With eight weeks to go until the midterm elections, Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, the state’s Democratic U.S. Senate candidate, called on physicians on Friday to weigh in on the threat his Republican opponent, Dr. Mehmet Oz, poses to reproductive rights if he wins a Senate seat.
In Fetterman’s latest ad, obstetrician and gynecologist Dr. Lisa Perriera is seen speaking at a podium about Oz’s pro-forced pregnancy beliefs.
“Oz has extreme anti-choice views and has said he opposes abortion even in cases of rape and incest,” Perriera says, warning that if he is allowed to represent Pennsylvania in the Senate, he “would only make the struggle for my patients harder” as pregnant people across the nation face more limited access to abortion care.
Oz said at an event in May that he believes abortion is “murder” at any stage of pregnancy, and suggested he would not support the right to abortion care for patients whose pregnancies result from rape or incest.
Three months later the celebrity doctor claimed he supports exceptions to abortion bans including when a patient is a survivor of rape or incest or faces life-threatening complications—but as cases in Texas and Louisiana have shown, even such exceptions can put pregnant patients in danger as doctors and hospitals weigh whether they can provide medically ncessary care without breaking state laws.
“Dr. Oz’s far-right position tearing away the right to safe, legal abortion care puts him in the radical right wing of our politics and woefully out of step with Pennsylvania voters,” Perriera says in Fetterman’s ad.
A poll taken by Franklin & Marshall University last month found that 9 in 10 Pennsylvanians support abortion rights in at least some circumstances.
The ad also features Debbie Fickes, a retired OB-GYN nurse.
“No state, no government, no church has the right to force a woman to give birth against her will,” Fickes says.
Republicans have indicated that they plan to pass a nationwide ban on abortion care if they win back control of Congress and eventually the White House.
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Julia Conley is a Common Dreams staff writer.
