Women Share the Horrors of How the Abortion Pill Harmed Them

National   |   Jessica Nardi   |   Apr 14, 2023   |   3:45PM   |   Washington, DC

The recent ruling by a federal judge condemning the FDA’s hasty approval of “abortion by pill” showcases just how harmful abortion is to women. Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk makes several mentions of how women have been devastated after buying into the industry’s lie that abortion is a “safe” solution to an unplanned pregnancy.

Hundreds of women have already come forward to share their testimony on how abortion tragically changed their lives. Below are excerpts from several of these stories – specifically from women who underwent chemical abortions –  taken from Silent No More Awareness and LiveAction’s Can’t Stay Silent report on abortion regret.

[Editor’s Warning: GRAPHIC CONTENT The following stories contain highly disturbing accounts of the effects of chemical abortions.]

Dora

As a 19-year-old nursing student, Dora found herself in an unplanned pregnancy. She had previously believed abortion was wrong, and never considered it as an option until she became pregnant and was pressured by her boyfriend and his roommates to abort the baby.

“I don’t quite remember their initial reaction, but I remember that the rest of the evening consisted of all of them sitting down with me in the living room and telling me the best choice was to abort. I told them I was uncertain of my choice, but they kept reminding me that we were so young and unable to raise a child on our own. I was so confused, and I remember thinking that I was going to have to go against everyone to keep this baby and that I would have no support if I didn’t go through with it.”

Dora went alone to a Planned Parenthood and received the pills for a chemical abortion. “Almost immediately, I regretted my decision. In tears, I asked the nurse if I could take back my decision … She encouraged me, yes, but encouraged me to continue with the abortion.”

After undergoing hours of excruciating pain and bleeding, Dora returned to Planned Parenthood for a check-up to only find out that the abortion had been incomplete and they would have to remove the rest of her baby’s remains through a D&C procedure.

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“The one in a million chance that it wouldn’t work** (as they told me) had happened. I was that one in a million … the nurse sent me immediately to a room for the procedure, and all I could hear were women screaming from the hallways. It sounded like a torture house … At this point I was balling my eyes out and my whole body was shaking in panic. When the nurse saw how bad I was getting she offered me more sedatives to calm me down.”

In the aftermath of her abortion, Dora suffered severe trauma and depression that led her to drop out of medical school and to turn to drugs, alcohol and even to become suicidal. Through the grace of God, Dora eventually found healing through faith and therapy.

“I share this because abortion is so evil in its core.” Dora shares. “What it does to the innocent and what it does to women is very real. Many women are left completely alone in their brokenness to figure it all out after an abortion. That is a sad truth, and that was my truth.”

**According to long-term studies out of Finland, the chances of a woman requiring surgical intervention after an attempted chemical abortion are much higher: between 19% and 23% of women experience adverse effects from mifepristone.

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Jordan 

Jordan discovered she was pregnant at the start of the government mandated COVID-19 lockdowns. She turned to her boyfriend and his family for support, but was met with the threat that if she didn’t choose abortion, she could no longer live with them.

Feeling like she had no choice, Jordan proceeded to have a chemical abortion.

“Immediately after the abortion, I felt like a failure to my unborn child, especially after taking the second pill. All because I needed a place to live, and I didn’t feel safe telling the father’s family no, I was the one to end my child’s life.  As time went on after the abortion I felt and experienced shame and guilt, grief like I’ve never experienced before, and regret because the week after the abortion was confirmed to have passed by the doctor, the baby’s father had broken up with me and I was left on my own, living in my car during the hot summer in Northern California.”

Thankfully, Jordan eventually found support through a local pro-life group and her church where she began to heal from all the grief, regret, and loneliness she felt after losing her child to abortion.

“I am open to telling my story of abortion and my mental health and healing process,” Jordan writes, “receiving God’s word once again and forgiving myself. I finally feel free from shame and that’s why I am silent no more!”

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Jessica

When Jessica informed her long-time boyfriend that she was pregnant, he immediately told her she had to have an abortion, claiming he wasn’t ready to be a dad. “

He ended up pressuring me into an abortion that I did not want. Although I was pressured into it, I do not hold him accountable because I made the appointment. I drove myself there, and I took the pills.

While at the Planned Parenthood to purchase her abortion pills, Jessica felt multiple times that she should just run out and keep her baby, but she ended up staying and taking the first pill.

I cried hysterically for the hour drive home, wondering how I could be so cruel to kill my own baby. I was so disgusted with myself after I took the pill, and I wanted to reverse it so badly, but I did not know you can still save your baby, as long as you don’t take the second pill and sought treatment … I birthed my dead baby into my toilet. I was heartbroken when I saw that it had tiny fingers and toes. I bled a lot, and the abortion was excruciatingly painful, almost as painful as my two unmedicated full-term births.

Jessica became deeply depressed and suicidal after her abortion and was plagued with guilt.

Every time I saw a baby, tears would rush down my face uncontrollably. I totaled my car on accident, because I was crying while leaving my cousin’s baby shower … I was jealous of my now sister-in-law throughout her pregnancy, because we would have been pregnant at the same time. She announced her pregnancy only a week after my abortion. It was a very dark time for me, and I longed for my baby so badly.

Now married with two other children, Jessica has found some consolation from her loss but says the regret will always remain: “The feminists who say that abortions are empowering are lying to you. We are ashamed of our choices and live with the guilt and shame.”

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Patricia

Seven months after having her first child, Patricia became pregnant unexpectedly from her new boyfriend who she had only been seeing for a few weeks. Her boyfriend told her he would support whatever decision she chose, but Patricia didn’t believe they could financially or responsibly have another child. Despite being raised in a Christian home opposed to abortion, Patricia felt like it was her only choice.

During her chemical abortion consultation, the abortionist told Patricia that there was nothing to worry about and “that I would have ‘some bleeding, and possibly clotting,’ and that complications resulting from pills were rare, I believed him.”

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.

On top of experiencing depression, Patricia continued to have severe bleeding in the weeks following her abortion, which necessitated multiple doctors visits to resolve the complications.

“I feel a burden to reach out to women who may be in similar situations as I was,” Patricia writes, “and to help them to understand that abortion is never the answer. My ultimate goal is to open my own pro-life pregnancy center in my hometown one day.”

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Emma

Emma was already a mom of eight children when she and her husband became pregnant again unplanned. Unsure of how to accept the news, Emma asked a close friend and her mother-in-law for advice and they both pressured her to abort her new baby.

They told me having another was silly and that it would look bad on us. I was in a very bad state of mind and I listened and had the abortion.

At 11 weeks pregnant, Emma took her abortion pills at home and immediately regretted it.

The abortion itself didn’t hurt me physically, but emotionally it was the greatest pain I’ve ever felt … I regretted my decision the second I took the first pill but it was too late.  I didn’t have time to take the other anyway because the morning after I took the pill the baby came out … I held the baby and said I was sorry … I have since realized that an abortion wasn’t right and I’d never do it again.

Emma says women need to know that chemical abortion is not like anything the industry says it is. “(they said I would just have a bad period). I didn’t have a bad period and I saw a baby!! They don’t prepare you for that …  if I didn’t listen to the pressure of others I would not have done so.”

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Additional Resources for Abortion Loss