Abortion activists have begun promoting the dangerous, self-induced abortions that they once claimed to want to help women avoid.
A Netherlands-based abortion group called Women Help Women recently launched a new website to counsel women on do-it-yourself abortions in the United States, the Washington Post reports.
The new website Self-managed Abortion: Safe and Supported, or SASS, does not sell or provide the abortion drug misoprostol, but it does instruct women on how to use it. It also tells them where women typically get the abortion drug illegally, what the legal risks and risks to their health are, and what to do if they experience complications, according to the Guardian.
Misoprostol is part of a two-drug, FDA-recommended abortion method commonly used in U.S. abortion facilities during the first trimester. The FDA recommends that the abortion drugs misoprostol and mifepristone be taken together and accompanied by medical supervision and an in-person follow-up appointment.
The first drug, mifepristone, works by blocking the hormone progesterone, causing the uterine wall to break down and basically suffocating the unborn baby. The second drug, misoprostol, then induces contractions to expel the unborn child’s body. This abortion method typically is used during the first 10 weeks of pregnancy.
“These drugs are dangerous. They are deadly. If they are mishandled, they result in serious injury,” Americans United for Life spokeswoman Kristi Hamrick told the Post. “To just distribute them and put them in an automatic dispenser like a can of soda is absolutely medical malpractice.”
Women Help Women Executive Director Kinga Jelinska told the Post their website is meant to be an “information-delivery project,” not a place where women can get abortion drugs.
The project leaders said they just want to help women who want do-it-yourself abortions to be safe, and they blame President Donald Trump’s administration for limiting women’s access to abortion clinics.
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Here’s more from the Guardian:
Researchers believe that women who self-administer abortion drugs are most likely taking misoprostol by itself, because it is easy to obtain from foreign pharmacies. Misoprostol used without mifepristone is less likely to cause an abortion but still has a high success rate.
There are certain medical risks in self-administering an abortion drug without the involvement of medical professionals. An ultrasound is often necessary to confirm a pregnancy and assess how many weeks a woman has been pregnant. Misoprostol is less effective and requires a different drug regimen later in the first trimester.
Medical professionals will also inform women about how to recognize complications, like excessive bleeding, that could occur after they leave the clinic and require medical attention. And using the drug improperly – say, at a high dose in the second trimester – can lead to serious medical complications.
The abortion group claims the drug is relatively safe for women, but their methods are very concerning.
Based on what the organizers said, women will be all but openly encouraged to hide important information from their doctors in emergency situations. The reasoning is that the women could face legal prosecution for self-aborting their unborn babies.
Susan Yanow, a consultant to Women Help Women, told Cosmopolitan: “And, very importantly, if a woman does have a complication, she will be encouraged to seek medical care, but she will also be given the information that miscarriage happens with 15 to 20 percent of pregnancies, and that miscarriages look the same as medication abortions and are treated the same way. So she will absolutely be confident that medical practitioners will be able to treat any symptoms she has but she doesn’t have to say why she’s bleeding.”
Yet, she insisted that the Women Help Women staff are giving women “information, not advice” about abortions.
More than 2 million unborn children in the United States have died in legal, drug-induced abortions. Women have suffered as well, as a Planned Parenthood study admits at least one woman is seriously injured from the abortion drugs daily.
The abortion drug mifepristone, or RU-486, is responsible for the deaths of dozens of women worldwide, including several in the United States alone, and it has injured at least 1,100 women in the United States, according to 2006 research from the FDA.
