Contributor: ATTWN Staff
In a step towards creating an environment hostile to women, a bill is now on the desk of California’s governor that is seeking to allow health care providers to send abortion pills by mail anonymously. This is their way of circumventing any state laws that ban abortion past a certain number of weeks – but it’s a terrible idea.
Key Takeaways
- California is trying to circumvent state abortion bans and protect doctors who prescribe abortion pills from being prosecuted.
- Abortion pills can have severe side effects – An extensive study of 865,727 cases found 10.93% of women experienced severe adverse events (sepsis, hemorrhaging, infection) within 45 days — 22x higher than FDA-reported risk.
- There is inherent danger in prescribing abortion pills anonymously – Women receiving abortion pills by mail may have no doctor to contact in emergencies, risking delayed care and serious complications.
- The mental and emotional trauma of abortion is real – At-home abortions can leave women facing the physical process alone, potentially causing lasting psychological harm when they must dispose of fetal remains themselves.
Side Effects of Abortion Pills
Besides ending the life of an innocent human being in the womb, abortion pills – a regimen of two drugs that cut off progesterone from the growing baby and then cause uterine contractions to expel the dead baby – cause serious side effects to women.
Just a few months ago, the largest study of women who took the abortion pill was released. It revealed that 1 in 10 women suffer ‘severe adverse events’ such as sepsis, hemorrhaging, infection, or another severe effect within 45 days of taking the pills, according to the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
The study reviewed and analyzed data from 865,727 prescribed mifepristone abortions from 2017 to 2023 in an all-payer insurance claims database. They found that 10.93% of women who took the abortion pill experienced severe adverse events within 45 days of taking it. The FDA labels the risk of the pills as “less than 0.5 percent” from clinical trials on the drug. This study shows that the real-world data is 22 times higher than the summary figure.
The Danger of Anonymous Prescriptions for Abortion Pills
California is seeking to subvert state abortion laws as well as protect doctors who send these pills to whoever asks for them. But there are inherent dangers here.
What happens when a woman orders abortion pills online from an anonymous doctor? She can’t call them because she has no idea who they are. Does she just Google what to do? What if she’s in rural America and cannot get to a doctor quickly? What happens if she is experiencing a ‘severe adverse event’ and has no one to call because there’s no number on the abortion pill bottle? What if the dosage amount is dangerous, like it is on the pills that Aid Access sends out?
Abby Johnson, CEO and founder of And Then There Were None and ProLove Ministries, ordered abortion pills from Aid Access, the same group being sued for wrongful death of an unborn baby, and they tell women to take double the amount of misoprostol, which causes uterine contractions.
A regular dose is 800 mcg to expel the baby after taking the first pill, mifepristone, which cuts off progesterone from the growing fetus. The instructions from this online abortion pill company are to take the initial dose of 800 mcg and then, three hours later, take another 400 mcg, and then another 400 mcg.
“That’s an extremely high dose of misoprostol and can cause serious side effects, including uterine rupture. The chance of this is higher during the second semester- women may not even know they are past the first trimester and take the high dose, putting themselves in danger,” said Abby Johnson.
What happens when that woman has no one to call, because the doctor is anonymous, after taking the abortion pills, and is having severe side effects? She’s on her own.
The Mental Health Aspect of Abortion Pills
Imagine taking the abortion pills and delivering remnants of the unborn baby in your toilet, bathroom, or shower. Now, every time you’re in that space, you are reminded of what happened. The mental health aspect of abortion is never discussed.
“Homes are now abortion clinics,” said Abby Johnson. “Abortion can cause not only severe physical reactions in women but also have disastrous mental health effects, especially if the woman already has preexisting mental health problems.”
When California sends out abortion pills without any contact information for the doctor who prescribed them, the woman is on her own for whatever happens.
“The adverse effects of the abortion pill cannot be overstated,” said Johnson. “What will a woman go through when she sees her discarded baby in the toilet? What will she think when she has to decide whether to flush it down or not? Women are also angry, like me, that they are not being told that an abortion pill abortion is not like a heavy period – it’s much, much worse. I think that more than 10% of women are experiencing terrible side effects of the abortion pill.”
Are You an Abortion Worker?
If you work for Planned Parenthood or any abortion clinic and are disheartened by what you see and are required to do for your work, And Then There Were None (ATTWN) can help. No one grows up wanting to work in an abortion clinic. ATTWN has helped more than 750 abortion workers leave their clinics, find healing, and join a tribe of women (and some men) who understand exactly where they are coming from, have the same experiences, and have dealt with all the same challenges that only abortion clinic workers face.
Call or text 888.570.5501 to get started on the path to freedom.