A new investigation by the Daily Mail discovered that dangerous abortion pills are being sold illegally on eBay, disguised as “pregnancy kits.”
For as little as $20, the sellers, most of whom appear to be from India, promise to send the abortion drugs mifepristone and misoprostol through the mail to buyers in the United States – some even offering a discount if they buy in bulk, according to the report.
The investigation adds to growing concerns about the increasingly easy access to abortion drugs and the danger to women’s and unborn babies’ lives.
Last year, the Biden administration began allowing U.S. abortionists to sell abortion drugs through the mail without ever seeing the woman. Some abortion activists also have admitted to smuggling abortion drugs across the Mexico border and sending broken and mislabeled pills to women or, possibly, their abusers.
The Daily Mail found dozens of listings for “pregnancy kits” containing abortion drugs on eBay recently. Most of the listings appear to be from India, and most sell the pills for $20 to $30 dollars. The average abortion at a U.S. abortion facility costs about $560, according to research from Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH).
Alerted to the investigation, an eBay spokesperson told the Daily Mail that they will remove the listings.
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“These items are prohibited under eBay’s prescription drug policy and this listing will be removed,” the spokesperson said. “Sellers who violate eBay policies face consequences up to, and including, permanent suspension.”
Dr. Sachiko Ozawa, a pharmacy professor at the University of North Carolina, urged women not to buy abortion drugs on eBay because, even though the company itself is legitimate, the sellers many not be.
“[These] websites don’t always provide information of side effects or guidance on when to seek further care,” Ozawa said. “There’s a huge amount of risks.”
Here’s more from the report:
Dr Robert Fuller, from the University of Virginia, told DailyMail.com that versions sold online could be falsified, contaminated with dangerous drugs or incorrectly dosed. …
‘Getting these medications through alternative sources, one has to be very careful that they are not getting a fake medication,’ he said.
‘Some of the fake pills may not have safe ingredients in them.’
In October, pro-life leaders Marjorie Dannenfelser and Katie Glenn warned women about another dangerous and illegal abortion drug smuggling operation across the Mexican border in a column at Real Clear Policy.
They pointed to a Washington Post article about the smugglers that showed photos of “broken pills sorted and packaged by volunteers with no medical background. When one ‘distributor’ comments to another that she touched a dog with her pill-sorting gloves, a third replies: ‘We’re not f—ing doctors, we’re not health-care workers. Everyone is taking some risk in this somewhere along the line…’”
Even when prescribed legally, abortion drugs are intentionally deadly for unborn babies and unsafe for their mothers.
First approved under the Clinton administration, mifepristone is used to abort unborn babies up to about 10 weeks of pregnancy – although some abortion groups want to use it later. It works by blocking the hormone progesterone and basically starving the unborn baby to death. Typically, abortion groups also prescribe a second drug, misoprostol, to induce labor and expel the baby’s body.
Along with millions of unborn babies’ deaths, the FDA has linked mifepristone to at least 26 women’s deaths and 4,000 serious complications between 2000 and 2018. However, under President Barack Obama, the FDA stopped requiring that non-fatal complications from mifepristone be reported. So the numbers almost certainly are much higher.
Studies indicate the risks are more common than what abortion activists often claim, with as many as one in 17 women requiring hospital treatment. A recent study by the Charlotte Lozier Institute found that the rate of abortion-related emergency room visits by women taking the abortion drug increased more than 500 percent between 2002 and 2015.
In England, which began allowing mail-order abortion drugs around the same time as the U.S., new investigations show a huge increase in ambulance calls and reports of coercion and abuse. There also have been reports of late-term babies being born alive at home as a result of mail-order abortion drugs because their mothers did not realize how far along they were.
