President Joe Biden’s campaign released an ad this week that promotes falsehoods about the Texas abortion ban, according to a report.
The ad features the story of Dr. Austin Dennard, an OBGYN in Texas who decided to get an abortion out of state after her unborn child was diagnosed with anencephaly. In this fatal condition, the baby’s brain does not fully develop. Dennard said in the ad that the Texas abortion ban put her “life at risk” — a claim contradicted by medical research and her own lawsuit, as reported by the Daily Wire.
Babies diagnosed with anencephaly are often delivered as stillborns or live for a few hours or days. One infant born with the disorder lived for 28 months.
The abortion ban in Texas that went into effect after the overturn of Roe v. Wade allows for exceptions when the mother has a “life-threatening” condition or faces a “serious risk of substantial impairment of a major bodily function” due to the pregnancy. Texas Health and Human Services reported 34 performed abortions in the state that qualified for this exception between January and September of last year.
A 2019 study on 28 anencephalic pregnancies found that none resulted in maternal deaths. All documented complications in the pregnancies were treatable.
Health resources including the Cleveland Clinic and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention make no mention of further complications triggered by a fetal diagnosis of anencephaly. The CDC notes prenatal diagnosis of anencephaly may be mistaken for other conditions and should be confirmed if the fetus is delivered.
Dr. Ingrid Skop is a Texas OBGYN who has practiced in the state for more than three decades. She told the Daily Wire that a fetal diagnosis of anencephaly has no maternal life-threatening complications. The doctor said that Dennard would only qualify for an abortion in Texas if she had further complications from her pregnancy that threatened her life.
“The fetal diagnosis does not, in and of itself, place the mother at risk,” Skop said. “These are tragic conditions, but they do not threaten the woman’s life. If she develops complications that threaten her life, that law clearly allows intervention.”
“It is incorrect for her to say that she had to leave Texas to protect her life,” she continued. “The reality is she left Texas because she wanted to terminate a baby who had a life-limiting condition.”
The Biden campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
Dennard is named in a lawsuit against Texas over the abortion ban. The public records, as reported by the Daily Wire, have no details of pregnancy complications beyond the anencephaly diagnosis. The documents state Dennard decided she wanted an abortion immediately after the diagnosis at her 11-week ultrasound and began to explore options out of state.
“At Dr. Dennard’s 11-week ultrasound visit, however, her baby was diagnosed with anencephaly,” her lawyers wrote. “Dr. Dennard knew immediately the prognosis for both her and her baby. Her doctor confirmed that the condition was not compatible with survival and that in Texas, all they could offer her was additional ultrasound scans. Dr. Dennard decided she wanted an abortion.”
“Dr. Dennard knew that due to Texas’s abortion bans, she would need to travel out of state. Dr. Dennard immediately started researching her options and calling friends and colleagues for advice. She decided to travel to the east coast for her care,” the lawsuit continued.
