According to a recent report, over 60% of the abortions performed in the United States in 2023 were chemical abortions conducted using drugs such as mifepristone and misoprostol.
Last year was unique as it was the first full calendar year following the Supreme Court’s landmark Dobbs decision on June 24, 2022.
The report from the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute found that the proportions of total abortions in the country that are chemical abortions rose 10% in the past three years.
Reuters noted Tuesday that the report was “based on data collected from” abortion facilities across the country. The “survey found over 1 million total abortions were provided through the U.S. healthcare system in 2023, the first time that number exceeded a million since 2012.”
Furthermore, there was a “dramatic decline in surgical abortion access” following the Dobbs decision, Reuters acknowledged. The ruling “allowed more than a dozen states to ban abortion with limited exceptions and close clinics, restricting access to surgical abortion procedures,” the news outlet added. “That in turn led to a growing reliance on a two-pill regimen to terminate pregnancies.”
Next Tuesday, the Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments in a case regarding the chemical abortion drug mifepristone, which some observers say could be the “next Dobbs.”
CatholicVote reported in late January that the nation’s highest court “announced it would hear the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine [in mid-December].”
At the time, Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) Senior Counsel Erin Hawley – an attorney representing the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine – explained the important implications of the impending case.
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“The FDA’s own label for these drugs says that roughly one in 25 women who take them will end up in the emergency room,” Hawley said on January 29.
“The agency’s removal of in-person doctor visits and consistent, ongoing care has subjected more women to suffering severe, even life-threatening, medical conditions,” she added.
“Regardless of Americans’ beliefs about abortion, no one should be okay with the FDA leaving girls to take these high-risk drugs all alone,” Hawley concluded.
Hawley’s husband is pro-life Sen. Josh Hawley, R-MO.
As CatholicVote’s McKenna Snow reported last week, clinical pharmacist Anthony Campagna recently went on the record stating that mifepristone “isn’t a medication at all.”
“[T]he right to be called a medication is forfeited the second a drug is used… with the intent to actively take life,” Campagna explained in a March 14 op-ed for Crisis Magazine. Despite this, the abortion industry commonly refers to abortions performed via the drug as “medication abortions.”
“[M]ifepristone has been responsible for the deaths of millions of unborn children,” Campagna wrote. “[T]he drug is responsible for close to a half million murdered children per year, and the number is growing.”
LifeNews Note: Joshua Mercer writes for CatholicVote, where this column originally appeared.
