Pro-abortion organizations are touting a dangerous, unproven chemical abortion regimen to stymie potential regulations on the abortion drug mifepristone.
An FDA-approved chemical abortion requires two pills. The first, mifepristone, kills the baby by starving he or she of progesterone, which is critical for embryonic development. The second, misoprostol, induces labor, helping the mother pass her deceased child and the remaining products of her pregnancy.
“Mifepristone alone has a 13 to 23% abortion ‘failure’ rate, which can mean both an on-going pregnancy or an incomplete abortion where not all tissue passes,” Dr. Catherine Wheeler, an OBGYN and member of Focus on the Family’s Physician Resource Council, told the Daily Citizen. “Misoprostol alone has a 20 to 40% failure rate.”
But the Society of Family Planning, National Abortion Federation and World Health Organization are among several pro-abortion groups telling women misoprostol-only abortions are safe.
In a memo titled, “Science Says Misoprostol Only is Safe and Effective,” the Society of Family Planning claims, “Medical guidance in the US and around the globe supports the use of misoprostol only for abortion throughout pregnancy.”
Misoprostol is “widely available, inexpensive and easy to administer,” the memo continues, and particularly appropriate for women in places where “mifepristone is not legally available or is inaccessible.”
This is an interesting fact to include in a document boasting a supposedly safe and efficacious treatment. Why would misoprostol-only abortions be a better choice for women who can’t access mifepristone?
Because misoprostol-only abortions are significantly more dangerous than chemical abortions — which are plenty dangerous themselves.
An analysis of insurance claims from nearly 866,000 chemical abortions by the Ethics and Public Policy Center found nearly 11% of women experienced a severe or life-threatening adverse events within 45 days of taking a mifepristone/misoprostol combo.
The likelihood of experiencing severe complications increases significantly when women initiate a traditional chemical abortion in the second trimester.
But data compiled by the Lozier Institute indicates misoprostol-only abortions are even riskier. Nearly 25% of women who initiated misoprostol-only abortions experienced incomplete abortions requiring surgery, compared to nearly 20% of those who initiated traditional chemical abortions in the second trimester.
More than 15% of the women who went through misoprostol-only abortions experienced hemorrhage, compared to just under 12% of the women who went through chemical abortion in the second trimester.
More than 9% of women required readmission to the hospital after a misoprostol-only abortion, compared to fewer than 7% of women who went through chemical abortions in the second trimester.
Misoprostol-only abortions also cause horrifying consequences for growing babies.
Unlike traditional chemical abortions, misoprostol-only abortions do not end the child’s life before he or she is violently expelled from the womb.
Many children still die in this process. Others — up to 9%, according to a review of studies conducted by pro-abortion scientists — survive. But misoprostol causes devastating birth defects when strong contractions cut off the developing baby’s blood supply, including:
Skull defects
Bladder development problems leading to incontinence
Stiff joints and undeveloped, rigid muscles
Cranial palsies
Facial nerve malformations
Failure to develop arms and legs
Drooping face
Misoprostol-only abortions can also facilitate late-term abortions, OBGYN Dr. Bill Lile, another member of Focus on the Family’s Physician Resource Council, told the Daily Citizen.
“Misoprostol alone is used to kill babies at higher gestational ages because, by week 12, the primary progesterone production increases dramatically,” Dr. Lile explained.
“This increase dramatically decreases the effectiveness of mifepristone [and] the abortion protocol shifts from blocking support of the early pregnancy to severe uterine contractions to force a pre-viable baby out of the uterus.”
At more than 22 weeks gestation, Dr. Lile told us, abortionists will often kill the baby to “prevent ‘physician and patient discomfort.’” The infant will either experience a heart attack following a fatal injection or bleed out after being stabbed in the spine.
Misoprostol-only abortions do nothing but harm mothers and children. But the abortion industry has every incentive to promote their use.
Cutting out mifepristone makes chemical abortion pills cheaper to make and ship. Misoprostol is also used to treat stomach ulcers, a legitimate medical use which makes the drug more difficult to regulate under the Comstock Act — a law prohibiting the interstate mailing of materials which cause abortion.
Importantly, organizations like the Society of Family Planning did not declare misoprostol-only abortions safe after any dramatic change in the data. They declared them safe when they feared mifepristone access could be regulated.
“The abortion industry is so committed to increasing abortion that they minimize these high risks in order to advance abortion access and ‘self-managed abortion,’” Dr. Wheeler sums up.
It fits with what we know of the abortion industry, which pursues profit to the exclusion of every moral good.
“Time and time again, the argument from the pro-abortion side is that access trumps safety,” Students for Life President Kristan Hawkins told the Daily Citizen earlier this month.
“It’s horrific.”
Additional Articles and Resources
Supreme Court Restores Access to Mail-Order Abortion Pills While Legal Fight Continues
Kristan Hawkins Lobbies Feds to Enforce Comstock Act
Supreme Court Temporarily Restores Access to Mail-Order Abortion Pills
Texas Father Sues Out-of-State Abortionist for Killing His Preborn Children
Shield Laws Enable Chemical Abortion in Pro-Life States
Shield Law Abortion Providers Advertised Alongside Black Market Abortion Pills
#AbortionChangesYou: A Case Study to Understand the Communicative Tensions in Women’s Medication Abortion Narratives (Health Communication)
New Abortion Pill Study Confirms Danger to Mothers
The Abortion Pill Harms Women: Insurance Data Reveals One in Ten Patients Experiences a Serious Adverse Event (Ethics and Public Policy Center)
The post Abortion Industry Promotes New, Dangerous Chemical Abortion Regimen appeared first on Daily Citizen.
Daily Citizen