How often do abortion activists claim abortions need to be legal to protect women from back alley and do-it-yourself abortions? Because now they are openly pushing the very unsafe abortions that they claim to want to end.
The Atlantic reports a pro-abortion group connected to Women on Web quietly began selling abortion drugs to women in America by mail-order six months ago.
Based in the Netherlands, Women on Web has been shipping abortion drugs to women across the world for years – often illegally, but its founder recently began selling to women in the United States as well. It sells the drugs under the name Aid Access and charges $95, according to the report.
This new move is alarming for women’s health and safety. The abortion drugs can be deadly to mothers as well as their unborn babies, especially if the mother does not have an ultrasound first. Women on Web only provides online consultations before mailing the pills; it does not provide ultrasounds or any medical treatments for complications.
“Handing out deadly drugs through the mail is a disaster waiting to happen. We know that women have died using chemical abortion drugs, and that how far along a woman’s pregnancy is or where it is can be a life or death issue,” said Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America.
Rebecca Gomperts, who founded Women on Web and the new Aid Access, said she plans to fill the prescriptions for American women herself. She said she sends the prescriptions to a pharmacy in India, which then ships the drugs to women in the U.S.
Gomperts said she is available for video-conferences or phone calls with women who have questions. But she is not available to help women who experience complications. Her abortion group does not provide ultrasounds either, an essential tool in understanding how far along the woman is in the pregnancy. It also can detect potentially life-threatening complications, such as an ectopic pregnancy.
She claimed the abortion drugs misoprostol and mifepristone are safe and 97 percent effective within the first nine weeks of pregnancy. Without an ultrasound, however, women often do not know how far along they are.
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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.
The abortion drugs are responsible for the deaths of dozens of women worldwide, including several in the United States, and have injured at least 1,100 women in the United States, according to 2006 figures from the Food and Drug Administration. A Planned Parenthood study even admitted at least one woman is seriously injured from the abortion pill daily.
Gomperts said she is afraid pro-life groups will try to shut down her organization, a fear that prevented her from selling abortion drugs in America before now.
According to the report:
She launched Aid Access as a separate service in order to mitigate the risk to Women on Web, and she claims that every step of the Aid Access process is legal. (According to Gomperts, the FDA allows people to import medicines for their personal use.) Gomperts launched the service six months ago, but has kept it quiet until now. She estimates she has already sent pills to 600 women.
Hawkins said Gomperts is putting women’s lives at risk.
“Even those pushing the drugs admit that they can fail, meaning that women can face infection and other complications if not examined …” she said. “Risking women’s lives to make a political point and a quick profit makes no sense, and we sadly anticipate horror stories when inevitably something goes wrong. Women deserve better.”
She also expressed concerns about the abortion drugs being misused by abusive partners or parents to force women to abort their unborn babies.
