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No, Jessa Duggar Didn’t Have an Abortion

No, Jessa Duggar Didn’t Have an Abortion

Former reality TV star Jessa Duggar posted an emotional response addressing national media claims that she had an abortion, which were made after her vulnerable post last week revealing she recently suffered a miscarriage.

“Women have D&Cs for many reasons,” Duggar posted, “not all of which involve killing a living human being.”

The “19 Kids and Counting” alum revealed in a video Friday she had experienced “heartbreak over the holidays,” when she and her husband, Ben Seewald, experienced a miscarriage near the end of her first trimester. She said it left her in “complete shock.”

“I didn’t even have words,” Duggar said. “I just immediately started crying. And I was so, so thankful in that moment that I had not gone to that appointment by myself, because I almost did. And Ben was there, and he put his arms around me.”

After her post, Duggar was accused by media outlets of “admitting she got an abortion.”

Jezebel posted, “Jessa Duggar Seewald Had an Abortion, Even If She Won’t Say the Word,” while Parade published “Jessa Duggar Reveals She Had a Life-Saving Abortion in Emotional New Video.”

A common procedure after miscarriages, Duggar underwent a D&C — or dilation and curettage — to remove tissue from the uterus. The short procedure is, in many cases, necessary to prevent infection or complications following a miscarriage, particularly if there is a chance uterine bleeding won’t fully clear the uterus. Additionally, some women, like Duggar, experience “missed miscarriages,” instances in which the body does not realize the unborn baby has died.

That is not the same as an abortion, which is defined as the “deliberate termination” of a pregnancy. Duggar, 30, had already lost the baby when she underwent a D&C.

“My baby’s heart had stopped beating three weeks before I had a D&C,” Duggar explained in an Instagram story. “(BTW, this was not my first D&C — it was my second. My first was two weeks postpartum Ivy’s birth for retained placenta).

“Each person is created ‘in the image of God’ (Gen 1:27), and to purposefully destroy a baby in the womb is an affront to the God who created that life,” wrote Duggar. “There’s a world of difference between someone dying and someone being killed.

“To equate one to the other — and to a mother grieving the loss of her baby no less — is severely distasteful,” she continued. “There is a world of difference between a mortician and a murderer. Even a child understands the difference between the two.”

Watch Duggar’s original video:

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