MYTH 1: These pills are quick, safe and simple.
TRUTH: The “abortion drug” is a TWO drug protocol. The first drug (Mifeprex) is used to cut off the hormone (progesterone) responsible for maintaining the life of the human embryo. The second drug, misoprostol, taken a day later causes the intense cramping and bleeding that forces the woman’s body to expel her fetus.
Women lose more blood from a chemical abortion, than from a surgical abortion. In fact, they lose a considerable amount of blood, and if the bleeding does not stop, they can be in serious danger without surgical intervention.
Women are often traumatized to see the remains of their dead, unborn child. But in order to complete the abortion, they must identify their fetus.
Women are equally shocked at the amount of pain they experience during this ordeal.
MYTH 2: The FDA’s scientists are experts at drug evaluation and applied the same rigorous assessment standards to RU486 that it uses for all other drugs.
TRUTH: The abortion drugs responsible for millions of unborn babies’ deaths, is also linked to at least 28 maternal deaths, and over 4000 serious complications according to the FDA’s own statistics[1]. However, under the Obama administration, the FDA stopped requiring that doctors disclose non-fatal complications from mifepristone, so the numbers of women experiencing adverse events from the drug is much higher than reported.
[1] https://www.fda.gov/media/112118/download
The FDA knew that the abortion drug's effectiveness diminished significantly after 49 days from last menstrual period, and that it comes with a lot of serious cramping, bleeding, and other significant side effects, enough to put some women in the hospital or even threaten their lives.
That is why the FDA approved the drug but used its Subpart H authority to require strict limits on distribution to“certified” prescribers only. Those prescribers (doctors) had to sign agreements indicating they knew about the abortion pill's regimen and special risks.
They were required to share these with patients, screen patients for gestational age and ectopic pregnancy, and made sure patients knew where to find help in the event of an emergency.
However, several very serious and glaring issues still remain:
How high a percentage of dead babies do you have to have, to call an abortion pill “effective"? Is it "effective" if 77% die, or perhaps over 83%, or perhaps over 92%?
What happens if the pills comes from places that don’t have high standards of purity, like India for example, and are less effective, resulting in a botched procedure?
How do you decide that pills, which work by inducing horrible bleeding and cramping are “safe?” Is it enough that a woman just survives the ordeal?
How much risk can you impose on a healthy mother in the middle of a healthy pregnancy to force her body to abort her child?
What do you do if a few women die, if they bleed to death, if they come down with rare, deadly infections, if women and doctors miss signs of significant complications because they’re expecting the pain and the bleeding that accompanies every chemical abortion?
What happens if the “do-it-yourself” abortion is a woman with an ectopic pregnancy, and the pain and bleeding are due to its rupturing?
These certainly don’t appear to be the signature of a safe drug, yet the record clearly shows that these are the sort of things mifepristone patients can expect.
Sources:
Randall K. O’Bannon, Ph.D., Addressing Many of the Myths the Media is Repeating about the FDA’s Approval and Management of Mifeprex (Mifepristone), National Right to Life, Director of Education & Research, 2023, https://www.nationalrighttolifenews.org/2023/04/addressing-many-myths-mifeprex-mifepristone/
RU 486 Safety and Efficacy Fact Sheet, https://www.nrlc.org/uploads/factsheets/RUSafetyEfficacyFS.pdf