Jessa Duggar Seewald, known for her role on the popular TLC reality show “19 Kids and Counting,” is receiving some backlash after sharing about a recent miscarriage.
Around Christmas, Seewald miscarried what would have been her fifth child. “At that moment, I was just in complete shock,” she said in a recent YouTube video. “I didn’t even have words, I just immediately started crying.”
At the time of her ultrasound, Seewald learned her unborn baby’s heart had stopped beating. She would need to have a dilation and curettage procedure, also known as a “D&C,” to remove the tiny body of her deceased baby from her uterus.
In the video, Seewald explained the emotional experience of losing her baby and having the D&C procedure, admitting, “It’s hard, but we do know the truth that God is good, and He does care for us.”
While many offered Seewald their condolences on social media, some pro-abortion activists claimed she had an abortion.
“Jessa Duggar discusses her recent miscarriage, which was treated by performing a D&C—that is, an abortion,” Melissa Murray, a law professor at New York University, wrote on Twitter. “D&Cs are a common procedure following a miscarriage. The Duggars are famously pro-life.”
A headline from an article in the Arkansas Times, a left-leaning alternative weekly, responding to Seewald’s miscarriage, read: “Health care for me but not for thee: a Duggar had an abortion.”
Sex and relationships coach Anne Hodder-Shipp said on TikTok, “Jessa Duggar, dedicated anti-abortion, anti-choice abortion campaigner, had the choice to have an abortion procedure in order to complete her nonviable pregnancy.”
Pro-abortion activists are equating Seewald’s post-miscarriage procedure to an elective abortion. While a D&C procedure can be used to perform elective abortions, it’s far from the procedure’s only use.
Elective abortions are performed with the intent of ending the life of a child growing inside a mother. That’s why the term “failed abortion” refers to an abortion in which the baby survives.
As Seewald shared on YouTube after facing criticism for having a D&C procedure, “Women have D&C’s for many reasons, not all of which involve killing a living human being. The ultrasound revealed that I had a missed miscarriage. My baby’s heart had stopped beating three weeks before I had a D&C.”
Seewald added that the procedure was “not my first D&C.”
“It was my second. My first was two weeks postpartum Ivy’s birth for retained placenta,” she said.
Seewald lives in Arkansas, a state that does not permit abortion except to save the life of the mother. In Arkansas, as in other states that have abortion bans, the D&C procedure is still used in cases such as miscarriage.
Lila Rose, a pro-life advocate and the founder of Live Action, came to Seewald’s defense this week, writing on Twitter, “Jessa Duggar shares on her Instagram today that her baby had passed away three weeks before she had a D&C, correcting the cruel slander from pro-abortion activists that she had an elective abortion. Jessa, I’m so sorry that they weaponized the loss of your precious baby.”
On today’s edition of the “Problematic Women” podcast, we define what an abortion actually is and explain why Seewald’s critics are misinformed.
Also on today’s show, we break down some of the ways The Heritage Foundation is working to preserve our freedoms through an initiative called Project 2025. (The Daily Signal is the news outlet of The Heritage Foundation.) We’ll also bring you up to speed on all the candidates who have thrown their hats in the ring for a presidential run in 2024. Plus, a new study is out on what cities in America are the happiest. The answers may surprise you. And as always, we’ll be crowning our “Problematic Woman of the Week.”
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