Illinois is now the fourth state in which women can access the abortion pill through a Planned Parenthood app. The abortion giant is pushing abortion access in the pro-abortion state even further by allowing patients to request abortion pill drugs via its “Direct” app, a move that could put women in danger.
Planned Parenthood’s “Direct” app allows women to get birth control, UTI treatments, and the emergency contraception Ella delivered to their door without seeing a doctor. In Hawaii, Maryland, Washington, and now Illinois, women can also use the app to get the abortion pill delivered without an in-person visit.
According to the Chicago Sun-Times, patients who claim they are up to 10 weeks pregnant can fill out a questionnaire on the app and then be mailed the drugs mifepristone and misoprostol, as long as they provide an Illinois address. This completely eliminates any interaction with a doctor before taking the abortion pill, placing women at higher risk of certain complications.
Without an ultrasound or blood test received in a doctor’s office, it is impossible to determine a woman’s true gestational age. If the woman is incorrect in her estimating, she puts herself in danger — doing so led to the deaths of two women in the United Kingdom. An email from the country’s National Health Service (NHS) indicated that numerous other women experienced serious complications after taking the abortion pill beyond the approved time limit. An ultrasound is also necessary to ensure that the woman does not have an ectopic pregnancy; earlier this year a woman in Ireland nearly died because she took the abortion pill and did not realize her pregnancy was ectopic.
Injuries from the abortion pill aren’t only occurring in the UK. Studies have found abortion pills to be four times more dangerous than first-trimester surgical abortions. The pro-abortion research organization Gynuity Health Projects, which conducted clinical trials aimed at expanding access to the abortion pill, published a study in 2020 that found that six percent (6%) of women who took the abortion pill experienced complications that required visits to urgent care or the emergency room. Two similar studies back up this finding.
READ: How Big Abortion flouts state pro-life laws and puts women at risk with ‘self managed’ abortion
Abortion is already rampant in pro-abortion Illinois, and women are paying the price. Women are routinely injured at the state’s abortion facilities; in December 2023, an abortion business in Downers Grove sent three women to the hospital in less than two weeks. In that same month, a separate facility in Granite City sent three other women to the hospital. There have been numerous reports of abortion injuries throughout the state in the past year — and those are just the ones that have been documented by pro-life witnesses. There are almost certainly other injuries occurring which pro-life advocates know nothing about.
Women who undergo abortions within their own homes run another risk — that of seeing the dead child that they deliver. Live Action’s “I Saw My Baby” campaign documents the stories of many women who were traumatized after taking the abortion pill and then seeing their dead babies, with one woman describing it as “a scene out of a horror movie.”
