Popular Atheist Misrepresents Medical Condition to Attack Pregnant Pro-Life Influencer

He's calling her "ignorant" and "selfish" for not aborting her baby

Prominent atheist blogger Hemant Mehta wrote an article on his Substack, the Friendly Atheist, attacking Christian pro-life influencer Alex Gooding for choosing to continue her pregnancy.

She Chose Life After Being Ordered to Abort

Gooding was diagnosed with a Cesarean Scar Ectopic Pregnancy, known as CSP or CSEP. Doctors have encouraged Gooding to abort, but after talking to other women who carried CSP pregnancies to term and had healthy babies, she’s decided against abortion.

She wrote about a conversation she and her husband had with a doctor on Instagram:

Matt and I were met with some hostility by the OB. He told me 1) that my baby would probably die anyway because her heartbeat was 114 and she was measuring 2-3 days behind (which is perfectly normal btw) and 2) when I told him I wouldn’t be killing my baby today, he turned to Matt only and told him he has to make me terminate then. This was not a good experience and honestly I have zero respect for how he treated us that day.

Insults from Hemant Mehta 

Mehta took issue with Gooding’s decision to have her baby and her reaction to the doctor.

After quoting the conversation above, he commented:

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.

After attacking Gooding as “ignorant,” “selfish,” and “stubborn,” Mehta says, “[Gooding] smiles for the camera, not giving a damn about the kids she already has.”

He then writes:

…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.

He also is worried about what might happen if Gooding doesn’t die:

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.

Mehta seems to realize how coldhearted that sounds, because he follows it with, “That’s not to say I want her to suffer. I hope everything works out for them.”

Studies and Statistics

So, anyway, I did a little research. I found three studies of CSP pregnancies that were carried to term. Each was in a major, peer-reviewed medical journal.

The first can be found in the International Society of Ultrasound in Obstetrics and Gynecology journal. 

In this study, 10 women were diagnosed with CSP and chose to carry to term. All 10 gave birth to healthy babies, and none of the women died. Some of them did need hysterectomies. From the study:

The morbidity associated with the pregnancies in our case series was lower than might have been anticipated; we had no cases of first- or second-trimester rupture of membranes or maternal death, and half of the group of women had their uterus conserved (albeit with postpartum hemorrhage and requiring additional hemostatic measures).

The second study can be found in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology.

There were 17 patients in this study. Sixteen of them delivered a healthy baby. None of them died.

From the study:

There might be an over-estimation of the risk severity of CSP probably because of publication and verification bias. The severe cases that develop into morbidly adherent placenta are likely the ones that have been published. Conversely, good outcomes of CSP may have been underreported.

Expectant management of CSP was shown to offer the possibility to deliver a liveborn neonate, although with considerable risk for hysterectomy…

The third study was also from the International Society of Ultrasound in Obstetrics and Gynecology. In this study, there were again no deaths. Of the women in the study, 62.5% carried to term and had healthy babies. The rest lost their babies.

The study concludes:

If a woman has a first-trimester diagnosis of a cesarean scar implantation pregnancy and embryonic cardiac activity is present, expectant management offers the possibility of delivering a live-born neonate (62.5% in our study) but carries a substantial likelihood of hysterectomy at delivery due to placenta accreta (37.5% in our study) …

Out of three studies, there was a 100% survival rate for the pregnant person.

Now, it should be noted that there were some women in the studies who suffered complications such as hemorrhage, and some needed hysterectomies. Although all the women survived, CSP isn’t harmless—it does present a risk to the mother.

But it is nowhere near the death sentence Hemant Mehta presents it as.

Mehta’s Response to this Information

With statistics like the ones in the studies, I wouldn’t think a woman deserves to be called ignorant, selfish, and stubborn for choosing life— even by someone who’s pro-abortion.

After I received Mehta’s Substack and looked up the studies, I wrote to him. I gave him a link to one of the studies and described the results. I asked him if he was willing to edit his blog post and include some of this new (to him) medical information.

He refused. He dismissed the medical data, didn’t back down, and wouldn’t acknowledge the studies. Unfortunately, accuracy, balance, and integrity took a back seat to the opportunity to bash a Christian pro-lifer.

There is another question to ask. Mehta claims to be pro-choice. One would think “pro-choice” means respecting pregnant people’s choices, even the ones you disagree with.

So why is he attacking a woman and calling her “ignorant” and “selfish” for making a choice about her own body? Shaming people for their reproductive choices (that don’t affect you in any way) hardly seems to be in line with a “pro-choice” ideology, or with respect for women in general.

As an atheist, I’m disappointed in Mehta, and even more disappointed in the many hateful comments by atheists on his blog post.

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Sarah Terzo covered the abortion issue for over 13 years as a professional journalist. In this capacity, she has written nearly a thousand articles about abortion and read over 900 books on the topic. She has been researching and writing about abortion since attending The College of New Jersey (class of 1997) where she minored in Women’s Studies.

Sarah Terzo is a supporter of the Consistent Life Ethic, a philosophy that values all human life from conception to natural death and opposes war, the death penalty, euthanasia, abortion, and all forms of government-sanctioned violence. CLE supporters also work for racial justice and advocate for the poor and disadvantaged, in the US and abroad. 

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This article originally appeared on Sarah Terzo’s Substack. You can read more of her articles here.