Isabel Vaughan-Spruce: "The damage abortion inflicts on women alone should be enough to make us pro-life".Amy Sinclair: "History will judge us for the barbarity of abortion".A review of the media reveals multiple articles on so-called "medical abortion". They emphasize the supposed safety and security of the abortion method based on mifepristone and misoprostol. This conclusion, however, is erroneous.
Before delving into the various health and moral concerns associated with medication abortion, we must first understand what this type of abortion entails. The term "drug" should be understood as "any substance used to treat a disease or ailment," according to the Cambridge Dictionary.
Pregnancy is neither a disease nor an illness, and the drug mifepristone was not developed to treat or cure any disease or illness. It is a self-induced abortion pill used to end the life of a child in its mother's womb. Therefore, the term "medical abortion" is misleading, and the term "chemical abortion" is more appropriate.
Chemical abortion
Chemical abortion is a two-drug process. It begins with mifepristone (brand name Mifeprex, legally known as RU486), which blocks the hormone progesterone, which is essential for maintaining a woman's pregnancy by preparing her body for conception and regulating her menstrual cycle, as American gynecologist Steven R. Goldstein points out. Blocking this hormone impairs and ruptures the uterine lining and prevents the transfer of adequate nutrition to the developing fetus, resulting in death.
Misoprostol (marketed as Cytotec) is taken 24 to 48 hours after taking mifepristone to cause uterine contractions in the body, with the main objective of emptying the uterine cycle. All of this occurs in the first trimester of pregnancy.
The child's heart is detectable at this stage, and its brain and lungs are also developing, explains M. Israel in a paper published by "The Heritage Foundation"in March 2021.
When does life begin?
The use of mifepristone and the chemical abortion process, in general, are neither safe nor something that can be supported in good conscience. First, we must recognize that life actually begins at conception.
Regarding this, the American College of Pediatricians, a national medical association of physicians and licensed health professionals, made a statement in March 2017, which focused on the scientific evidence of when an individual human life begins: "The predominance of human biological research confirms that human life begins at conception-fertilization. At the moment of fertilization, the human being emerges as a complete, genetically distinct, zygotic living human organism, a member of the species Homo sapiens, needing only the right environment to grow and develop. The difference between the individual in its adult stage and in its zygotic stage is one of form, not of nature."
On the other hand, Dr. Maureen Condic, a neuroscientist and member of the U.S. National Science Board, writing about the scientific view of the beginning of human life, stated: "The conclusion that human life begins with the fusion of sperm and egg is indisputable, objective, based on the universally accepted scientific method of distinguishing different cell types from each other and on ample scientific evidence. Moreover, it is totally independent of any specific ethical, moral, political or religious view of human life or human embryos."
In a 2017 survey, 4,107 Americans were asked when they believed the life of a human being begins. Respondents represented a diverse demographic and political spectrum: 62 % held pro-choice views, with 66 % identifying as Democrats; 57 % were women and 43 %, men; 63 % had graduated from college. When asked who was most qualified to determine when a human life begins, 80 % chose biologists over philosophers, religious leaders, voters, and Supreme Court justices. When asked to explain their answer, 91 % of those who chose biologists said the reason was because they are objective experts in the study of life.
The same study surveyed 5,557 biologists from 1,058 academic institutions. 63 % of the participants were nonreligious, 63 % were male, 95 % had a PhD, 92 % were Democrats, and 85 % were pro-choice. The sample also included biologists born in 86 different nations around the world. When asked when they believed human life begins, 95.7 % of the biologists agreed with the underlying biological view that it begins at fertilization.
Abuses of the abortion pill
Biology is the study of life. Its meaning comes from the Greek words "bios" (meaning life) and "logos" (meaning study). Biologists study the origin, growth and structure of living organisms. When people who study life inform us that the life of a human being begins at fertilization, should we not do everything possible to protect the life of the child growing inside its mother's womb?
Every abortion takes the life of a human being, but chemical abortion can also damage the life of a woman. mothereven to death. If chemical abortion is legalized, abortion pills may end up in the hands of traffickers, abusive partners and others who plan to use them for nefarious purposes.
The legalization of chemical abortion may increase the number of forced abortions, and there have already been reports of pregnant women being given abortion pills without their knowledge or consent. In 2006, a Wisconsin man gave his girlfriend a drink to which he added mifepristone. The next morning she became ill and miscarried the 14-week fetus.
Let's cite other cases. In 2013, a man tricked his pregnant girlfriend by giving her an abortion pill supposedly to treat her infection, resulting in the loss of their child, L. Mungin told CNN in September 2013. In 2014, CBS News echoed the case of a Kansas man who was arrested for buying Mifepristone pills online and placing them in his girlfriend's food, causing the death of the fetus.
In 2015, Herald Sun picked up the story about a Norwegian man who slipped abortion pills into his ex-girlfriend's smoothie and caused her to miscarry. She lost the baby in her 12th week of pregnancy, and two years later, in 2017, a Virginia doctor was accused of slipping 4 mifepristone pills (800 mg instead of the standard 200 mg) into his girlfriend's tea, resulting in the death of her unborn child. He pleaded guilty to fetal homicide and received a three-year prison sentence, while losing his medical license.
That year, a Michigan man attempted to murder his unborn child by secretly slipping mifepristone into his girlfriend's water bottle. His girlfriend became suspicious and turned the water over to police, who determined that it contained the abortion-inducing drug. The man had obtained the mifepristone from a New York dealer who was later charged and convicted.
Meanwhile, a study from the same year 2018 entitled "Exploring the feasibility of obtaining mifepristone and misoprostol from the internet",identified 18 websites selling abortion pills without a prescription or any relevant medical data, such as medical history. The paper concluded that obtaining abortion pills from rogue pharmaceutical websites is feasible in the U.S. Do we really want to include the possibility of someone seeking to buy abortion pills online and using them for evil purposes, such as abusing their pregnant partners and killing their children?
What scientific studies say
When evaluating chemical abortion from a medical point of view, we must examine the negative health effects on the mothers who undergo the procedure.
A Finnish study, coordinated by Marko Niinimäki and published in the National Library of Medicine, of 42,619 abortions found that chemical abortion has four times the complication rate of surgical abortion and that one-fifth of all chemical abortions end in complications. Overall, the report found that chemical abortion caused approximately four times as many adverse events as surgical abortion.
At least one adverse complication occurred in 20 % of women who underwent chemical abortion and 5.6 % of those who underwent surgical abortion. 15.61 % of patients who underwent chemical abortion reported hemorrhage as an adverse consequence, compared with 2.11 % of patients who underwent surgical abortion.
Similarly, a journalistic audit entitled "Abortion Pill 'Less Safe Than Surgery" published in The Australian investigated approximately 6,800 surgical and chemical abortions. According to the audit, 3.3 % of women who used mifepristone in the first trimester of their pregnancy went to the emergency room, compared with 2.2 % who used a surgical method.
In addition, 5.7 % (1 in 18 patients) of mifepristone users were found to require readmission to the hospital, compared with 0.4 % (1 in 250) of surgical abortion patients. The use of mifepristone in second-trimester abortions resulted in 33 % of women needing some type of surgical intervention, while 4% suffered major bleeding.
At the same time, a California retrospective observational retrospective report, using data from U.S. Medicaid (the U.S. government-funded healthcare program that provides free or low-cost coverage to millions of citizens), found a 5.2 % complication rate for chemical abortion versus a 1.3 % complication rate for first-trimester surgical abortion. It also mentioned that the risk of complications present in taking an abortion pill was four times higher than that of surgical abortion (U. D. Upadhyay, National Library of Medicine, 2015).
Bleeding and other complications
Furthermore, a 2016 Swedish study in which 119 women who had undergone chemical abortion were interviewed found that almost half of them (43 %) bled more than expected, and a quarter (26 %) bled for more than four weeks (M. Hedqvis, in Sexual & Reproductive Healthcare, 2016).
In this regard, Dr. Ingrid Skop, Director of Medical Affairs at the Charlotte Lozier Institute, and a practicing obstetrician-gynecologist with more than 25 years of experience, wrote regarding the mifepristone-misoprostol chemical abortion regimen in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons. There he stated that "the average woman undergoing a chemical abortion will bleed for 9-16 days and 8 % will bleed for over a month. Most will experience side effects of childbirth such as cramping, heavy bleeding, nausea, vomiting, fever, chills, headache, diarrhea, and dizziness. Many will experience the emotional devastation of looking at the body of their aborted child."
In addition, Dr. Skop explained that mifepristone contributes to an altered inflammatory response by blocking glucocorticoid receptors, which increases the risk of Clostridium sordellii infection and sepsis, sometimes leading to death. This was affirmed in a pharmacotherapeutic study in which the propensity of mifepristone to develop infection, possibly leading to lethal septic shock, was noted (R. P. Miech, Annals of Pharmacotherapy, 2005).
In conclusion, the results of Finnish, Australian, American and Swedish research and other medical studies, together with Ingrid Skop's personal experiences, corroborate each other's observations: chemical abortion causes adverse effects on women's health.
Risks for women
It could be argued that some selective biases influenced the various scientific/medical research conducted on the adverse effects and risk factors associated with mifepristone.
However, it is quite telling that both the manufacturer of mifepristone, Danco Laboratories, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) acknowledged the risks of Mifepristone to women's health: "Almost all women receiving Mifeprex and misoprostol will report adverse reactions, and many can be expected to report more than one such reaction."
A congressional report submitted to the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Government Reform, entitled "The FDA and RU486: Lowering the Standard for Women's Health" (2006), draws attention to the physical risks to women taking the RU-486 regimen. These include reactions such as "abdominal pain; uterine cramping; nausea; headache; vomiting; diarrhea; dizziness; fatigue; back pain; uterine bleeding; fever; viral infections; vaginitis; rigors (chills/shivering); dyspepsia; insomnia; asthenia; leg pain; anxiety; anemia; leukorrhea; sinusitis; syncope; endrometritis, salpingitis, pelvic inflammatory disease; decreased hemoglobin greater than 2 g/dL; pelvic pain; and fainting."
The same Congressional report questions the safety of mifepristone and recommends its withdrawal from U.S. markets by stating that "FDA's integrity in the approval and oversight of RU-486 has been deficient and requires the withdrawal of this dangerous and deadly product before more women suffer the known and expected consequences or deaths."
"RU-486 is a dangerous drug for women, its unusual approval demonstrates an inferior standard of care for women, and its withdrawal from the market is warranted and necessary to protect public health," the report adds. The FDA also warned healthcare professionals about sepsis infection and recommended a high index of suspicion for serious infection and sepsis in those undergoing chemical abortion.
Problems caused are not reported
As of 2018, FDA has been made aware of 24 deaths, 4,195 adverse events, 1,042 hospitalizations, 599 cases of blood loss requiring transfusions, and 412 cases of mifepristone-associated infections (A. F. a. D. Administration, Mifepristone U.S. Post-Marketing Adverse Events Summary through 12/31/2018).
The true numbers of the various problems and adverse events caused by mifepristone may be much higher due to problems with the FDA Adverse Event Reporting System (FAERS).
A report by The Heritage Foundation sheds light on this issue: "As a condition of becoming a certified prescriber, the prescribing agreement originally required prescribers to report serious adverse events and complications to Danco, which, in turn, submits periodic reports to the FDA. These adverse events...are compiled in the FDA's FAERS. But when a woman experiences a complication of abortion, she is likely to report it to an emergency department or other outpatient facility rather than to the prescriber who prescribed the abortion pill regimen....
There is no way to know how often EDs and other facilities fail to report complications to Danco or the FDA, as they may not know that the woman is undergoing an elective chemical abortion rather than a spontaneous abortion" (M. Israel, at www.heritage.org, March 2021).
Opacity
In addition, women seeking medical treatment for adverse reactions after taking mifepristone may be too ill or refuse to disclose that they have taken the RU-486 drug regimen because they do not want that to appear in their medical records.
Medical professionals who do not supervise chemical abortion procedures, but who may treat infected or bleeding patients, are not required to report adverse effects of mifepristone, regardless of whether that health care worker is aware that a patient has taken the RU-486 drug regimen.
Physicians performing chemical abortions may also be unaware of adverse events that occur after administering RU-486, which exempts them from the reporting requirement, according to the 2006 congressional study cited above.
This same Government Reform Committee report on mifepristone also explained the contraindications present in the system: "Although RU-486 is approved for use up to 49 days of pregnancy, in the United States it is routinely prescribed up to 63 days of pregnancy. Physicians also often prescribe a different dosing regimen than that approved by the FDA. Therefore, it has been suggested that there is, in fact, a disincentive on the part of prescribing physicians to report adverse events that may be attributable to a physician's negligence or willingness to prescribe a regimen that is outside of the FDA-approved regimen for RU- 486" .
In 2016, the FDA reduced the reporting requirements so that only deaths had to be reported to the FDA itself.
Conclusion
After considering abundant scientific and governmental sources, it is obvious that chemical abortions harm everyone. Chemical abortion is not medicine because medicine cures, while abortion kills. It is unsafe because of its history of causing health complications in women, including septic shock, infections, and prolonged or severe bleeding.
It is not socially safe because abortion pills have been purchased over the counter for malicious purposes, such as the murder of unborn children without their mothers' knowledge. Lax oversight and deficiencies in the FDA reporting system mean that the true harm caused by chemical abortifacients is still uncertain and that the number of women significantly harmed by the abortion pill regimen may be substantially higher than expected.
The reality is that we cannot allow chemical abortion to be legalized. Why legalize something that has proven to be dangerous, with cases where it has been unethically obtained and misleadingly used against women, while we lack full knowledge of its true causalities?
Every human life has inherent dignity and should be treated as such. A free society is one in which human beings enjoy equal dignity, regardless of age, sex, health status or other vulnerability.
If we do not respect, value and protect life from conception, we will not support, care for and defend the life of someone long after they are born. Let us contribute to a free and moral society by doing our part to ensure that chemical abortion is not legalized.
Founder of "Catholicism Coffee".
