Lately, it seems a number of pro-abortion outlets are publishing “how-to” guides for DIY abortions. The latest offender is VICE, with an article called “What to Know About Giving Yourself an Abortion.” Abortion groups have been pushing unsupervised, at-home abortions, a dangerous and unsafe practice, for years. Recently, pro-abortion groups have become much more vocal about their aim to illegally distribute abortion pills online and teach women how to “safely” end the lives of their preborn children without medical supervision.
While another recent “guide” to ending your baby’s life in the comfort of your own home included a disclaimer from the author which read, “I am neither a lawyer nor a medical professional, and this guide should not be a substitute for legal or medical advice,” the VICE article contains no such disclaimer. In fact, the author of the piece in VICE sought the endorsement and advice of an abortionist lending the impression that the breezy guide to medical abortion is, in fact, medical advice.
Author Marie Solis brought in none other than abortionist Daniel Grossman, one of the foremost activists pushing for at-home abortions. Despite posing as an “unbiased” fact-checker, Grossman has decades of professional and financial ties to the major players in the industry, including DANCO Laboratories, the manufacturer of the abortion pill. For years, Grossman has been behind some of the industry-funded “studies” on at-home abortion pill use. Mentioning only that Grossman is “an OBGYN and the director of Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health, a program at the University of California, San Francisco,” the article fails to disclose Grossman’s financial relationship with the manufacturer of the abortion pill and history of promoting so-called “self-managed” abortion.
The article’s author claims that “any abortion with pills is ‘self-managed’ to some degree.” While it is true that the current pill protocol involves mothers ingesting the pills in a doctor’s office or abortion facility and then being sent home with the rest of the pill regimen, often without adequate preparation, women are then on their own to cope with the pain and discomfort that can occur during the abortion and are alone and unsupervised when they deliver the now-deceased baby. Women have described the experience as “horrific,” “humiliating, and terrifying.” This fact should serve as an indictment of the abortion industry and the lack of information and support offered to mothers not a reason to promote illegally purchasing pills online and doing your own abortion.
In Solis’s article, Grossman provides criteria for assessing if you’re a “good candidate” for the method before ending your baby’s life. The major concerns are gestational age, as the pills are only intended for use in the first 10 weeks of pregnancy, and if abortion pills are taken during an undiagnosed ectopic pregnancy it can be fatal for the mother. However, Grossman doesn’t mention that underestimating the gestational age of the baby happens frequently and results in an increased failure rate of the abortion pill as well as additional increased risks for the mother.
READ: Abortion pill horror stories from pro-choice women prove pro-lifers are telling the truth
Solis recommends using the site Plan C to find an illegal supplier of abortion pills online. She mentions only that the site’s highest-ranking service is “run by a licensed physician,” abortionist Rebecca Gomperts, and fails to mention that the website Plan C conducted a 2017 study showing that abortion pills purchased from 18 websites contained the labeled active ingredient at more or less the written dose.
Solis writes, “Self-inducing or self-managing an abortion is now synonymous with taking pills, a safe and effective method of ending a pregnancy.” Notably, Solis links to an article on the efficacy of mifepristone — which kills the baby by cutting off the nutrient supply — and misoprostol, which induces contractions to deliver the deceased baby. Many women illegally acquiring abortion pills are only able to acquire misoprostol, which significantly increases the abortion failure rate. Even when both mifepristone and misoprostol are available, there is still a failure rate requiring surgical intervention to prevent life-threatening infection. Women on Web, recommended by Solis, includes in its own statistics that 6.8% of women required follow-up surgical abortions after the abortion pills failed. Live Action News recently estimated that based on current failure percentage ranges, up to 31,000 women could experience an abortion pill failure every single year.
With no mention of the likelihood of surgery following a failed abortion, Grossman recommends only that women seek medical attention if there is a prolonged fever or severe bleeding after the abortion. Otherwise, Grossman claims, the discomfort of the abortion can be effectively treated at home with ibuprofen and a warm bath, a suggestion which does not even come close to many women’s abortion pill experiences.
Finally, the VICE article suggests that the only danger in taking abortion pills purchased illegally over the internet without any medical supervision is the possibility of facing legal repercussions in the few states that have outlawed self-managed abortion. Solis quotes abortion activist Robin Marty who says, “There’s a lot of mythology around self-managed abortion. But if we keep spreading information and resources as widely as possible, people will start to understand that there’s no danger in these pills—the only danger is the legal jeopardy, and that’s the problem.” The fact that a preborn child will lose her life and a mother may face irremediable harm are real and significant dangers. Refusing to acknowledge them shows that abortion activists’ commitment is to abortion, not the well-being of women.
Author’s Note: If you have taken the first pill (mifepristone/RU-486) in the abortion pill regimen and are experiencing regret, there may be help available. Please visit AbortionPillRescue.com.
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