At 12 weeks pregnant, Amberly went in for a routine OB/GYN appointment with her fifth baby, but during the ultrasound, she was told her baby had stopped growing at about 10 and a half weeks and that she would need “help” for the miscarriage to complete. She had no idea that the mifepristone she was given would leave her lying alone and helpless in a puddle of blood.
“It was the worst and scariest thing that we’ve been through as a family,” she told Live Action News. “That is with a husband who is a doctor… who knew how to handle things like this and it was surprising and terrible for him as well.”
After Amberly, who was at the appointment alone, was told that her baby had died, she was not given a follow-up ultrasound, but was sent to a different doctor to discuss her “options.” The doctor told her, “‘Well, from your estimate, you’re 12 weeks and the baby stopped growing at 10 and a half weeks, so there’s a strong possibility that you’ll need a procedure.'” She was told, “‘In order to avoid sepsis, I suggest you get help’ — mifepristone.”
Miscarriage care
For first-trimester miscarriages, women typically are given three choices: wait for their body to complete the miscarriage on its own, undergo a D&C procedure in which the uterus is emptied using scraping and suctioning, or take misoprostol to cause contractions to expel the baby (or take mifepristone and misoprostol together). American Family Physician states that “The most effective regimens for medication management of early pregnancy loss and medication abortion include 200 mg of oral mifepristone (a progesterone receptor antagonist) followed by 800 mcg of misoprostol (a prostaglandin E1analogue) administered buccally or vaginally.”
As previously reported by Live Action News researcher and contributor Carole Novielli, mifepristone is not FDA-approved for miscarriage care — at least not on its own. “A petition from 48 pro-abortion groups is asking the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to approve the abortion pill (mifepristone) for miscarriage care — a move that is essentially a scheme to get the drug approved under ‘other indications’ and circumvent laws that restrict abortion,” explained Novielli.
At least one study has shown that this could prove dangerous. As in Amberly’s case, the prescribing of mifepristone for miscarriage care can cause heavy bleeding. The pro-abortion study which sought to disprove the pro-life process known as ‘Abortion Pill Reversal’ (APR) administered mifepristone to 12 women who were planning to have surgical abortions. Some of those women were given progesterone, as is the protocol with APR, while others were given a placebo.
Of the patients who received the placebo, two had continuing pregnancies at two weeks, one had no gestational cardiac activity three days after mifepristone use, one called an ambulance after the onset of heavy vaginal bleeding after taking mifepristone, and one “called an ambulance after experiencing hemorrhage” after taking mifepristone and she “received a 1-unit transfusion of packed red blood cells.”
Of the five patients who received progesterone, only one “started having brisk bleeding and called an ambulance.” Doctors at the ER “found no gestational sac… Heavy bleeding lasted about 3 hours overall, and no intervention was needed.”
The results of the study, which was prematurely ended, raised concerns about the safety of using mifepristone — especially alone — in either miscarriage care or abortion.
Amberly said that when she experienced a miscarriage, she was not given any options other than mifepristone and was told that she would need a follow-up ultrasound and possibly a D&C procedure if her body didn’t expel everything.
Waking in a ‘puddle of blood’
The appointment was on a Monday, and by Friday Amberly was picking up the mifepristone prescription. Her husband was training to be a doctor, but not an obstetrician, and was not familiar with mifepristone. Amberly was given a four-pill dose and took the first pill. She was supposed to take the second pill four hours later… but that never happened.
Believing her life was in danger from potential sepsis, Amberly took the first pill that evening. She began cramping that night and “bleeding profusely,” she said. “I passed our baby and stayed up all night.” She had been led to believe that taking the pill would cause bleeding like a regular period, but, she said, she “kept bleeding and bleeding.”
The following day, her husband took their four children to run errands so she could rest. “In the meantime,” she explained, “I kept bleeding and soaking through everything. I passed out on the bathroom floor and came to enough to put my feet up. But I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t think. I put my feet on the bathroom stool. My family came home and my husband called me and called me and I was apparently not responding.”
Her husband and children found her on the bathroom floor in a “puddle of blood.” Her husband picked her up and said he was bringing her to the hospital, but Amberly insisted on staying home. He put her in bed, telling her he would sit and watch her to ensure she didn’t pass out again. It was a decision he later came to regret, realizing he should have followed his instinct and insisted that she go to the hospital. He said she likely should have undergone a blood transfusion due to how much blood she was losing.
“I didn’t stop bleeding for 17 days,” she said. “I had another ultrasound appointment to make sure everything was expelled and I told them that I was still experiencing bleeding and they treated it as not a big concern even though it had been more than two weeks.”
It took Amberly a long time to recover. She said her periods have been extremely heavy ever since, and she also deals with ongoing pain four years later. She worries about what this drug will do to young girls who take it, often without their parents’ knowledge.
“It’s a danger,” she said. “I had four little children and they saw me passed out on the floor in a puddle of blood. If it did this to me — a woman who has had four children — what would it do to a teenage girl?”
Pro-abortion laws are harming women
The doctor told her that a month after taking the mifepristone she should be able to get pregnant again, but at the one-month mark, Amberly was still struggling. She felt weak and was dealing with continued pain. Three months later, however, she became pregnant and has since gone on to welcome two more children.
Feeling that she was an anomaly, she didn’t speak out about her experience until she read the story of a woman who had a similar experience. “I realized it’s not an uncommon thing,” she said. “It’s common. They aren’t warning patients or even giving women’s bodies the chance to do what they do naturally [after miscarriage.]”
At the time of her miscarriage, Amberly and her family were living in upstate New York. It was 2020 and just months earlier, New York had passed an extreme pro-abortion law that allowed abortion through birth. Amberly, her husband, and another couple often stood outside of the local hospital’s abortion ‘clinic’ on Fridays where abortions were committed through 20 weeks gestation.
For women beyond that gestation, the hospital would refer them to a different hospital in Rochester, just over an hour north. The couples held signs offering to adopt any baby at risk of abortion, but they were heartbroken as even women beyond 20 weeks left the facility determined to get abortions in Rochester. Their friends were ultimately able to save one baby from abortion and adopt him, but they had to stand by in horror as another woman who said she would allow them to adopt her baby decided to go through with a late abortion instead.
For Amberly, losing her baby to miscarriage was heartbreaking, and it was worsened by the extreme bleeding and pain she suffered due to a drug that the abortion industry and pro-abortion doctors in states like New York tout as safe. Where pro-abortion laws flourish, it seems that doctors — who were trained under the era of Roe v. Wade — don’t seem to understand true health care for women.
After all, Amberly is not alone. As the Supreme Court reviews a lower court decision to better protect women and babies from mifepristone, women are sharing the horrible experiences they have had with mifepristone and misoprostol, including Britney Spears, who recently shared her “excruciating” experience in her tell-all memoir.
Amberly wants all women to be aware of how dangerous mifepristone can be. The abortion industry markets the abortion pill as being “as safe as Tylenol” and akin to “bringing down a missed period.” This is not the case, as Amberly’s experience — and the experiences of countless other women — demonstrate.
