Anti-abortion kooks walked so that anti-vaxx kooks could run

This is a good post putting the insane proposed bans on terminating ectopic pregnancies in the context of pseudo-scientific bullshit that has long permeated the movement to criminalize abortion:

Here is a scientific fact: Ectopic pregnancies are not viable. They occur when a fertilized egg implants outside the uterus, which dooms the pregnancy and, without treatment, can doom a woman, too. Ectopic pregnancies can lead to hemorrhage and are the leading cause of death for women in the first trimester of pregnancy. Here’s another fact: There is one way to save a woman from an ectopic pregnancy, and that is through termination — an abortion.

A proposed Missouri bill ignores these facts outright. H.B. 2810 would make it a felony, punishable by ten-years-to-life in prison, to perform an abortion after ten weeks of pregnancy, including in cases of ectopic pregnancy, the Springfield News-Leader reports. The bill’s architect, state representative Brian Seitz, offered a familiar justification for his work. “This bill is about protecting life,” he told the newspaper. In a confusing email to Bloomberg News, Seitz claimed that his bill had been misrepresented by critics and that it would do nothing “to curtail that LEGAL activity, as it can present a clear and present danger to the mother.” Perhaps Seitz does not understand that abortion is both a legal activity and the cure for ectopic pregnancies. Or perhaps he does know but simply doesn’t care about the facts. In either case, he would hardly be the first anti-abortion conservative to potentially put women at risk through his disregard for basic medical science. The anti-abortion movement turns to such pseudoscience to conceal its hostility for abortion-seeking women.

For proof, examine the movement’s record. Anti-abortion activists commonly make a variety of medical and scientific claims about contraception and abortion that have no evidential basis. They have insisted that abortion leads to cancer, infertility, and psychological disorders. The owners of Hobby Lobby believed that intrauterine devices, or IUDs, and the Plan B pill cause abortions. In Ohio, a previously proposed bill “would have prohibited insurers from covering abortion services but provided an exception for doctors to ‘reimplant’ an ectopic pregnancy into a woman’s uterus,” Bloomberg News reports, which is impossible. Current bills in Ohio and South Carolina would require doctors to tell patients who receive medication abortions that the procedure can be halted or reversed. A dozen other states have already passed similar laws, even though the claim they advance is based on an unproven, potentially dangerous treatment that isn’t endorsed by the medical community.

Fake anti-abortion science was a major part of the worldview of even very grudging vote to uphold some parts of Roe v. Wade Anthony Kennedy. With Brett Kavanaugh or Amy Coney Barrett the median vote of the Court, the amount of Doing My Own Research will pretty much turn the Constitution into the Joe Rogan Experience.