The growth of abortion pill use presents another challenge to states looking to protect unborn children, and it is a danger to women misled by the abortion industry’s deceptive marketing.
A Guttmacher Institute report found that the abortion pill, for the first time, accounted for more than half of abortions in the United States in 2020, with 54% of the 930,000 abortions conducted being caused by the pill.
Abortion pill use increased during the COVID-19 pandemic, when the FDA announced it would drop the requirement that abortion pills be administered at an in-person clinic under medical supervision, allowing women to access them remotely via telehealth clinics and mail.
Multiple abortion pill startup companies, such as Choix, Hey Jane, and Just the Pill, have seen increases in demand and funding over the past year, according to CNN. Hey Jane CEO Kiki Freedman said the company has doubled its clinical team since Texas passed its Heartbeat Bill in September, and it saw a “nine-fold increase in new telehealth patients per day” compared to last year.
“In a post-Roe world, abortion care via mail will likely become the most viable form of access for most of the country,” Freedman said.
The abortion pill is actually two drugs, mifepristone and misoprostol, taken 24 to 48 hours apart. The first blocks progesterone, a hormone required for a baby to live and grow, and the second causes cramping to expel the child from the womb.
Nineteen states require the physical presence of a physician when the medication is administered, according to Guttmacher Institute. Legal battles over this requirement are already pending. For example, in Mississippi, mifepristone manufacturer GenBioPro sued Mississippi State Health Officer Thomas Dobbs over state restrictions requiring an in-person prescription. The federal judge handling the case has said he is currently “not sure” whether he should delay it until the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision is released.
Abortion providers advertise the pill as safe, and it is recommended by a number of elite medical institutions, including the World Health Organization. But the potential side effects and consequences of this pill are not always shared. The FDA reports 26 deaths since 2000 and more than 4,000 adverse events, though other studies note this number has been underreported.
A Charlotte Lozier Institute study used Medicaid data to analyze 17 years of chemical abortions, finding a 500% increase in abortion-related emergency room visits following chemical abortions between 2002 and 2015. Of the 423,000 confirmed abortions, 121,283 were followed by emergency room visits within 30 days, meaning roughly 35 in every 100 abortions resulted in a visit. Compared to surgical abortions, women who received a chemical abortion were at a 22% greater risk of ending up in the emergency room for any reason.
Worse, 60% of abortion-related visits following the abortion pill were miscoded as treatment for a miscarriage. Another Charlotte Lozier Institute study published in May found that miscoding abortions as miscarriages puts women at risk of multiple hospitalizations.
This is the danger posed by mail-order drugs, especially as abortion advocates encourage their use to “evade abortion restrictions” and instruct women in states with bans on how to order them. These proponents rely on a lack of transparency about the pill’s side effects and hope that the women they’re catering won’t bother to do the research themselves. Hey Jane, for example, advertises its product as “fast, safe, and affordable” — a convenient alternative to going to the clinic. Its website also states that abortion “is one of the safest medical procedures out there.”
The industry needs to be honest: Abortion pills are not a simple, safe procedure. Not for the women, and especially not for the child.
