Last week, Costco announced it would not sell abortion-inducing Mifepristone at its 500-plus pharmacies, following a pressure campaign from conservative groups. Pro-life activists view this as a victory, but if it is, it’s incomplete. It does not do enough to protect the lives and health of women who use this drug. Our government should.
Imagine a medication meant for women that caused a serious adverse outcome 11% of the time. Few women would roll the dice under those odds. And surely a vigilant, protective government would ban such a deadly product.
Yet that is not what is happening in America at present. The vast majority of women have no idea that the commonly ingested abortion pill Mifepristone is that dangerous because their government and America’s abortion-pushing culture tells them the opposite.
We know this because our organization Foundation for the Restoration of America carefully examined insurance data and found that Mifepristone is 22 times more dangerous than the FDA claims. Another group, Ethics and Public Policy Center, came up with similar results.
The findings show that slightly more than one in ten women who take these at-home abortifacients will suffer sepsis, blood transfusion, hospitalization, infection, hemorrhage, uterine rupture, ruptured ectopic pregnancy, or even death. Although the statistics are less than transparent, the FDA’s own website shows 151 deaths linked to Mifepristone.
Mifepristone and misoprostol are the key drugs used in chemical abortions, killing the fetus and forcibly expelling it from the uterus. These chemical abortions are now the dominant form of all abortions in America, representing 63% in 2023 compared to 31% in 2014.
Surely, politicians and regulators who claim the mantle of protecting women need to give this blockbuster information their immediate attention. Lives are at stake.
Unfortunately, science and public health have taken a back seat over the years when it comes to the abortion pill. In a refreshing bit of explanatory journalism, our Restoration News Senior Investigative Researcher Samantha Flom chronicled the Left’s fevered efforts to short-change women’s health in the service of radical abortion ideology dating back to the Clinton administration.
The Left has always viewed pushing abortion as a political move that enlarges and energizes its base. Shockingly, as well, some of those who force-fed the abortion pill on America were also interested in ghoulishly reducing our population, Flom reports.
Rehashing the history of the abortion pill, once known as RU-486, is interesting and necessary context — however, there is a more pressing matter. Our new findings identify a crisis that demands immediate action.
Planned Parenthood and other abortion-pushing groups use Mifepristone as their weapon of choice in the war on unborn Americans. They falsely tell women that the abortion pill is safer than aspirin and use the COVID pandemic loosening of regulations to promote widespread mailing of pills across state lines to bypass states with sensible safeguards.
These relaxed standards now result in women obtaining the deadly drugs without an in-person consultation with a qualified medical professional and without regard to the possibility of ectopic pregnancies, which are dangerous enough without the extra complication of Mifepristone.
IS THE PROLIFERATION OF ABORTION PILLS POISONING THE WATER?
President Donald Trump, Health & Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, and FDA Commissioner Marty Makary need to address this health crisis immediately. At the very least, they need to take the interim step of reinstating the in-person doctor requirement for women considering the pill and stop allowing it to be mailed. Twenty-two state attorneys general have made the same request in a letter to HHS and FDA.
Then, a careful, non-political analysis of the dangers of Mifepristone needs to be undertaken swiftly, and a determination made whether we truly care about women’s health, or continue to be compliant servants to the soul-crushing abortion industry. We already know this drug is immoral. Let’s determine once and for all whether it’s safe.
Doug Truax is Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Restoration of America, which includes Foundation for the Restoration of America.