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February 19, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) – For decades, one of the abortion lobby’s most persistent arguments for legal abortion was that it meant physicians would be “safely” committing the procedure rather than women attempting it themselves. Yet recent years have seen a rise in the promotion of “do-it-yourself” abortions, often with no professional oversight whatsoever.

On Monday, the left-wing publication Vice ran an article in which staff writer Marie Solis explained “What to Know About Giving Yourself an Abortion,” which she claimed is “overwhelmingly safe and effective” now that pills have replaced coat hangers as the dominant method.

“‘Self-managed abortion’ is a term used to describe the method of self-inducing an abortion, typically using pills purchased on the internet,” she wrote. “Though it’s a violation of the Food and Drug Administration’s rules to sell abortion medication online — the agency’s restrictions on mifepristone require it to be administered in person at a hospital or clinic — there are several websites where people can buy the drugs online.”

She advised women interested in self-abortions to undergo an ultrasound to determine how far along they are in pregnancy and rule out complications such as ectopic pregnancy (a notable departure from the pro-abortion stance that ultrasounds are burdensome and unnecessary when the the subject is offering women the chance to see the resulting images), and noted that blood disorders and intrauterine devices (IUDs) are incompatible with abortion pills.

Solis then gave readers links and addresses to several websites where abortion pills can be purchased (one of which has been warned by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration to stop skirting medical guidelines), then detailed the process of taking them.

“The first step of the pill regimen is to swallow the mifepristone with water,” she said, euphemistically explaining that the drug “stops the embryo from developing” in place of “kills the embryonic human.” The woman takes misoprostol 24-48 hours later, after which she can expect bleeding that, Solis said, is usually “no worse than a ‘heavy period’” but can occasionally include “quite severe” pain, which can be “managed with ibuprofen, or soothed with heating pads or a warm bath.”

But while Solis insisted this practice is safe, the FDA explains that it took action against self-abortion providers because they circumvent federal requirements that the approved prescription version of mifepristone, Mifeprex, be only made available via a Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy (REMS) program and obtainable only from REMS-certified healthcare providers. This, it said, ensures that providers can “assess the duration of the pregnancy accurately, diagnose ectopic pregnancies, and provide surgical intervention in cases of incomplete abortion or severe bleeding, or to have made arrangements for others to provide such care”; give women “access to medical facilities for emergency care”; and more.

Pro-lifers also warn that even when “properly” taken, abortion pills are not only lethal to preborn children but more dangerous to women than advertised.

“As of December 31, 2018, there were reports of 24 deaths of women associated with Mifeprex since the product was approved in September 2000, including two cases of ectopic pregnancy resulting in death; and several cases of severe systemic infection (also called sepsis), including some that were fatal,” the FDA warns, on top of 2,740 cases of severe complications from 2000 to 2012.