OTTAWA, Ontario October 16, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – Designed to kill preborn babies, the two-step Mifegymiso abortion pill (RU-486) has reportedly been prescribed at least 13,000 times in Canada since becoming available in January last year.
Using figures obtained from provincial health authorities, the National Post newspaper reported Oct. 15 on the number of known Mifegymiso prescriptions. But it's likely many more prescriptions than this have been written for Mifegymiso in Canada because the territory of Yukon did not divulge the number of these abortion pill prescriptions to the National Post, citing alleged privacy reasons.
And then there was the failure to respond to the newspaper's request for information about these prescriptions by the provinces of Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia.
Marie-Claire Bissonnette, a youth coordinator at Campaign Life Coalition, is saddened by the booming popularity of these abortion pills.
“It’s tragic that people are rejoicing at the number of times the new abortion pills have been prescribed,” said Bissonnette in an interview with LifeSiteNews.
“It’s understandable that the people who aren’t in favour of protecting the lives of innocent preborn children would support such a pill – but what isn’t congruent is their support despite the dangers and harm that Mifegymiso may cause the mother,” she said.
The abortion pill comes with a host of nasty side effects and has resulted in the deaths of numerous women (for example, here, here, here, and here).
“This drug has been proven to be very dangerous to women,” said pro-lifer Patricia Maloney, author of the Run With Life blog.
According to Maloney, even some pro-abort authors have written about the dangers of this abortion pill system, including Renate Klein who helped pen the book RU486: Misconceptions, Myths and Morals.
“(She) is dead set against this drug because of its long list of side effects, including the possibility of death,” said Maloney. “These side effects are especially troublesome for women in remote parts of our country. If a woman has a serious problem while taking the abortion pill and if she is in need of expert medical care that care may not be readily available to her in these remote or unserviced places, putting these women at great personal risk.”
The biggest harm to most women, though, may well be the trauma they will suffer once they realize they have taken the lives of their innocent, unborn babies, said Bissonnette.
“In addition to the side effects, it’s worth thinking about the psychological impact on women who are expected to flush their preborn down toilets,” she said. “And what about the women who may 'sneak a peek' at what they excrete, only to find a tiny human, whose fingers and toes may have been developed by this point?”
Mifegymiso is billed as “the World Health Organization’s gold standard of medical abortion” a two-pill system that contains a drug “used for close to 30 years with an outstanding safety and efficacy record” in 60 countries.
According to Health Canada, Mifegymiso typically leads to 10.8 days of vaginal bleeding, including two days of heavy bleeding.
“The medication causes vaginal bleeding and commonly induced pain and cramping, which required pain medication in some women,” states Health Canada.
In almost six out of 10 women, Mifegymiso causes diarrhea and roughly a third of women experience nausea. The abortion pill brings on fever and chills in 44 per cent of women who take it, and vomiting and weakness in roughly one out of five women. More than one in 10 women will suffer from headaches and dizziness when taking Mifegymiso, according to Health Canada.
After all of that, the abortion pill might not even work as advertised.
It has a “treatment failure” rate of four per cent. That means in one out of every 25 pregnancies for which the mother takes Mifegymiso to abort her child, he or she doesn't die from the drugs.
Those women typically resort to surgical abortions.
In Canada, the number of surgical abortions is not precisely known because some private abortion clinics refuse to report how many unborn babies they kill every year. In any given year in Canada, private clinics typically generally perform more abortions than the country's hospitals.
In 2016, the most recent year for which figures are available, there were about 97,760 abortions recorded, with almost 67,000 of those performed in private abortion mills.
That means there are roughly as many deaths from abortion in Canada alone each year as there are people living in each of Waterloo, Ontario or Red Deer, Alberta or Delta, British Columbia.
With the arrival of chemical abortion pills in many countries throughout the world, the trend has been for women to overwhelmingly opt for this method over surgical abortions to end the life of their child. In Scotland, abortion pill use accounts for 83 per cent of all abortions.
The potential for women to be coerced or tricked into unwillingly aborting their children by means of abortion pills is no small concern. In May of this year, a U.S. doctor was sentenced to three years in prison after he put abortion pills in his pregnant girlfriend's drink, causing her to lose the baby. In 2013 a U.K. man was sentenced to 15 months in prison for plotting to kill his girlfriend’s preborn baby by slipping an abortion pill into her drink.
Last year, Campaign Life Coalition spokesman Jack Fonseca warned that women in abusive situations are particularly at risk.
“For girls who are being sexually abused by people with some control over their lives, abortion is a way to keep the abuse secret for years,” said Fonseca. “In many cases, it is only when the girl becomes pregnant that the abuse comes out and is stopped.”
Mifegymiso makes it easier for the abuser to arrange an abortion and cover up his crime, Fonseca argued.
“The introduction of this pill is not progress. It is regressive,” he said. “It puts young women at great physical and mental health risk.”
A study published in April of this year in the medical journal Issues in Law and Medicine indicated that it is possible to stop an in-process chemical abortion by means of an FDA-approved progesterone treatment used since the 1950s to stop miscarriages.
Related stories:
Deadly for the child, dangerous for the mother: Ontario’s new abortion pill guidelines
Pro-life leader on abortion pills: We must end all abortions, not just ‘unsightly ones’
Thousands of Canadians to march against Trudeau’s abortion extremism