An anti-abortion influencer insists she'll continue her high-risk ectopic pregnancy
This won't end well.
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An anti-abortion influencer insists she'll continue her high-risk ectopic pregnancy
This won't end well.
Oct 28, 2024
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Alex Gooding is one of those #TradWives who constantly posts about her ever-growing family. She has seven kids (“& 6 in heaven”). Her identity boils down to being a proud “Christian Mom of Many” under the Orthodox Christian Church umbrella.
Alex Gooding (screenshot via YouTube)
Her family is about to grow larger by one, with “Chloe Marie” on the way in a few months… but there’s a serious complication. Doctors have told her this is a Cesarean Scar Ectopic Pregnancy (CSEP), a rare condition in which the embryo implants inside the scar tissue left over from a previous C-section (as opposed to more common—but also dangerous—ectopic pregnancies which occur in the fallopian tubes).
What’s important to know is that these types of pregnancies are almost never viable. Without surgically or medically removing the embryo, a mother’s life is in serious danger, as one medical website noted:
Terminating the pregnancy is the best way to protect the woman and avoid catastrophic problems down the line.
But Alex Gooding is a conservative who thinks abortion is evil, so she says she plans to continue the pregnancy, despite the advice of her doctor who apparently tried everything he could to knock some sense into her.
That kind of response isn’t just infuriating; it’s selfish. The doctor was giving them the sad truth: The baby will almost certainly not survive, and there’s a good chance Alex won’t make it either. And they responded… by getting mad at the doctor.
Beyond that, it seems cruel to continue a pregnancy that could leave your other seven children without a parent due entirely to your own ignorance and stubbornness.
Because Alex is an influencer, though, the situation is made even worse because of survivorship bias. She doesn’t seem to understand that there’s a reason she’s hearing from other women who have survived ectopic pregnancies.
She’s hearing from “more survivors than not,” everyone! It’s a miracle!
Or maybe—and I know this may come as a shock to her—it’s literally impossible to hear from people who died from pregnancy complications. She refuses to consider how many other pregnant people in her situation didn’t make it. Instead, she smiles for the camera, not giving a damn about the kids she already has.
There’s nothing brave about continuing a pregnancy this risky. She’s not a role model for other women.
This is a prime example of why even most “pro-life” people say there should be exceptions “for the life of the mother.” A 2022 survey by the Pew Research Center found that, among Americans who believe abortion should be illegal in “most” or “all” cases, nearly half of them (46%) still said abortion should be an option if a woman’s life or health were in jeopardy. Another 27% said it depended on the situation. A situation like this one, in other words, might sway even the most fervent anti-abortion zealots.
All this from someone who admits she has a history of high-risk pregnancies and supports candidates who would remove choice as an option from anyone who’s pregnant—with no exceptions.
She’s lucky, in a way, that it’s not too late to choose a wiser path. She doesn’t have to do the thing she insists she’s going to do.
There is another concern, too. If everything works out as well as it possibly could, and the baby and mother survive, her advocacy would only discourage others in her situation from making the tragic but safer decision. Her survival could lead to more suffering for others. That’s not to say I want her to suffer. I hope everything works out for them. But instead of using her platform responsibly, and explaining to her followers that there are situations when even staunch abortion opponents might want to consider some nuance, she’s pitching herself as a martyr for the cause, as if it’s her versus the medical establishment.
The same medical establishment that, ironically, helped her bear other children through IVF, a process she now rejects as immoral.
In any case, congratulations to the eldest girl in the family, who may soon have to take over all of the child-rearing and household responsibilities because her mother wants to play Russian Roulette with her body and there’s no reason to think the father will help raise the kids. Nothing about this screams “choosing life.” It just sends the message that she’s more interested in giving birth than raising the family she already has.
As several online commenters pointed out, this continues a pernicious mindset that ramped up during the pandemic, where some people decided to follow their “own research” over solid medical advice that revealed how wrong they were. They would rather die to “own the libs” than take solid advice that might contradict their pre-existing beliefs. What a mistake.
I'm pro choice.
