Illegal abortion ads on Facebook have become a huge problem in the tiny African nation of Lesotho.
Abortions are illegal in the southern African country, but abortion sellers are preying on vulnerable, desperate women through the social media site.
CNN recently spoke with nine women who bought abortion drugs illegally through the online ads. They said the sellers claimed to be doctors, and many claimed the abortion drugs were safe.
However, each of the women said she experienced extensive bleeding, severe pain and faintness – symptoms that are common even when the abortion drugs are given legally by a doctor.
“I feel as if the blood could have filled a 20 liter bucket,” one woman, Mpho, told CNN. “If I tried to stand for just a few minutes, I’d have collapsed. I have never bled so much, or felt so much pain, in my life.”
Here’s more from the report:
CNN, posing as a 15-year-old girl, contacted one person claiming to be a doctor, who had posted about abortion services on Facebook. CNN could not verify whether this person was in fact a doctor.
In a WhatsApp message exchange, the vendor attempted to sell “womb cleaning pills” for about 1,000 Loti, or about $86, and claimed the procedure wouldn’t hurt.
Facebook did not respond to several requests for comment from CNN.
A Lesotho Ministry of Health official estimated that 13 percent of hospital admissions for women of childbearing age are due to illegal abortions. Another government official even admitted that they encourage women to travel to other countries to abort their unborn babies because it will be safer for the woman.
And police told CNN that it is difficult to track down illegal abortionists who advertise online.
The report continues:
Women believed to have had an abortion are regularly reported to police in Lesotho. But many in the country argue that doctors providing the illegal procedures are the ones who should be criminalized. Foreign doctors, and others claiming to be medical professionals, prey on desperate women and girls in Lesotho, profiting from their abortions, according to police.
Aus Lesupi, a spokesperson for Lesotho police, says they should be prosecuted. But the rogue physicians often fall through the cracks.
“Our courts are too lenient on these people,” Lesupi told CNN via email. “Usually the doctors are foreign, and later flee the country.”
This is an argument pro-life advocates in the United States and Europe have made for many years: When abortion is illegal, abortionists should be prosecuted, not women.
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However, the liberal news outlet highlighted the illegal abortion epidemic in such a way as to imply that legalizing abortion is the answer. Abortion activists often claim that legalized abortion saves women from dangerous do-it-yourself abortions and back alley abortionists.
But abortion advocacy groups themselves advertise do-it-yourself abortions online, claiming that they are safe. Women on Web, a pro-abortion group based in the Netherlands, has a good reputation among abortion advocacy groups and even the liberal media; and yet, it also advertises dangerous mail order abortion drugs to women online.
Like so many other ads, the group claims its abortion drugs are safe and easy to use. But abortion drugs, whether given by a back alley abortionist or a supposedly reputable group, can be deadly to women as well as their unborn babies.
According to April 2011 FDA figures, there were 2,207 adverse events related to the use of the popular abortion drug RU 486, including 14 women’s deaths, 612 hospitalizations, 58 ectopic pregnancies, 339 blood transfusions and 256 cases of infections in the United States alone. A European drug manufacturer has publicly stated that at least 28 women have died worldwide after using RU 486/mifepristone.
Simply saying “we’re safe” does not make it so.
