As part of their COVID-19 response, the World Health Organization (WHO) has declared abortion as an essential service. The U.K. has now issued temporary approval for chemical abortions to be completely done at home. The U.S. abortion lobby continues to call for the FDA to lift restrictions (REMs) off the abortion pill (U.S. brand "Mifeprex"), making way for complete "self-managed" abortions. Unfortunately, this is what the abortion industry all over the world has pursued even before the current pandemic--for abortions to be unrestricted, unregulated, and do-it-yourself.
The abortion pill is a two-drug regimen that is basically a do-it-yourself method anyways, but normally, the woman would have some type of interaction with a physician by taking the first pill (mifepristone) under their supervision at the clinic (although this is no longer a requirement in the U.S. since 2016) and then going home to take the second drug (misoprostol) 24-48 hours later.
Gone are the days of abortion activists calling for abortions to be "safe, legal, and rare" to protect against desperate women performing their own "back-alley" abortions. Now, abortion pills are the new back-alley method, credentialed by the world's most prestigious medical institutions.
By placing the burden of inducing abortions completely on women--despite the fact that the health complications that often result from an induced chemical abortion are eerily similar to those of "back-alley" abortions--it is evident that the abortion industry has no regard for human dignity whatsoever--for the child or the mother.
The Future of Abortion
The abortion industry has favored dispensing abortion pills due to how easy they are to distribute and their ability to lower overhead costs of in-clinic surgical abortions. Chemical abortion is a way to shift costs and patient oversight from the surgical provider to the patient herself, particularly for use in "low-resource settings." Thus, it is not surprising that world abortion leaders like International Planned Parenthood, Marie Stopes, and Doctors Without Borders have already made extensive use of "medication" or "medical" abortion, a shift that has been supported by WHO.
According to the Guttmacher Institute, the abortion industry views the drug-based method as the future of abortion, so as they are expanding telemed activities they are actively experimenting on women in Burkina Faso, Columbia, Mexico, and Vietnam to perform chemical abortions in the second trimester. Currently, this method has only been approved universally for first trimester pregnancies only.
The once abortion-neutral humanitarian aid group Doctors Without Borders (DWB) has now launched online instructional videos, credentialed by WHO, to train their "humanitarian" workers on how to use the abortion pill. Shockingly (or perhaps not), DWB acknowledges that they expect vulnerable women to use the site in order to learn how to induce their own abortion, with instructions for self-managing an abortion up to 22 weeks!
The Unique Trauma of Chemical Abortion
A chemical abortion is a multi-day, traumatic process of cramping, contractions, and bleeding which culminates in the uterus expelling the embryo or fetus, and it comes with four times the risk of complications compared to surgical abortions. The risks of life-threatening and health-endangering complications only increase as the gestational age of the pregnancy progresses.
What makes chemical abortions uniquely traumatic is that a mother sees and must dispose of the remains of her aborted child. The psychological trauma of abortion on women cannot be underestimated, especially the trauma from of undergoing a chemical abortion. Mifeprex has been approved for inducing abortion on babies up to 10 weeks gestation, at which point the baby already has a head, hands, feet, fingers, and toes. For a woman to take in the visual devastation of a child that is half-way developed at 22 weeks is severely distressing, especially for women who thought they were getting care from "humanitarians." Instead, they walk away with more trauma. In reality, they can't walk away at all--they are left alone to "self-manage" the abortion.
For the WHO and DWB to endorse drug-induced abortions on women up to 22 weeks is bordering considerably on medical malpractice. The two most prevalent complications observed for chemical abortions comparatively, were hemorrhage and incomplete abortion. An incomplete abortion means there needed to be surgical intervention to extract any remaining parts of the unborn child from the woman's uterus. Prolonged hemorrhage requiring blood transfusion can occur. It's already been reported to the FDA that over 500 blood transfusions, over a thousand hospitalizations, and 24 deaths have taken place as a result of Mifeprex. And that is just what's been reported.
In 2015, a peer-reviewed study to test the safety and feasibility of self-administered over-the-counter abortion pills found that when women take the pills past 63 days gestation, 62 percent of participants had incomplete abortions resulting in surgical intervention. Nearly 13 percent required surgical evacuation with blood transfusion. Yet in 2016 under the Obama administration, the FDA extended Mifeprex eligibility from 63 days to 70 days gestation and altered the drug dosage to make chemical abortions even more dangerous.
An "Essential" Medical Service?
Telemed abortion trials are currently taking place in 13 states to test the viability of women self-managing abortions through mail-order abortion pills. The FDA must be held accountable and not approve any drug trials and studies that intentionally destroy human embryos or fetuses.
Planned Parenthood has also announced plans to expand their telemed services to all 50 states, which would include pick-ups for contraceptives and abortion pills. This comes on the heels of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit decision in Planned Parenthood v. Abbott granting Planned Parenthood approval to proceed with chemical abortions even though abortion has been deemed non-essential in the state of Texas.
Even apart from the question of caring for the life of the unborn child, abortions require a high level of physical interaction between the mother and a physician who can examine, diagnosis, evaluate, and treat her.
Abortion activists routinely compare inducing a chemical abortion to taking Tylenol, but a chemical abortion involves heavy bleeding and cramping and carries life-threatening risks, so pretending for ideological reasons that chemical abortions can be done remotely (commonly using Skype) or even as a do-it-yourself, over-the-counter regimen is extremely dangerous and negligent. Furthermore, telemedicine is not suited to the provision of immediate emergency care.
We are now likely to see scenarios where women who have taken the abortion pill regimen will need blood transfusions, treatment for infections, and possible follow-up surgery to complete the abortion, which means they will need to go to the emergency room and wait for treatment next to possible victims of COVID-19. This does not conserve medical resources and puts the safety and health of women at risk. In addition, the woman, who may or may not have health insurance coverage, is expected to bear the additional cost of these complications of "self-managed" abortions.
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) and their allies put out a statement complaining that abortions are being left out of essential health care services that need to remain open at this time. Some more liberal-leaning states have deemed abortion as "essential," but fortunately the U.S. currently has strong pro-life leadership from the top down, so at a national level it is unlikely that we will see abortion declared as an "essential service" at a time like this. But that will not stop the abortion industry from taking advantage of the pandemic to ramp up progression to their desired future of total "self-managed" abortions.
Encouraging women to self-manage an abortion and calling it a "paid" service is a dangerous practical joke the abortion industry is playing on women.
Thankfully, there are still some reputable medical leaders, such as the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG), who refuse to put women in this type of danger by categorizing abortion as an "essential service."
Though the abortion industry markets itself as a champion for women's reproductive rights, there is no way that professional medical institutions should willingly put women in the "back-alley" of their own bathrooms to induce their own abortions with drugs at the risk of death and call it "health care."
Population Control Is the True Objective of World Abortion Leaders
World abortion leaders are not concerned about women, they are concerned with population control. That concern is undoubtedly heightened amid a pandemic that could produce a baby boom. The legacy of abortion is rooted in eugenics, and when defending "abortion access," proponents will consistently dog-whistle about how any pro-life protection or common-sense abortion restriction will hurt "low-income people," "people of color," and those in "rural" or "underserved" communities. It is not a coincidence that abortion is promoted in predominantly African-American and Hispanic communities and promoted and performed in undeveloped countries. Elites like Bill Gates who heavily finance Planned Parenthood and the Population Council support abortion as a mechanism of alleviating poverty by eliminating the children of those who are impoverished. Interestingly, the Population Council was the lead sponsor in getting the abortion pill (RU-486) approved in the United States.
As of late, President Trump has decided to halt funds to the World Health Organization as an investigation takes place to assess their mishandling of the coronavirus. However, further concern is warranted when it comes to U.S. tax dollars being entangled with WHO's pro-abortion agenda amid the reinstatement of the Protecting Life in Global Health Assistance Act, formerly known as the Mexico City Policy, which bans taxpayer funds for promoting or performing overseas abortion. The United States is the largest contributor to the WHO's budget, providing "between $400 million and $500 million per year to the WHO."
Over two-thirds of Americans continue to oppose taxpayer-funded abortions, and Trump's election was super-charged by pro-life voters who continue to be a base of support. Assessing whether U.S. dollars should go to conflicting interests should be heavily weighed moving forward.
As world abortion leaders aggressively pursue "abortion access" at any cost, the U.S. is currently in a strong position to ensure that it is not a part of the population control agenda and to continue putting women and human dignity first.