As abortion pills become the preferred method of committing abortions, there has been an increased effort to defend them as safe, and to demean the humanity of preborn children, especially early in pregnancy. The latest effort comes from a supposed Associated Press ‘fact-check’, but it’s heavy on pro-abortion propaganda, and light on the facts.
Most striking is that experts made the claim that early in pregnancy, there is an embryo present, but “no baby.”
The risks of the abortion pill are real
The AP cited two “experts:” Emily Godfrey, an abortionist, and Alison Edelman (it is unknown if Edelman commits abortions). This ostensible conflict of interest was not mentioned by the AP, and both women were merely described as doctors. Both claimed that complications from the abortion pill are rare.
“They are incredibly safe,” Godfrey said. “Less than 1% of people who have sought a medication abortion have had complications.”
Edelman agreed. “Medication abortion is incredibly safe in terms of all of those things,” she said, citing a 2018 report. “The risk of infection is less than 1%, harm to internal organs is almost nonexistent, and bleeding risk is less than 1% as well.”
Yet more recent data — including information from none other than MSI Reproductive Choices, an international abortion conglomerate — have found otherwise. Complications found include “retained products of conception, haemorrhage, and infection,” which the AP claims is extraordinarily rare. The recent data from 2021 showed that approximately 6% of women who underwent a chemical abortion required visits to the ER or urgent care due to complications, including “3.0% of women [who] require[d] a surgical evacuation of retained products of conception” and “2.3% of women having an induced medical abortion [who] [we]re subsequently treated at an NHS hospital for haemorrhage.”
Similar data was also reported by Marie Stopes Australia in 2020, which reported a complication rate of 6.37%, and incomplete abortions at 4.95%. Furthermore, a United States study likewise found that 6% of “known outcomes” from the abortion pill required visits to the emergency room or urgent care for complications — six times the rate of complications claimed by the AP’s experts.
Considering how many women undergo chemical abortions, based on data from the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute, this could mean as many as 20,380 women per year need emergency care after taking the abortion pill. Infection is a real risk as well; a Canadian teenager died of septic shock earlier this year after taking the abortion pill.
Yet the AP says complications are practically non-existent.
The abortion pill is already known to be four times more dangerous than first trimester surgical abortion, but the abortion industry regularly tells women to disguise abortion pill complications as complications of natural miscarriage. So the true number is likely even higher.
No baby? No facts
In addition to denying the reality of complications associated with the abortion pill, the AP further argued that there is essentially no baby present, so there cannot be retained body parts.
“Before nine weeks, really what you’re seeing is a gestational sac. To have like an actual part of a baby left, would be, would be almost unheard of for a medical abortion process,” Edelman said, adding that a preborn child at 11 weeks is “probably a centimeter and a half to two centimeters.”
Godfrey agreed, claiming that there is an embryo, and not a fetus — though these are merely descriptive phrases for human development, and not what defines one’s inherent humanity. “There is no baby there. The embryo is the size of a piece of rice. There is nothing to be left behind,” she said. “Arms don’t really develop until nine weeks of pregnancy. Again, they are millimeters in length.”
An embryo is small, of course, but size has no bearing on the complexity of that human’s development. At nine weeks, an MRI shows just how substantial development is at that point, with a brain, lungs, and heart all present. Not only are arms present, but the baby has tiny fingers and toes, and can even suck her thumb. The Endowment for Human Development also shows footage of a child in the womb at nine weeks of pregnancy — and clearly, there is a human being present:
Even before nine weeks, it doesn’t take long for obvious signs of humanity to take place; a beating heart, for example, is present just three weeks into development. At the moment of fertilization, the baby already has his or her own unique DNA strand, completely separate from his or her mother, with their sex, hair color, eye color, and countless other traits already determined.
Even brain waves can be measured and recorded by six weeks gestation.
Though the AP claimed their so-called “fact check” was part of an effort to address “misinformation,” none of these scientific facts were shared. The only claims given were those made by two clearly biased doctors, whose arguments were meant to promote and defend the abortion pill. And rather than giving the truth, the AP merely recycled their pro-abortion propaganda.
Women deserve to know the truth — the truth about the humanity of their preborn children, and the truth of what they’re risking with the abortion pill.
