Most of the mainstream media is in the tank with pro-abortion activists, which explains their reluctance to accurately report on the seriousness of abortion complications. Yet any person who truly believes in the best interests of women should want all women to know what can happen to them when undergoing an abortion. Since they won’t do it, we will.
The latest data from the CDC on abortion shows that in 2020 there were 620,327 abortions in the United States. They also found that roughly 2 percent of all abortions involve some type of complication. To put that in perspective, that means that in about 12,400 cases, there was a complication.
The CDC further determined that 2020 marked the first time that a majority of abortions (53 percent) involved pills. Abortion clinics account for almost 100 percent of the other cases.
Dr. Ingrid Skop is an OB-GYN and a senior fellow and director of medical affairs at the Charlotte Lozier Institute. One of her biggest concerns is the recent decision by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to permanently remove restrictions on obtaining the abortion pill: women are no longer required to see a doctor in-person to be prescribed chemical abortion pills.
“The regimen that’s been approved by the [FDA] consists of two pills,” Dr. Skop told the Daily Signal. “Mifepristone blocks the progesterone receptor, so it cuts off the hormonal support and kills the embryo or fetus. It’s followed generally in 24 to 48 hours by misoprostol, which induces contractions and causes this tissue to be expressed. Unfortunately, it doesn’t always work. Probably about 1 out of 20 times it will not express all the tissue, and the woman will require surgery to complete the abortion.”
It was President Biden who took away the in-person requirements for the abortion pill. Dr. Skop explains what this means.
“This means there’s no physical exam, there’s no ultrasound to make sure that the gestational age is correct, to make sure the pregnancy is not in the fallopian tube where it could rupture. There’s no safeguards to make sure a woman is not being coerced into an abortion. No one’s doing labs to determine if she has an Rh-negative blood type and needs a RhoGAM shot to prevent future pregnancy complications.”
Here are some other problems associated with abortion pills (the information is taken from the Charlotte Lozier Institute).
• Chemical abortion has a complication rate four times that of surgical abortion, and as many as one out of five women will suffer a complication.
• Chemical abortion drugs are more likely to send women to the emergency room: the rate of chemical abortion-related emergency room visits increased over 500% between 2002-2015.
• Chemical abortions are over 50% more likely than surgical abortions to result in an ER visit within 30 days affecting one in twenty women.
• Some abortion advocates encourage women to lie to their doctors if they need urgent care and say they are having a miscarriage. However, if a chemical abortion is miscoded as a miscarriage in the ER (which occurred 60% of the time in one study), the woman is at significantly greater risk of needing multiple hospitalizations and follow-up surgery.
Women who go to abortion clinics that are not run by doctors are also in a risky situation. If she has complications, she is dependent on the judgment of a non-licensed physician to attend to her. Question: If no one in his right mind would undergo dental surgery performed by a dental hygienist, why would anyone allow a midwife, nurse or physician assistant to perform an abortion?
We did a study of the prevalence of non-doctors performing abortions across the country. It is available on our website.
The passion for abortion is so strong at Planned Parenthood that it now has mobile clinics that “roam the southern Illinois border” looking to entice women in nearby pro-life states, such as Missouri, to get rid of their unborn child. Pregnant women can hop on board an RV and have their abortion done lickety-split. Even DoorDash can’t match this kind of service.
Finally, abortion activists are pressuring the Biden administration to declare an “abortion public health emergency,” decrying the lack of access to abortion in some parts of the country. Makes you wonder: Do they really hate kids that much?
