Big Abortion has dusted off the false talking points they used years ago, before Roe v. Wade became the law of the land — the claims that pro-life laws cause women to die. But today, those abortion advocates have updated their messaging by infusing it with new propaganda: that self-managed abortion — which they once claimed was deadly to women — is now “safe.”
Today’s self-managed abortion (SMA), set in motion by Big Abortion years before Roe fell, is largely accomplished through the use of legally obtained abortion pills at home (mifepristone). However, some women reportedly choose to use other methods, such as herbs, being “hit in the stomach,” “lifting heavy objects,” and even “inserting an object” into their bodies in an attempt to abort their children.
Abortion rights activists sending coat hangers to GOP senator https://t.co/tC1DXJyu9m pic.twitter.com/DhuzPsEHt9
— The Hill (@thehill) July 3, 2018
“Women Will Die”
In the years leading up to the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision, those promoting abortion’s decriminalization fabricated data on illegal abortion deaths that were allegedly inflicted with DIY or self-managed methods. As Live Action News has documented time and again, illegal abortions prior to Roe did not lead to thousands of women dying annually.
In 2021, former abortionist Carole Joffe was cited by PolitiFact as claiming that illegal abortion deaths prior to Roe were caused by “inept” abortion providers as well as women self-managing their own abortions. Joffe made the claims in a training module produced by the University of California San Francisco’s (UCSF) Innovating Education training series, “The History of Abortion in the US prior to Legalization.”
“And, finally of course, perhaps the largest category of illegal abortions were women desperately trying to do abortions themselves,” Joffe claimed. She acknowledged that some women did self-abort with “coat hangers” prior to Roe, but she also claimed that “we’ll never have an accurate count of how many women died of illegal abortions.”
Live Action News warned at the time how the abortion industry was already pushing dangerous DIY abortions by pills.
Joffe’s claims, and the pre-Roe fabrications that claimed hundreds of thousands of women died from illegal abortions, have been debunked. But the American public has been lied to for so long that they believe without legal abortion post-Roe, thousands of women will die. And of course, the abortion lobby is using this false information to frighten the public even today, in an effort to promote legal abortion without limits in every state.
Enter Roe v. Wade
When the State of Texas responded in the Roe v. Wade lawsuit, it argued that because illegal abortion was so dangerous, Texas had an interest in protecting women from abortion hazards.
“When most criminal abortion laws were first enacted, the procedure was a hazardous one for the woman. This was particularly true prior to the development of antisepsis… Thus, it has been argued that a State’s real concern in enacting a criminal abortion law was to protect the pregnant woman, that is, to restrain her from submitting to a procedure that placed her life in serious jeopardy,” Justice Harry Blackmun wrote. “The State has a legitimate interest in seeing to it that abortion, like any other medical procedure, is performed under circumstances that insure maximum safety for the patient. This interest obviously extends at least to the performing physician and his staff, to the facilities involved, to the availability of after-care, and to adequate provision for any complication or emergency that might arise. The prevalence of high mortality rates at illegal ‘abortion mills’ strengthens, rather than weakens, the State’s interest in regulating the conditions under which abortions are performed.”
In other words, it was assumed that killing preborn children under “safer” conditions would protect women’s lives. There is, of course, no “safe” way to kill an innocent human being — certainly not for the human that is killed. And women still die from legal abortion.
Blackmun added, “Consequently, any interest of the State in protecting the woman from an inherently hazardous procedure, except when it would be equally dangerous for her to forgo it, has largely disappeared. Of course, important state interests in the areas of health and medical standards do remain” (emphasis added).
Why had it disappeared?
Because once pro-abortion propagandists saw an opportunity to decriminalize abortion, they began speaking more honestly as to who was committing most illegal abortions: medical doctors. And even Joffe had to acknowledge this.
Past Planned Parenthood president Alan Guttmacher admitted to the Harvard Crimson in 1967 that “Seventy per cent of the illegal abortions in the country are performed by reputable physicians, each thinking himself a knight in white armor.”
In 1959, Mary S. Calderone, medical director of Planned Parenthood wrote: “Another corollary fact: physicians of impeccable standing are referring their patients for these illegal abortions to the colleagues whom they know are willing to perform them…”
New Messaging: ‘Self Abortions Are Safe’
Legalized in-clinic abortion under the supposed care of medical professionals was never free of complications and deaths. According to 2021 Centers for Disease Control (CDC) data, the number of published legal abortion-related deaths has now risen to 460 deaths from legal abortion recorded by the CDC between 1973 and 2020, with additional numbers reportedly killed by illegal abortions.
This did not stop Big Abortion from going one step further to demedicalize abortion by promoting self-managed abortion as “safe,” to push the expansion of the abortion pill.
The coat hanger has been a symbol of illegal and unsafe abortion for a long time. But with technological advances, self-managed abortion is really just 2 pills. Medication abortion is safe, and our study shows patients can take it with minimal supervision. https://t.co/2DuGJNgH4a
— Dr. Daniel Grossman (@DrDGrossman) September 5, 2018
2018: A consortium of abortion organizations — Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH), Gynuity Health Projects, and Ibis Reproductive Health — published a report entitled, “A roadmap for research on self-managed abortion in the United States,” to “normalize” so-called self-managed abortion.
The report suggested, “[M]edication abortion could be even further demedicalized through pharmacy dispensing and expansion of telemedicine models—or even making it available over the counter (OTC)—which have the potential to expand access greatly.”
Abortion groups ANSIRH, Gynuity, IBIS want to normalize self-managed abortion 2018 strategy
The Guttmacher Institute, a former “special affiliate” of Planned Parenthood, once described self-managed abortion as ending a pregnancy “without direct supervision by a health care provider.”
A report which seemed to soft-pedal “self-managed abortion,” published by Guttmacher, suggested that over-the-counter (OTC) status alone will not ensure the success of self-managed medication abortion in the United States.”
“To fully integrate self-managed medication abortion with existing abortion practices in the United States, misoprostol and mifepristone must first become available without a prescription,” Guttmacher wrote.
The report indicated that the abortion industry has no plans to relinquish the profits medication abortion brings:
“[…]self managed medication abortion will require adaptations to ensure that clinic-based providers can play a role in supporting people who self-manage…. For example, they could serve as a source of accurate information about self-management and offer care if it is needed or wanted at any stage. This would require payment and reimbursement systems that compensate providers adequately for providing these services...”
In 2018, Guttmacher claimed in a tweet: “Evidence suggests that most individuals have the skills they need for safe #SelfManagedAbortion, including assessing eligibility, managing the drug regimen and assessing completion of the procedure.”
Guttmacher promotes self managed abortion (Image: Twitter)
2019: A “Blueprint for Sexual and Reproductive Health, Rights, and Justice,” endorsed by 80 pro-abortion groups, defined a self-managed abortion to “include the use of medication abortion pills (mifepristone and/or misoprostol), traditional herbs, or other means to end a pregnancy.”
It demanded that “Lawmakers must… reduce barriers to medication abortion and decriminalize self-managed abortions.”
2021: Abortion promoters openly advocated that women seek misoprostol from veterinary sources, which puts women at risk. And a former NARAL board member and founder of the abortion site We Testify called it “misinformation” to claim that all illegal abortions are “unsafe.” She told Twitter followers, “Illegal doesn’t have to mean unsafe. With medication abortion, it’s quite safe to self-manage an abortion…”
In addition, former NARAL board member Daniel Grossman unveiled a “solution” to his Twitter followers, promoting so-called “advance provision” of abortion pills.
Guttmacher published a list of demands calling for the Biden Administration to “destigmatize the full range of abortion methods, including self-managed abortion,” and calling for “HHS should… create public health resources to educate pregnant people, medical providers, first responders, social workers and law enforcement officials about self-managed [DIY] abortion.”
2022: Abortion insiders promote making your own abortion drugs.
2023: Planned Parenthood listed the herbs used by some to cause abortions and then wrote that “using herbs, plants, or other untested chemicals can put you at risk for things like poisoning, an allergic reaction, or an incomplete abortion.”
The abortion corporation, which reports that 70% of its abortions are done by abortion pill, also wrote, “Finding and taking abortion pills to end a pregnancy without the help of a doctor or nurse is called ‘self-managed abortion’ (which some people call an ‘at-home abortion’). It’s a fairly common practice, especially in places where abortion is illegal.”
In a blog post, Planned Parenthood reiterated, “Abortion laws vary by state, and some states have banned abortion or made it very difficult to get. So some people may choose to have self-managed abortion…”
Women Help Women wants to bring self-managed #abortions into the home with help from its online guide. https://t.co/4l8a0ZQIwB
— PlannedParenthood DE (@PPDelaware) May 20, 2017
Propaganda: “Pro-life Laws Harm Women”
Pre-Roe, so-called self-abortions were portrayed by abortion advocates as dangerous. But once Big Abortion began toying with the idea of no-test abortion pill protocols and mail-order telabortion schemes (including an over-the-counter abortion pill push), suddenly, self-managed abortion became “safe.”
A recent study heavily promoted by media and published by JAMA, “Self-Managed Abortion Attempts Before vs After Changes in Federal Abortion Protections in the US,” suggested that “self-managed” abortions (SMA) had risen 40% since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in its 2022.
The study defined SMAs to include herbs, alcohol, being hit in the stomach, inserting an object into the body (reminiscent of coat hanger abortions), as well as use of the abortion pill regimen (mifepristone and misoprostol).
By lumping the abortion pill in with other self-manage abortion methods once thought extremely dangerous for women, Big Abortion can blur the lines and claim that women’s health suffers when pro-life laws are enacted to protect preborn living children — something noted in a Live Action News analysis of the study, which pointed out that “the results of the study are being dishonestly used to attack pro-life laws as dangerous, as if they are the cause of the increase in self-managed abortion.”
JAMA’s research was funded by “an anonymous foundation, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.” Multiple authors also cited an “Anonymous Foundation” for their work. Authors also received funding from the Packard Foundation another abortion pill investor, and some also got funds from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation; the foundation’s goal is to expand abortion.
Live Action News previously investigated other “anonymous foundation” ties to abortion research, and traced some of it back to the Buffett Foundation — which invested heavily in the abortion pill’s early efforts.
JAMA study on self-managed abortion funded by anonymous donor, Packard and Hewlett Foundation
Today, Big Abortion is unconcerned about the harms self-managed abortions could cause women, keeping silent as underground abortion pill vigilantes and ‘shadow networks‘ assemble abortion pills stored on ping-pong tables and shipped from basements, where they could be laced with any number of harmful substances.
While the abortion lobby promotes harmful self-managed abortion and turns a blind eye to dangers coming from within their own ranks, they try to shift blame on the harms women endure to pro-life laws. The truth is that all responsibility of harm caused to women by dangerous DIY abortion methods falls squarely at the feet of the abortion industry, its supporters, and its complicit media and political allies.
