Real information on the effects of the abortion pill is not easily accessible to women. And for anyone who is in favor of the empowerment of women, this is not a good situation. Knowledge empowers; deception does not. Nearly half of U.S. states do not even bother to report complications women experience from the abortion pill — also known as RU-486, mifepristone, misoprostol, medical abortion, chemical abortion, and medication abortion. Even the fact that the abortion pill has so many names makes it difficult for women to get real, reliable information.
READ: These 15 women say taking the abortion pill is nothing like having your period
Despite the lack of easy access to factual information, California is currently trying to force all public universities to sell the abortion pill to young women on their campuses. College women are speaking out against this dangerous move, decrying the real-life effects it will have on women.
It would require — not just allow, but require — public universities to sell abortion pills to pregnant women on campus. … They [these abortions] are generally committed in the first 10 weeks of pregnancy. The universities would be under no obligation to also tell women about the possibility of abortion reversal if they regret their abortion.
READ: Pushing abortion on California college students is institutionalized misogyny
But despite the dearth of public knowledge about the abortion pill, real women are speaking out and sharing their personal stories — and they are horrific. (And really, stories about surgical abortion and its gruesome reality are no better. Women deserve to know what really happens in all kinds of abortion.)
… I started to feel pain in my abdomen unlike anything I had ever experienced. Then the blood… was gushing out of me. I couldn’t wear a pad… nothing was able to absorb the amount of blood I was losing. The only thing I could do was sit on the toilet… for hours… bleeding, throwing up into the bathroom trashcan, crying and sweating. I used to watch shows about childbirth. I would see these women in labor… covered in sweat. I would always think, ‘Gosh, do they keep it hot in the delivery room, or what?’ But at that moment, sitting on the toilet, I knew it wasn’t from heat… it was from pain.
After several hours on the toilet, I desperately wanted to soak in the bath tub. …My bathwater was bright red. It looked like I was sitting in the middle of a crime scene …
I stood up…. I began to sweat again and felt faint…. Then I felt a release… and a splash in the water that was draining beneath me. A blood clot the size of a lemon had fallen into my bath water. Was that my baby?…. Then came the excruciating pain again. I… sat on the toilet. Another lemon sized blood clot. Then another. And another. I thought I was dying. This couldn’t be normal. Planned Parenthood didn’t ever tell me this could happen…. I decided that I would call them in the morning… if I didn’t die before then. It was around midnight and I had been in the bathroom for a good 12 hours.
READ: Here’s why the abortion pill is dangerous for women
Kimi’s Story
In a book called “Choice,” Kimi Hemingway shares her story:
I was running to the bathroom in 10 minute intervals, soaking up thick pads, then screaming on the toilet while tissue, mucus, blood, [excrement], spilled out of me….
Heather helped me back to the couch. I felt wrung out, but it had only just begun. It was the last time that day that I made it to the toilet. The 5 feet between the couch and the bathroom seemed insurmountable, and when the convulsions, fever, and chills hit, my body thumped to the floor. I stayed there excreting fluids I did not know my body had onto the wood floor.
Sarah Terzo reports further about Kimi’s personal revelation:
When Hemingway, traumatized and exhausted, finally went back to the abortion facility, the abortion workers found her plight amusing. She got no sympathy. The physician’s assistant who examined her laughed, “You sure are a bleeder, aren’t you?” Hemingway left the abortion facility in tears.
Three months went by. Hemingway was still “bleeding through my clothes [and] wearing diapers.” She went to a doctor unaffiliated with the clinic, who diagnosed uterine and bladder infections and gave her antibiotics. The doctor told her that he had seen other women in a similar condition after taking the abortion pill.
Read more of Kimi’s story along with other women’s accounts here.
READ: After my D&C abortion, suction abortion, I saw the remains of my baby in a bucket
Holly’s Story
Holly died after taking the abortion pill, so her tragic story is shared by her father:
I first heard of the mifepristone abortion pill, on September 17, 2003, the worst day of my life. A call came, earlier that morning, while I was at work.
A nurse told me my 18-year-old daughter, Holly, was in the hospital and in very serious condition. I asked “What was wrong?” She said, “Mr. Patterson, we’ll explain when you get here, be careful, come as quickly as you can.”
I sped to the hospital which was near the San Francisco suburb of Livermore, where Holly and I lived. Once there, I found her in the intensive care unit, barely conscious, too weak to talk, pale complexion, puffy faced, and struggling to breathe. …
While standing at her beside, the doctor came in and briskly explained, “We are doing everything we can for her, but she might not make it. These things sometimes happen as a result of the pill.” …
Holly died on the seventh day after starting the mifepristone/misoprostol medical abortion regimen and on the same day she was scheduled to return to Planned Parenthood for a follow up visit to make sure her abortion had been completed.
Editor’s Note: For more facts on the abortion pill, its side effects, and abortion pill reversal, go here.
