Dr. Oz's Pro-Life Campaign Branding at Odds with Past Comments

Dr. Mehmet Oz, the celebrity doctor running for the Republican nomination in Pennsylvania’s 2022 Senate race, claims he is “100% Pro-Life” but has a record indicating otherwise.

In a campaign ad on his website, Oz speaks about operating on the heart of a five-day-old child, saying, “Could you imagine harming that? Imagine nine months earlier terminating, killing that life. Because that’s what it is.”

“Once you’ve seen that, you’re not going to go back,” he continued in the ad. “I’m pro-life. Life starts at conception.”

But Oz is on record in the past advocating for access to abortion.

In a 2019 interview on the Breakfast Club, a radio show hosted by Charlamagne tha God, Oz was asked about an Alabama heartbeat bill — limiting abortion to six weeks after conception — and took the opportunity to slam the entire premise of a heartbeat bill, claiming there is no heartbeat at six weeks.

“There are electrical exchanges at six weeks, but the heart’s not beating,” Oz said.

“If you’re going to define life by a beating heart, then make it a beating heart, not little electrical exchanges in the cell that no one would hear or think about as a heart,” he continued, reiterating common terminology from pro-abortion advocates that children in the womb are merely just “cells.”

“Just being logical about it, if you think that the moment of conception you’ve got a life, then why would you even wait six weeks?” he said, further attacking the premise. “Right, then an in-vitro fertilized egg is still a life.”

Oz also attempted to minimize the issue of abortion, claiming there were other, more important things to be focused on.

“There’s so much we’ve got to do already to take care of each other,” he said. “To start picking fights on this, I always wonder about it. It happens periodically. There are these moral issues that almost on purpose are inflamed.”

At the prospect of overturning Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court case that is largely responsible for over 62 million abortions since its 1973 decision, Oz said that “as a doctor … it’s a big-time concern.”

“Because I went to medical school in Philadelphia, and I saw women who had coat-hanger events,” he said. “And I mean really traumatic events that happened when they were younger, before Roe v. Wade. And many of them were harmed for life.”

He then continued to make the argument, as many pro-abortion Democrats such as Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) do, that he is personally uncomfortable with abortion but would not want to “interfere with anyone else’s stuff.”

His Breakfast Club interview is not the only time he has taken a pro-abortion stance.

In December, Oz struggled to give a concise answer to when he believes life begins in an interview with Fox News.

While claiming to be “pro-life,” Oz also said that life “begins when you’re in the mother’s womb,” which host Will Cain pointed out includes all nine months of pregnancy.

Fox News host Will Cain grills U.S. Senate candidate Dr. Oz (R-PA) on what his political beliefs are on key conservative issues. pic.twitter.com/g8FU1NtGQC

— Jason Rantz on KTTH Radio (@jasonrantz) December 16, 2021

“Life’s already started when you’re in your mother’s womb,” Oz replied. “But it’s a rathole to get trapped in the different ways to talk about it.”

“We need as a nation to make sure the Constitution is appropriately followed and people like me who are pro-life have our feelings respected, and this is something that should not be taken away from us by judiciary legislating from the bench,” he continued.

Despite his past statements, the Oz campaign is attempting to rebrand as pro-life.

In early March, Oz wrote an op-ed in the Washington Examiner claiming, “From the moment of conception to natural death, all life is a miracle.”

“To combat these pro-abortion extremists, I think it’s clear the pro-life movement needs more doctors in our ranks,” he wrote, despite having qualified his past pro-abortion statements on his being a doctor.

Breccan F. Thies is a reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow him on Twitter @BreccanFThies.