“Despite documented risks of heavy bleeding, hemorrhaging, and even a handful of deaths, the FDA loosened its protocol for the abortion pill regimen early last year. The agency approved use of the drugs for up to 10 weeks of pregnancy (instead of seven), and reduced the number of suggested doctor visits from three to two.”
A single pill in a paper cup upended Rebekah Buell’s life.
In 2013, the 18-year-old college freshman sat in a Planned Parenthood office near Sacramento, Calif., staring at an abortion pill formulated to end the life of the 8-week-old baby in her womb.
Buell already had an infant son from an unplanned pregnancy. Her brief marriage was ending. She couldn’t imagine raising a second child alone. Buell grew up Baptist and knew abortion was wrong but says she thought, “God’s just going to have to forgive me.”
But sitting across from a Planned Parenthood worker, Buell felt tears welling up in her eyes. She says the worker told her, “Just because you’re sad doesn’t mean you’re making the wrong decision.” Buell says she also warned, “Once you take this, there’s no going back.”
Buell swallowed the pill. A few million women have done the same since the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the abortion drug mifepristone in 2000. Mifepristone aims to kill an unborn baby by blocking the progesterone hormone needed to sustain the pregnancy. A second drug—misoprostol—induces contractions and expels the unborn child.
A woman takes the first pill at an abortion center or physician’s office. She takes the second drug at home. A common piece of advice abortionists give pregnant women: If you pass a blood clot larger than a lemon, call us.
Buell planned to abort her baby in secret at her parents’ home. With the pills, she could avoid surgery and anesthesia. She says it seemed “convenient and easy to hide.” No one would have to know.
It’s a common scenario: This year nearly as many women may end their pregnancies through chemical abortions as through surgical ones. The pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute has estimated some 25 percent of pregnancies end in chemical abortions, but Planned Parenthood—the nation’s largest performer of abortion—reported last year nearly 43 percent of the abortions at its centers were drug-based.
Despite documented risks of heavy bleeding, hemorrhaging, and even a handful of deaths, the FDA loosened its protocol for the abortion pill regimen early last year. The agency approved use of the drugs for up to 10 weeks of pregnancy (instead of seven), and reduced the number of suggested doctor visits from three to two.
Many abortionists already followed the looser protocol, but three states had required physicians to follow the FDA’s stricter recommendations: Since the agency relaxed standards last March, officials in Ohio, Texas, and North Dakota say requests for chemical abortions have tripled.
Pro-abortion forces have pushed hard, and the FDA has responded: Last year the agency allowed a clinical trial to send abortion drugs to women in four states via U.S. mail. The mothers still had to obtain an ultrasound to confirm their pregnancies; but their abortion consultations happened over their computers, and the abortion pills arrived in their mailboxes.
Esther Priegue of the Choices Women’s Medical Center in Queens, New York, marveled at the possibilities for the pregnant women in the packed waiting room of her abortion center last spring: “Imagine if they could do it all from home, and never have to step into the clinic for even for a moment.”
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