(Bracey Harris. NBC News).
The Charlotte Lozier Institute wants to arm the anti-abortion movement with science, but critics say its research is flawed.
On a winter day less than two years after the fall of Roe v. Wade, Dr. Ingrid Skop beamed at a crowd of anti-abortion activists gathered at the Texas Capitol.
“The sun is shining on us. I think someone is happy with what we’re doing,” said Skop, a longtime OB-GYN, clad in a white doctor’s coat.
Her smile dropped as she launched into a speech attacking the Food and Drug Administration’s regulation of mifepristone for medication abortions. “One out of 20 women ends up needing emergency surgery with these dangerous pills,” she said.
The statistic isn’t far off, but the procedure that Skop warned of is a vacuum aspiration to clear the uterus, considered routine in miscarriage care and low-risk.
Skop’s warnings about abortion extend far beyond this rally. She is the vice president and director of medical affairs of the Charlotte Lozier Institute, established in 2011 as the research arm of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, a nonprofit group that works to elect anti-abortion candidates.
In a movement where many adherents are guided by religious or ideological beliefs, the institute has tried to win on secular grounds by offering research and studies aimed at countering the well-established scientific consensus that abortion care is safe.