Well-known late term abortionist Warren Hern recently questioned the care women receive when they are sold abortion pills by asking the obvious: Who is doing “follow-up exam[s]” and “tak[ing] care of… a complication”?
In a recent interview with the New Yorker, “America’s Abortion Doctor” stated: “My issue with medication abortion is—is there a follow-up exam? Do you know if the uterus is empty or not? Who’s going to take care of them if there’s a complication? Because of political oppression, people are afraid to take care of the patient.”
Hern fails to note that the reason so many don’t know if they can legally treat abortion complications is because the abortion industry and its media allies have been busy spreading disinformation by conflating miscarriage and abortion, early delivery and abortion, ectopic pregnancy treatment and abortion, and more — for a very long time.
But beyond this, the way the abortion pill (mifepristone/Mifeprex) is distributed has changed over the past several years, expanding from in-person dispensing and follow-up care to a ‘no-test’ abortion pill protocol, and later to mail-order and even telehealth access. Today, women can obtain the abortion pill with little to no counseling or follow-up, and Hern was likely referring to this when he questioned the aftercare of women who obtain “medication abortion.”
WARREN HERN, ABORTION ‘EXPERT’
Abortionist Warren Hern founded the Boulder Abortion Clinic in 1975, and the facility commits abortions through the third trimester. Hern is often touted as an expert on abortion. He has – in his own words – written “the only single-author medical textbook [“Abortion Practice”] on the subject.”
Hern served on the first board of the National Abortion Federation and chaired NAF’s Medical Standards Committee, which published its first edition of the NAF Standards for Quality Abortion Care in 1978. According to author Johanna Schoen, in her book “Abortion After Roe,” NAF was founded in 1977 from the merger of two organization: the National Association of Abortion Facilities (NAAF) and the National Abortion Council (NAC.)
“In 1977, when the National Abortion Federation was founded, many of us felt that the principal issue before those providing abortion or defending their existence was no longer availability but quality care,” Hern wrote in “Abortion Practice.”
“To this end a Standards Committee was formed. Serving on that committee and chairing it for a total of four years convinced me that high standards in medical care, counseling, and other aspects of abortion services were not only essential to patient safety but to the continued availability of these services,” abortionist Warren Hern added.
Still, in the words of another physician who read Hern’s interview and e-mailed Live Action News, “Unscripted Warren Hern is the abortion industry’s worst nightmare, because he raised several legitimate questions.”
HERN: “is there a follow-up exam?”
In 2016, the Obama administration Food and Drug Administration (FDA) weakened the REMS safety system for mifepristone by removing the requirements that women or teen girls take the first pill in the abortion pill regimen in front of a clinician, in-person, at the location of a certified prescriber. The FDA also removed requirements for a follow-up visit.
Then, in 2020, the abortion industry rolled out a ‘no-test‘ abortion pill protocol which removed important labs, testing, and blood work needed to accurately date a pregnancy, and rule out deadly ectopic pregnancies before administering the abortion pill. Rapid expansion of the abortion pill continued in the ensuing years, even as the abortion industry openly flouted FDA gestational limits and safety regulations, even encouraging women to lie to ER physicians about abortion pill complications.
Today, online abortion pill dispensaries are admittedly spending mere minutes with abortion clients, with little to no follow-up, despite potential complications associated with the abortion pill (some even leading to death). Virtual abortion pill organizations interviewed in Ms. Magazine’s “online provider series” testified to this.
HERN: “Do you know if the uterus is empty or not?”
Today, the abortion industry expects abortion pill clients to function as the doctor, nurse, and pathologist in a DIY at-home abortion.
Big Abortion is very aware that the later the gestational age of the preborn child, the less effective the abortion pill regimen is. In fact, the FDA’s medication guide acknowledges that as many as seven percent (7%) of women will need surgery after taking mifepristone ‘to stop bleeding’ or to complete the abortion.
“Self-managed” abortion essentially involves no medical professional being available in person, and by definition leaves women alone to “manage” whether their abortions are complete (without retained tissue), whether they are bleeding too much (hemorrhage), or whether they are experiencing a potential emergency.
Industry statistics show that the failure rates for the abortion pill regimen increase as the gestational age of the preborn baby increases. Yet, the abortion pill is being used well into the second and even third trimester of pregnancy, well past the 70 days/10 week limits approved by the FDA. In 2021, chemical abortions recorded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) revealed that nearly 1,000 were reported at gestational ages above 13 weeks — three or more weeks past the FDA limit.
Planned Parenthood’s website reveals that the abortion giant is among the many abortion profiteers willing to prescribe the abortion pill past the FDA-approved gestational limit, and their own statistics reveal that when they do, the abortion pill regimen is twice as likely to fail:
- “At 8 weeks pregnant or less, it works about 94-98% of the time” — a 2 to 6% failure rate.
- “At 8-9 weeks pregnant, it works about 94-96% of the time” — a 4 to 6% failure rate.
- “At 9-10 weeks pregnant, it works about 91-93% of the time” — a 7 to 9% failure rate.
- “At 10-11 weeks pregnant, it works about 87% of the time” — a 13% failure rate.
Planned Parenthood claims that when abortion clients take “an extra dose of misoprostol,” the abortions are completed 99% of the time at 9-10 weeks and 98% of the time at 10-11 weeks.
This contradicts the drug’s own label and FDA medication guide.
HERN: “Who’s going to take care of them if there’s a complication?”
The answer is likely “the emergency room.”
Published percentages for ER visits on mifepristone’s 2023 label state that 2.9 to 4.6 percent of women who take abortion drugs end up in the emergency room, indicating that abortion pill ER visits could be in the tens of thousands every year.
The “self-managed abortion” scheme was planned and implemented by the abortion industry years before the fall of Roe v. Wade. Even in the early days of the abortion pill’s approval, the industry acknowledged that emergency rooms would be a necessary link in the “self-managed” abortion chain, despite the industry’s repeated claims that the drug is “safe.”
The abortion industry has now shifted responsibility for abortion pill clients from abortion providers to often overcrowded emergency rooms. Today, bad actors inside the industry even tell abortion clients not to call them, but to instead present to emergency rooms for abortion pill aftercare. Some have even suggested that clients lie about abortion pill complications and claim they are experiencing a natural miscarriage.
Why does this matter? Because it falsifies the true dangers of the abortion pill for women, instead causing those dangers to be reported as natural pregnancy complications. This then inaccurately skews statistics regarding abortion and pregnancy risks.
Despite abortionist Warren Hern’s concerns over abortion pill “care,” in the end, he remained true to Big Abortion by stating that he believed the “medications themselves are quite safe” — even attempting to blame the lack of care on “the repression from the political system.” But the abortion industry set up these standards themselves, and have done nothing but expand abortion pill access and use over the past several years.
Given the fact that 63% of abortions in the U.S. are now done by pill, the idea that these drugs suffer from “repression from the political system” is laughable.
In reality, medical professionals who dispense abortion drugs without providing follow-up care have only themselves to blame when women are harmed.
