Late last month, Reproaction was dismayed to see The Hill running a disinformation-filled op-ed bylined by an anti-abortion lobbyist, Christina Francis, on the third anniversary of the Dobbs ruling. We told The Hill about our concerns in a letter to the editor. Unfortunately, it wasn’t selected for publication.

We still think the public deserves to know just how deep Francis’s anti-abortion ties go, so we’re printing the letter here on our blog:

Shame on The Hill for platforming an anti-abortion lobbyist on the third anniversary of the Dobbs ruling. What was so unsuitable about the other 364 days of the year on which The Hill could have given Dr. Christina Francis an opportunity to spread disinformation under the thin guise of supposed medical expertise? The Hill’s readers ought to be warned that Dr. Francis holds scientifically unsound, fringe beliefs—including wrongly claiming hormonal contraception causes abortion, expressing ethical concerns with IVF not shared by mainstream medical experts or the public, and the frankly bizarre claim that induced abortion is “not necessary” for women’s health, despite mainline medical experts, such as the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), clearly and repeatedly proving otherwise.

In 2023, Dr. Francis said she has “practiced obstetrics for 18 years without once performing an elective abortion,” making it difficult for us to believe she is an expert in care she does not provide. Her interest in abortion policy appears to be rooted in large part in politics. She is affiliated with the Charlotte Lozier Institute, a project of SBA Pro-Life America, the “political arm of the pro-life movement,” and has represented herself as the president of the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, the plaintiff group formed to challenge FDA approval of medication abortion. It’s deeply troubling to us for Dr. Francis, as a physician, to support the sketchy theory of so-called “abortion pill reversal” (which ACOG has called “not supported by science”) and to claim that 10-year-old sexual assault victims can often safely carry pregnancies to term (though Francis claims she would recommend abortion “if necessary”).

Dr. Francis has built a career out of spreading disinformation—such as wrongly claiming that hormonal contraception causes abortion, or wrongly asserting that abortion negatively impacts mental health—in the media, courts, and on Capitol Hill in the service of a dangerous anti-abortion political agenda. Her views should be challenged, not amplified, especially in an era of growing anti-science sentiment in D.C. and in federal policymaking writ large.