Some recent pro-abortion media propaganda has attempted to gaslight the public by painting “self-managed abortion,” sometimes known as “DIY” or “at-home abortion,” as if it is the fault of the pro-life movement and the result of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. But the abortion industry’s plan to move toward self-managed abortion was set in motion long, long before the Supreme Court’s June 2022 decision — in fact, over a decade before. It seems that now, the abortion industry and media’s plan is to blame pro-life laws when anything goes wrong with the self-managed abortions they endorsed and promoted.
This is, of course, entirely dishonest rhetoric, and the abortion industry and its friends in the media are well aware of this.
The horrors of “managing” an abortion without medical supervision were predicted by pro-life advocates for years, while largely ignored by lawmakers, media, and government agencies, who claimed taking the abortion pill was “safer than Tylenol,” “safer than Viagra,” and even “safer than penicillin“… or any other number of drugs. Even while pushing for at-home abortions without requiring any testing or ultrasounds (to rule out ectopic pregnancy or assess gestational age), “safe” was always their claim.
That is, until now.
Designed by Big Abortion, not the Result of Pro-Life Laws
In her piece entitled “Alone in a Bathroom,” published by the Washington Post, journalist Caroline Kitchener used the horrors of “self-managed abortion” to push propaganda that the overturning of the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision suddenly unleashed situations where women were now forced to hide in their bathrooms alone and suffer in pain, avoid emergency assistance, rely on unregulated virtual abortion pill providers, and see the horrific consequences as they deliver their dead babies into toilets.
The optics look much like the days of so-called illegal abortion prior to Roe, but just like many of those days, what has been unleashed on women was designed and implemented by Big Abortion — not the United States Supreme Court, nor states with pro-life protections.
WAPO Alone in the Bathroom misleads on self managed abortion
In the years leading up to Roe v. Wade, advocates openly admitted that a majority of “illegal abortions” were being performed by “reputable physicians.” 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.”
Today, “self-managed” abortion basically involves no medical professional 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.
Post-Roe, this is playing into the hands of abortion propagandists who know full well that “self-managed abortion” was invented and pushed on women by Big Abortion.
“’Self-managed’ abortion increased dramatically after Roe v. Wade was overturned — with women in antiabortion states obtaining pills through several distinct channels,” wrote Kitchener.
In her Washington Post article, Kitchener claims she spoke on the phone to women who self-managed their abortions at home. The stories Kitchener heard reflected the warnings of the pro-life community when the abortion industry rolled out its plan for self-managed abortions, which went ignored (until after Roe‘s reversal) by media outlets like the Washington Post.
But now, as Kitchener has insinuated — somehow the concept of aborting into a toilet alone in your home is no longer freedom and liberation for women; instead, it’s now the ‘cruel’ result of the end of Roe v. Wade.
Kitchener and the Post know better. They just trust that the public doesn’t.
“As more women in states with abortion bans choose to end their pregnancies on their own, without directly interacting with a medical professional, they are thrust into a largely ad hoc, unregulated system of online and grass-roots abortion pill distributors — an experience that, while deemed generally safe by medical experts, can be confusing, scary and, at times, deeply traumatic,” Kitchener wrote.
But aborting “Alone in a Bathroom” was the design of Big Abortion, and any fallout for women’s trauma should be laid squarely at the feet of the profitable abortion industry, which is more concerned with access than safety.
Big Abortion Promotes Self-Managed Abortion
The abortion industry’s move toward self-managed abortion began over a decade ago.
Between May 2009 and February 2011, clinical trials “to assess the acceptability of home-use mifepristone” were conducted and reviewed in the United States, Moldova, and the Republic of Nepal, sponsored by Gynuity Health Projects (GHP).
In 2015, Gynuity announced clinical trials for the “Feasibility of Medical Abortion by Direct-to-Consumer Telemedicine,” or “mail order” abortion pills at select locations, including Planned Parenthood.
In 2016, the pro-abortion Obama administration weakened the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) REMS safety regulations by removing requirements that women or teen girls take the first drug in front of a clinician, in-person at the location of a certified prescriber and that the manufacturer report the drug’s non-fatal adverse events (complications).
That same year (2016), Gynuity began conducting its TelAbortion “trojan horse” trial, later dubbed by the media group Fast Company as a “work around” the FDA’s REMS.
Then, in 2017, Tara Health Foundation, an organization which pledged to fund the abortion pill on college campuses in California, published a 92-page strategy on its website which included the push for “home use” or “self-managed” abortion along with the elimination of REMS.
In 2018, a consortium of abortion organizations — Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH), Gynuity Health Projects, and Ibis Reproductive Health — published a report which 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.”
That same year, abortion promoters began recruiting for a study in which women would obtain the abortion pill regimen from a pharmacy instead of an abortion facility.
Also in 2018, the Guttmacher Institute, the former “special affiliate” of Planned Parenthood, published a report which seemed to soft-pedal “self-managed abortion,” claiming that the FDA’s REMS restrictions were not justified. Their report indicated that, while DIY bathroom abortions would shift responsibility from medical providers to women, Big Abortion had no plans to relinquish the profits medication abortion brought them.
Then, Planned Parenthood’s 2019 plan vowed that the abortion corporation would “be expanding its telemedicine services to increase access to medication abortion for patients living in remote communities.”
During this same timeframe, pro-abortion activists Francine Coeytaux and Victoria Nichols created the website PlanC to further promote dangerous “self-managed abortion.”
Fast-Tracking Self-Managed Abortion During COVID-19 Pandemic
Seeing a “crisis” in the COVID-19 pandemic, the abortion industry launched its so-called “no-test” abortion pill protocol which had been planned well before the world experienced the coronavirus pandemic. Despite the need to accurately diagnose a pregnancy and rule out ectopic pregnancies for women’s safety, abortion businesses now have the option to avoid all testing — including all lab work and ultrasounds — before dispensing 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 about abortion pill complications when committing self-managed abortions without medical supervision.
In April of 2021, under the guise of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Biden administration’s FDA temporarily enabled abortion pill distribution and expanded the REMS safety regulations to allow limited mail-order pharmacy distribution. By December of 2021, the Biden FDA had further weakened the REMS by eliminating the in-person dispensing requirement and enabling the abortion pill to be permanently shipped by mail.
Promoting over-the-counter abortion
Before the ink had dried on that FDA decision, influential abortion insiders were calling for more “self-managed abortion” by suggesting that the abortion pill be made available over the counter (OTC), something the abortion industry was always wanting.
Case in point: Guttmacher’s 2018 report stated, “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…. Lifting the REMS on mifepristone would allow more convenient models to emerge in states that permit telemedicine abortion…. lifting the REMS on mifepristone and securing OTC status for medication abortion are advances that do not depend on state legislatures or the Supreme Court.”
By December of 2021, former NARAL board member Renee Bracey Sherman was joined by abortionist Daniel Grossman in an op-ed where they openly advocated for OTC abortion pills. That same year, advocates of abortion were claiming that “illegal” abortion could be “safe,” and advised women to lie about any abortion pill complications when presenting to an emergency department.
Then, in January 2023, the Biden FDA further gutted the REMS by announcing it would allow retail pharmacies to dispense the drug.
In our series digesting this Washington Post article more critically, Live Action News will use Kitchener’s own observations to further expose how harmful “self-managed abortion” is, and we will document further why the onus for the harm and horrors described by Kitchener lie squarely at the feet of the abortion industry.
