the criticism is truly a gift- a beautiful gift. Thank you for your good and important work.
I hear and appreciate your deep compassion, and agree that more compassion in healthcare settings (and all settings!) is a vital good to be maximized.
But does “pro-life” legislation somehow get us there?
Your mistreatment in a Catholic hospital suggests no.
The practical application of these laws, in the US and elsewhere where we have much more data, suggests no.
The laws legislators (pro life or pro choice) pass also suggests no - with far more compassionate legislation done by pro choice legislators, or blocked by pro life ones.
There’s also the counter factual I think you should wrestle with: the deep compassion of many doctors and other staff who perform abortions. It’s easy to imagine them as worse than the worst Twitter commenters. But in practice staff at abortion clinics are on the whole deeply caring. They help patients (who desire it) hold their child, prepare their child for burial, etc.
There are also many implications to the way you see a stark difference between how a pro choice person performs an abortion and the way a pro life person does a “delivery” in the same circumstance. Do we want a world where the law attempts to dictate and discern intent? One where the law makes the same assumptions you do? Does a world of fetal personhood mean Jewish doctors are banned from becoming OBGYNs?
As one doctor wrote on Twitter, portraying all doctors who perform abortions as heartless could be the most damaging part of your piece, since they already receive a deluge of very real threats of violence. It’s easy and dangerous to perpetuate a stereotype of them being heartless butchers. It’s harder to believe that myth when you extend them compassion and understanding, and hear their stories and the stories of women they’ve cared for.
I don't think all doctors who perform abortions are heartless, and I did not say so in my piece. I don't know whether the OB-GYN whose practice I left because she yelled at me for crying performs abortions, But I think a culture that repeatedly warns people not to personify children in the womb, lest it undermine the case for abortion, will weaken its ability to care for grieving parents.
The abortion doctor I linked above notes the gap between her actual practice and advocacy talking points:
"When probed, the questions raised by abortion—its ethics, its spiritual significance, its impact on women’s lives—represent a vast gray area. Words like “viability” and “choice” erase this gray area by invoking black-and-white concepts, right vs. wrong, or even some notion of consumerist entitlement. Meanwhile, in the procedure room, my patients grapple with emotional and moral contradictions, using words such as “life,” “death,” “baby,” and “grief”—the very words that are strictly off-limits in public discourse because to use them is to reveal some dark and shameful secret.
But what is that dark secret? It is not that women seek abortion out of a callous disregard for “life,” or out of a self-righteous obsession with their own “right to choose.” Nor is it that perverse and predatory doctors rush women through discussions about abortion, or discourage women from examining their complex and often contradictory emotions. It is the opposite, in fact.
The real secret is that abortion is difficult. It is difficult because in a pregnant woman, there are no clear physiologic boundaries, no clean line showing what belongs to whom. Also—and this might sound shocking, coming from someone on this “side” of the debate—it is difficult because mothers love their children, and they often don’t know exactly how to think about, or whether they are allowed to love, an unborn child."
Yes! I think that’s a beautiful essay. But to wrestle with this and come down on the side of state violence against women and the people who care for them continues to perplex me. How does a world of current and future legislation get us closer to a place of compassion rather than further from it?
I'm more used to hearing laws described as "coming down on the side of state violence against X" by either prison abolitionists or libertarians, and I am neither. I want substantial reforms of policing and incarceration, but I think both are necessary parts of what a state is for and how it protects the vulnerable.
A law is not just an opportunity for state violence—it matters what the law is acting to protect or prohibit. It's possible that where we differ is whether there is any good protected at all by laws that prohibit abortion. But I see them as a response to a pervasive violence against the extremely vulnerable.
It also matters *how* we write the law. I think we both knew some of the same libertarians in college who argued against seatbelt laws on the grounds that they weren't worth executing people over, and that, ultimately (in their view) all laws depend on the potential for lethal violence, so if you wouldn't kill someone over it, you can't rightly make a law. I think that's wrong in theory and in practice—seatbelt laws save lives, and we can have the laws without public execution of scofflaws.
I’ve been musing more on your choice to not get into policy analysis.
In theory, if there was a concerted and successful attempt to rebrand abortions for the health of the mother as “early deliveries” - if that is what you are attempting to do with the NYT piece - it *could* have a positive impact on maternal health outcomes. I’m curious if you have found any examples of places where this approach has worked. Given the way hospital legal teams operate and the way the laws currently on the books are written (US South and elsewhere with similar bans), I don’t see this attempt being successful. And from a practical standpoint, there just aren’t places for women to get abortions now in large swaths of the country until they are actively in a medical crisis, in which case (if the abortion is approved by some opaque hospital administration mandated process) the abortion will be performed by someone who most likely has little experience with the procedure.
That isn’t even getting into how the pro life movement has worked to eliminate abortion training in medical schools which makes it all the less likely the doctor has appropriate training.
Many many women don’t want to call their abortions abortions, and I do get that. But creating a two tier regulatory framework is hard in the clearest of circumstances, and parsing “good” from “bad” from “spontaneous” abortions is not something our legal system, hospital administrations and doctors are great at when there is a threat of a felony or obstruction charges or the loss of a license to practice overhead.
And that’s why I believe now is the time for you to policy-nerd out on this legislation! Write about how bad policy leads to messiness in hospitals! Interview hospital administrators about what these laws mean! I couldn’t think of a better writer to take that project on.
I think we’re approaching the true point of our disagreement!
I do understand where you’re coming from, but I can’t get past the fact that there doesn’t seem to be *any* place with anti-abortion laws like the ones we now have that meets my threshold of women getting consistent and appropriate healthcare for pregnancy complications *and* where abortions decrease below our pre Dobbs levels. I’d love you to share a concrete *why* you’re optimistic laws like those in “pro life” states today will have the outcomes you hope for. I don’t understand the choice to avoid policy analysis in this moment when it could have such a positive impact on law currently being drafted.
On the state violence front, I think women waiting for their fallopian tube to rupture for treatment is state violence - the direct result of bad policy. I also think a ten year old having to travel out of state for an abortion is state violence.
Leah, thank you for writing this piece and as someone who is intimate with the pro choice movement, it was severely disappointing to see the commentary you received though not entirely surprising. The bad faith and cruel responses you received were emblematic of the callousness and willful ignorance of nuance I've come to see rising in the pro choice world. However all that being said, my own thoughts echo a lot of Martha's concerns here. If you do write and report on hospitals and the application of these laws, I work closely with training abortion doctors and many of our teaching hospitals are deeply impacted and responding to the on the ground reality. I am working (though currently on maternity leave) on policies for hospitals and emergency rooms and there is a ton of confusion and uncertainty around how care is going to look. I would be happy to try to get some people directly involved in these matters (most of whom are abortion doctors or lawyers) to speak with you though sadly I am not sure they would be willing. Not sure how to get in contact without publicly posting my email so lmk if you're interested and I can email you.
I do hear what you’re saying. And to be honest - it truly concerns me. Imagine if every time a doctor saved a woman with an ectopic pregnancy (and performed an abortion), their “intent” was analyzed based on their religious beliefs, their social media history, their political persuasion, etc. Do we want to accuse someone who spends their days caring for patients and respecting their patients beliefs of homicide because their intent doesn’t respect the personhood of the developing embryo enough? Is this the world you want?
I'm not convinced that the pro-choice movement is based on a woman's "desire." The pro-choice movement is based on various social factors, not feelings. There are also the pro-choice aspects of privacy, economics, autonomy, health care, and equality. It's far more complicated, IMO, and saying it is based on a woman's whims or desires dismisses the very real issues in the pro-choice movement and why a woman may choose abortion.
There is a lot of debate on when life begins and its viability, not only in the medical community but also (as Martha mentions) in different religious traditions. I'm Catholic, but my feeling has changed a lot to where I'm much more liberal on this issue than I was previously. Judaism and Islam have different teachings on abortion. So IMO, when there is an aspect of religious freedom that is not considered in the larger debate.
I just want to say how much I appreciate your work, and as a mother who has lost two babies through miscarriage, I am appalled at the vitriol you’ve received. Thank you for writing about Camillian. Thank you for your vulnerability and honesty. And thank you for your writing in this substack. It gives me much to think about.
Pro-choice tweeters did a pretty swift 180 from "LOL pro-lifers consider ectopic surgeries abortions" to "LOL pro-lifers don't consider ectopic surgeries abortions."
This is a question of factual inquiry, not a means to prove any particular point - other than yourself and Alexi, where else have you read or heard the word “deliver” in reference to the ultimate/potential result of an ectopic pregnancy?
I think the way I'm using it is not the most common usage, which is why I expanded into the analogy of the baby delivered due to eclampsia at a time he or she *might* survive but is not expected to. In both cases, as I see it, the delivery is performed with everyone hoping against hope that the child could make it. (In my case, it would require a miracle, in the 21 or 22 week case, it is very unlikely but there is a glimmer of hope).
In contrast to the delivery of a child expected to die, an abortion has as its goal the cessation of life, and it has failed if the baby survives. Charlie Camosy wrote about this a bit at Public Discourse ("The Right to a Dead Baby" https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2022/04/81840/), considering if the right to abortion access is about the right to not be pregnant (to be disconnected) or the right for a baby to cease being.
I really appreciated your comments on twitter and here. I had diagnoses very early every time, because we had frequent blood tests due to our miscarriage history, so when the numbers looked wrong, the doctor had us in right away. When we conceived Beatrice (now 2.5) after two ectopic losses, my doctor made sure to monitor blood levels and do an ultrasound as soon as she could expect to see where the baby was, so she could take good care of me. I'm very grateful to her, and I expect to be advocating for an early 6 week u/s for any future pregnancies.
Aside: I'm sorry about the hurtful responses you received in response to the article. I am really baffled that anyone could read your writing on abortion and conclude that you are being insincere or misleading.
You wrote: "All current laws include either an explicit note about care for women whose children are ectopic or a life-of-the-mother exemption, though people are concerned that any ambiguity or uncertainty about the laws could disrupt care." I am really glad you're planning to write about this! I would really like to see pro-lifers engage meaningfully with the fact that a woman from Texas was denied an abortion for ectopic pregnancy and told to drive to New Mexico for treatment (https://www.reformaustin.org/womens-rights/texas-abortion-law-already-putting-people-in-danger/), not to mention cases like Savita Halappanavar and several woman in Poland who died of sceptic shock after being refused abortions. It is perhaps tempting to dismiss cases like this as medical malpractice and explain that the law didn't really prohibit treatment in those cases--but I think this ignores the fact that in the absence of laws restricting abortion, these tragedies would not have happened. What is it about the law that needs to be fixed in order to stop these cases from happening?
I think there is sometimes a thing that needs fixing in the law itself, and sometimes the issue exists with how the law is interpreted (esp by hospitals used to taking a maximally cautious approach). Outside the context of abortion, Dara Lind, an excellent beat reporter on immigration, frequently has to address rumors of enforcement actions that don't exist. She's often correcting misinformation shared in good faith, by people who feel that if there *might* be a threat, they best care for the vulnerable by amplifying it. But this can wind up terrorizing people or keeping them from activities that are not dangerous.
Here, too, I think there's an attempt to warn that people are worried life-saving care could be restricted, and they're right to ask about how law is implemented! But asserting that it *will* creates confusion that can lead to the law being applied badly. So, again, my goal is to do reporting on this and talk to people directly affected in hospitals and in training.
You may be right that the issue is hospitals taking a maximally cautious response, but I disagree with you that it's irresponsible to assert that laws being drafted now will result in harm to women. The laws being passed now don't seem different enough from those on the books in Poland or previously Ireland; unless you can give me a convincing reason why I'm wrong about this, I will assume that the same negative consequences will eventually follow.
Also, what do you view as the responsibility of pro-life legislators who are drafting laws for the maximally cautious medical environment of today? They are passing laws *today* so these laws need to be just in the medical system we have *today,* not an ideal future one that interprets the law exactly as they'd want.
Could you expand a bit more on what you mean by “creates confusion that can lead to the law being applied badly”? Especially the “applied badly” part. Any real or hypothetical examples in mind to illustrate this would be great!
Something can be legal to do, but if there's uncertainty about *whether* it is legal, people may hesitate or refrain from taking action the law does not prohibit. The more ambiguity (whether in the law or in coverage of the law), the greater the potential chilling effect.
Because right now in my mind the example would be hospitals or doctors who might refrain from providing the procedure you received, if they are not sure whether it is permitted under the law in a state post-Roe. Would that not also be a chilling effect you describe?
That is my concern, too.
What gives me pause with your piece is your use of the word “deliver” in describing ectopic pregnancy, as this word is more associated with potential for live birth (whereas there is zero chance of this with ectopic) and thus adds to the cloudiness and chilling effect to the POV of caregivers wishing to be maximally cautious.
When you typed that, could you give me an example in your mind of what people (patients or caregivers) might do/not do because of the chilling effect?
Thank you for your courage, and your witness of truth and vulnerability. Sharing your stories is an incredible act of love. I’m sure you were well aware of the smothering blanket of criticism you would receive, seemingly from all sides! Your ability to analyze and find the humanity behind the criticism is truly a gift- a beautiful gift. Thank you for your good and important work.
I hear and appreciate your deep compassion, and agree that more compassion in healthcare settings (and all settings!) is a vital good to be maximized.
But does “pro-life” legislation somehow get us there?
Your mistreatment in a Catholic hospital suggests no.
The practical application of these laws, in the US and elsewhere where we have much more data, suggests no.
The laws legislators (pro life or pro choice) pass also suggests no - with far more compassionate legislation done by pro choice legislators, or blocked by pro life ones.
There’s also the counter factual I think you should wrestle with: the deep compassion of many doctors and other staff who perform abortions. It’s easy to imagine them as worse than the worst Twitter commenters. But in practice staff at abortion clinics are on the whole deeply caring. They help patients (who desire it) hold their child, prepare their child for burial, etc.
There are also many implications to the way you see a stark difference between how a pro choice person performs an abortion and the way a pro life person does a “delivery” in the same circumstance. Do we want a world where the law attempts to dictate and discern intent? One where the law makes the same assumptions you do? Does a world of fetal personhood mean Jewish doctors are banned from becoming OBGYNs?
As one doctor wrote on Twitter, portraying all doctors who perform abortions as heartless could be the most damaging part of your piece, since they already receive a deluge of very real threats of violence. It’s easy and dangerous to perpetuate a stereotype of them being heartless butchers. It’s harder to believe that myth when you extend them compassion and understanding, and hear their stories and the stories of women they’ve cared for.
I think people do go into abortion work because they want to help women. This is a particularly thoughtful and compassionate essay by an abortion doctor: https://bostonreview.net/articles/why-i-provide-abortions/
I don't think all doctors who perform abortions are heartless, and I did not say so in my piece. I don't know whether the OB-GYN whose practice I left because she yelled at me for crying performs abortions, But I think a culture that repeatedly warns people not to personify children in the womb, lest it undermine the case for abortion, will weaken its ability to care for grieving parents.
The abortion doctor I linked above notes the gap between her actual practice and advocacy talking points:
"When probed, the questions raised by abortion—its ethics, its spiritual significance, its impact on women’s lives—represent a vast gray area. Words like “viability” and “choice” erase this gray area by invoking black-and-white concepts, right vs. wrong, or even some notion of consumerist entitlement. Meanwhile, in the procedure room, my patients grapple with emotional and moral contradictions, using words such as “life,” “death,” “baby,” and “grief”—the very words that are strictly off-limits in public discourse because to use them is to reveal some dark and shameful secret.
But what is that dark secret? It is not that women seek abortion out of a callous disregard for “life,” or out of a self-righteous obsession with their own “right to choose.” Nor is it that perverse and predatory doctors rush women through discussions about abortion, or discourage women from examining their complex and often contradictory emotions. It is the opposite, in fact.
The real secret is that abortion is difficult. It is difficult because in a pregnant woman, there are no clear physiologic boundaries, no clean line showing what belongs to whom. Also—and this might sound shocking, coming from someone on this “side” of the debate—it is difficult because mothers love their children, and they often don’t know exactly how to think about, or whether they are allowed to love, an unborn child."
Yes! I think that’s a beautiful essay. But to wrestle with this and come down on the side of state violence against women and the people who care for them continues to perplex me. How does a world of current and future legislation get us closer to a place of compassion rather than further from it?
I'm more used to hearing laws described as "coming down on the side of state violence against X" by either prison abolitionists or libertarians, and I am neither. I want substantial reforms of policing and incarceration, but I think both are necessary parts of what a state is for and how it protects the vulnerable.
A law is not just an opportunity for state violence—it matters what the law is acting to protect or prohibit. It's possible that where we differ is whether there is any good protected at all by laws that prohibit abortion. But I see them as a response to a pervasive violence against the extremely vulnerable.
It also matters *how* we write the law. I think we both knew some of the same libertarians in college who argued against seatbelt laws on the grounds that they weren't worth executing people over, and that, ultimately (in their view) all laws depend on the potential for lethal violence, so if you wouldn't kill someone over it, you can't rightly make a law. I think that's wrong in theory and in practice—seatbelt laws save lives, and we can have the laws without public execution of scofflaws.
I’ve been musing more on your choice to not get into policy analysis.
In theory, if there was a concerted and successful attempt to rebrand abortions for the health of the mother as “early deliveries” - if that is what you are attempting to do with the NYT piece - it *could* have a positive impact on maternal health outcomes. I’m curious if you have found any examples of places where this approach has worked. Given the way hospital legal teams operate and the way the laws currently on the books are written (US South and elsewhere with similar bans), I don’t see this attempt being successful. And from a practical standpoint, there just aren’t places for women to get abortions now in large swaths of the country until they are actively in a medical crisis, in which case (if the abortion is approved by some opaque hospital administration mandated process) the abortion will be performed by someone who most likely has little experience with the procedure.
That isn’t even getting into how the pro life movement has worked to eliminate abortion training in medical schools which makes it all the less likely the doctor has appropriate training.
Many many women don’t want to call their abortions abortions, and I do get that. But creating a two tier regulatory framework is hard in the clearest of circumstances, and parsing “good” from “bad” from “spontaneous” abortions is not something our legal system, hospital administrations and doctors are great at when there is a threat of a felony or obstruction charges or the loss of a license to practice overhead.
And that’s why I believe now is the time for you to policy-nerd out on this legislation! Write about how bad policy leads to messiness in hospitals! Interview hospital administrators about what these laws mean! I couldn’t think of a better writer to take that project on.
I think we’re approaching the true point of our disagreement!
I do understand where you’re coming from, but I can’t get past the fact that there doesn’t seem to be *any* place with anti-abortion laws like the ones we now have that meets my threshold of women getting consistent and appropriate healthcare for pregnancy complications *and* where abortions decrease below our pre Dobbs levels. I’d love you to share a concrete *why* you’re optimistic laws like those in “pro life” states today will have the outcomes you hope for. I don’t understand the choice to avoid policy analysis in this moment when it could have such a positive impact on law currently being drafted.
On the state violence front, I think women waiting for their fallopian tube to rupture for treatment is state violence - the direct result of bad policy. I also think a ten year old having to travel out of state for an abortion is state violence.
Leah, thank you for writing this piece and as someone who is intimate with the pro choice movement, it was severely disappointing to see the commentary you received though not entirely surprising. The bad faith and cruel responses you received were emblematic of the callousness and willful ignorance of nuance I've come to see rising in the pro choice world. However all that being said, my own thoughts echo a lot of Martha's concerns here. If you do write and report on hospitals and the application of these laws, I work closely with training abortion doctors and many of our teaching hospitals are deeply impacted and responding to the on the ground reality. I am working (though currently on maternity leave) on policies for hospitals and emergency rooms and there is a ton of confusion and uncertainty around how care is going to look. I would be happy to try to get some people directly involved in these matters (most of whom are abortion doctors or lawyers) to speak with you though sadly I am not sure they would be willing. Not sure how to get in contact without publicly posting my email so lmk if you're interested and I can email you.
I’d be very grateful if you emailed me. I’m Leah dot Libresco ar gmail dot com
I do hear what you’re saying. And to be honest - it truly concerns me. Imagine if every time a doctor saved a woman with an ectopic pregnancy (and performed an abortion), their “intent” was analyzed based on their religious beliefs, their social media history, their political persuasion, etc. Do we want to accuse someone who spends their days caring for patients and respecting their patients beliefs of homicide because their intent doesn’t respect the personhood of the developing embryo enough? Is this the world you want?
I'm not convinced that the pro-choice movement is based on a woman's "desire." The pro-choice movement is based on various social factors, not feelings. There are also the pro-choice aspects of privacy, economics, autonomy, health care, and equality. It's far more complicated, IMO, and saying it is based on a woman's whims or desires dismisses the very real issues in the pro-choice movement and why a woman may choose abortion.
There is a lot of debate on when life begins and its viability, not only in the medical community but also (as Martha mentions) in different religious traditions. I'm Catholic, but my feeling has changed a lot to where I'm much more liberal on this issue than I was previously. Judaism and Islam have different teachings on abortion. So IMO, when there is an aspect of religious freedom that is not considered in the larger debate.
I just want to say how much I appreciate your work, and as a mother who has lost two babies through miscarriage, I am appalled at the vitriol you’ve received. Thank you for writing about Camillian. Thank you for your vulnerability and honesty. And thank you for your writing in this substack. It gives me much to think about.
Pro-choice tweeters did a pretty swift 180 from "LOL pro-lifers consider ectopic surgeries abortions" to "LOL pro-lifers don't consider ectopic surgeries abortions."
Leah, thank you for having the courage to share your story on this difficult topic. I'm sorry you received those bad-faith responses. Best wishes!
This is a question of factual inquiry, not a means to prove any particular point - other than yourself and Alexi, where else have you read or heard the word “deliver” in reference to the ultimate/potential result of an ectopic pregnancy?
I think the way I'm using it is not the most common usage, which is why I expanded into the analogy of the baby delivered due to eclampsia at a time he or she *might* survive but is not expected to. In both cases, as I see it, the delivery is performed with everyone hoping against hope that the child could make it. (In my case, it would require a miracle, in the 21 or 22 week case, it is very unlikely but there is a glimmer of hope).
In contrast to the delivery of a child expected to die, an abortion has as its goal the cessation of life, and it has failed if the baby survives. Charlie Camosy wrote about this a bit at Public Discourse ("The Right to a Dead Baby" https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2022/04/81840/), considering if the right to abortion access is about the right to not be pregnant (to be disconnected) or the right for a baby to cease being.
But have you seen the word “deliver” ever in the same sentence in conjunction with describing the outcome of an ectopic pregnancy?
e.g. “deliver an ectopic pregnancy”
I really appreciated your comments on twitter and here. I had diagnoses very early every time, because we had frequent blood tests due to our miscarriage history, so when the numbers looked wrong, the doctor had us in right away. When we conceived Beatrice (now 2.5) after two ectopic losses, my doctor made sure to monitor blood levels and do an ultrasound as soon as she could expect to see where the baby was, so she could take good care of me. I'm very grateful to her, and I expect to be advocating for an early 6 week u/s for any future pregnancies.