May 25, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) — It is not uncommon for women who have had abortions to wait 10, 20, or even 30 years to seek help in dealing with the unexpected emotional trauma that so often accompanies the loss of their child. But women who opt for chemical abortion are turning to post-abortion healing programs like Rachel’s Vineyard much earlier. The certainty that they have made a terrible mistake comes quickly and cannot be rationalized under the “it was my choice” mantra.
The reasons for this almost immediate regret are straightforward enough but never discussed by the abortion cartel and its media henchmen: A chemical abortion is a drawn-out, painful, bloody procedure that takes place, for the most part, in a woman’s own home. The place where she should feel safe and secure has now become an abortion mill. Chances are good her dead baby was delivered in the toilet.
“The actual experience of the abortion pill can be a shocking and traumatic event,” our Priests for Life Pastoral Associate Kevin Burke wrote in 2017. Rachel’s Vineyard, which he co-founded with his wife, Dr. Theresa Burke, by then was already seeing an uptick in women who were dealing with profound abortion regret soon after ending pregnancies at home. Men who went through the experience with their partners also have been seeking help much earlier than those whose children were lost through a surgical abortion.
Chemical abortion is the rising star in the abortion arsenal. Approved for use in the U.S. in 2000, abortion pills now account for 40 percent of abortions. In the beginning, women had to be examined by an abortion doctor before taking the first pill in the office, and then sent home with instructions on when to take the second.
Then “telemedicine” arrived on the abortion scene, allowing women to go to an abortion business for a video chat with an abortionist before being sold the pills. Now, courtesy of the COVID-19 pandemic, women can order pills through the mail. No doctor necessary! Obtaining an abortion has become as easy as doing a Google search.
At one website I surfed into, women are assured “safe and effective abortion care” following a brief video chat with “a trusted medical provider.” Another site said women can schedule a video chat — but it’s not required. Pills will arrive in discreet packaging in one to three days.
Every site — including that of the nation’s biggest abortion seller, Planned Parenthood — stressed the safety of abortion pills. But the reality is quite different. Since 2000, the FDA has recorded 24 deaths in women who took the abortion-pill regimen. Maybe that sounds like an acceptable risk to you, but I guarantee if your daughter, mother, or wife was among these casualties, you would feel differently.
The FDA also recorded 4,000 adverse reactions in that time period, and you can be sure the actual number is much higher. A study in the journal Contraception found that about six percent of women who had chemical abortions sought emergency room treatment within a month of the abortion. That’s more than 22,000 women. Chemical abortion should top the list of things that make the woke generation feel unsafe.
Abortion complications are routinely under-reported, if they are reported at all. But the things that can go wrong with a chemical abortion are numerous — and potentially deadly. An undiagnosed ectopic pregnancy can kill a mother, but a woman who does an at-home pregnancy test and then orders abortion pills off the internet would never know her child was growing outside her womb.
Septic infections are also possible, and potentially fatal. Or the chemical abortion might not work, sending women to abortion mills for a surgical termination. Twice the trauma, twice the chance for injury.
It was big news when California’s two state university systems decided to make abortion pills available to women on campus, and the only thing that prevented dormitories from becoming abortion mills immediately was the pandemic. When in-person classes resume in California in the hall, babies will die on campus and women’s lives will be irrevocably changed. We will never hear about it, though, because California is one of the states that refuses to report its abortion statistics.
After many years of declining abortion rates, the numbers have been creeping up in the last few years, and there’s no doubt that chemical abortion is behind that increase. The abortion cartel pushes the pills because they are more lucrative than surgical abortions. Abortion ideologues push the pills because they do an end-run around pro-life efforts outside killing centers. There is no regard for women’s health and safety, and certainly no one is thinking about the baby, at least until after the abortion, and by then it’s too late.
Here’s how a North Carolina mother, who is part of the Silent No More Awareness Campaign, described her chemical abortion:
The next day, at home alone with my infant son, I took the abortion pills. Within one hour I knew that everything the doctor had told me was a lie. I was bleeding so heavily, I believed I was dying. I was passing clots the size of baseballs, and I was in the worst physical pain of my life, worse than childbirth. The worst part of my experience was when I was sitting on the toilet and I felt myself pass a clot that felt strange. I looked into the toilet and saw my baby. It had a head, body, and tiny arms and legs. The shame and guilt that I felt at that moment, as I was forced to flush my aborted baby down the toilet, is impossible to describe.
It’s important to learn the truth about chemical abortion, and to pass it on. The drugs are not safe. The abortion is not easy or quick. Women put their health and even their lives at risk when they choose chemical abortion.
Within the first one to three days after taking the abortion pill, it’s often possible to reverse the chemical abortion. To find out more, CLICK HERE.
Janet Morana is the executive director of Priests for Life and the co-founder of the Silent No More Awareness Campaign. She is the author of Recall Abortion and Shockwaves: Abortion’s Wider Circle of Victims.