An abortion activist is trying to demonstrate what an abortion by pill is really like. But her efforts are misleading – at best.
To show women that abortion “doesn’t necessarily need to be a huge deal,” Amelia Bonow, the cofounder of Shout Your Abortion, recently swallowed abortion pills on camera. In a two-part video series, Bonow ordered the pills online and walked through the process of taking them – by taking them herself. But it was unrealistic for at least two reasons: Bonow wasn’t pregnant and she didn’t film what happened after she swallowed the pills.
Bonow’s organization, Shout Your Abortion, encourages women share their positive abortion stories and has been heavily promoted by the media from its beginning in 2015. Since then, Bonow has made headlines for telling children that abortion is “part of God’s plan,” among other things. While she has had an abortion, she has never had one by pill.
“I’m not pregnant,” she stressed in the video released on July 16. “I just am kind of curious because I talk about pills all the time.”
She wanted to show that “doing this doesn’t necessarily need to be a huge deal.”
“For a lot of people, this might be a better, more convenient way to end a pregnancy than visiting an abortion clinic,” she said.
Before filming, Bonow said that she had consulted with lawyers and found that “what I’m doing is legal currently.”
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“So, f*** it,” she said. “I’m going to go get some abortion pills, and I’m going to eat them, because I want to. And I can. And I want you to know that you can too.”
She began the process by filling out a form online. After submitting her photo ID and paying $150, she received an email a few hours later confirming that the pills were on their way.
Two days later, she received the package with the abortion pills: one tablet of mifepristone and eight tablets of misoprostol. Then, she “started getting ready” for her “not-abortion.” Among other things, she warned her roommate “who has had multiple medication abortions” to “be prepared to dote” on her.
As she consumed the pills, she described what they did. First, she swallowed the mifepristone pill, which “begins the abortion process.”
“You don’t actually feel anything after taking it, and you can go about your normal life, doing whatever,” she described. In her case, that meant enjoying a 7-Eleven slurpee, washing her car, and playing with a puppy.
Then, “24 hours later, it was time to take the misoprostol,” she said.
“When misoprostol starts working, it causes a person to experience cramps, bleeding, nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea,” she said. “It basically causes you to cramp out whatever is in your uterus.”
She carefully placed four tablets under her tongue, adding, “And I waited for the magic to happen.”
But the footage didn’t show that “magic” – and instead fast-forwarded 12 hours.
“It wasn’t like, fun,” Bonow told her roommate afterward. “I like got a fever, and got really sweaty and hot and cold. And just got, kind of got like a really upset stomach, and then got period cramps, basically, but just kind of worse. And then I just started bleeding, but like not that much.”
Even though she was up all night, she stressed, “I feel okay.” And, “if I was pregnant and didn’t want to be, that’d be awesome.”
Had she actually had an abortion, she agreed with her roommate that it would have been a “cause for celebration.”
Still, she took care to add disclaimer to her video, admitting: “My experience is not an accurate representation of what it’s like to have a medication abortion since I was not actually terminating a pregnancy.” In other words, “The side effects I describe would have likely been more severe if I’d actually been pregnant.”
On this point, she’s right.
Five years ago, an obstetrician-gynecologist partnered with pro-life group Live Action to detail abortion procedures – including what abortion by pill is like for women who are actually pregnant. Dr. Anthony Levatino, who once performed more than 1,200 abortions, said that this kind of abortion is administered up to 10 weeks in pregnancy and consists of “two steps.”
First, “the woman takes pills which contain mifepristone,” he began. This blocks the hormone progesterone and causes the “lining of the mother’s uterus” to break down, “cutting off blood and nourishment to the baby.”
A day or two later, the woman takes misoprostol. Together, he continued, these pills “cause severe cramping, contractions, and often heavy bleeding to force the dead baby out of the woman’s uterus.”
“The process can be very intense and painful,” he warned, “and the bleeding and contractions can last for a few hours to several days.” Most often, he said, the woman will “sit on a toilet as she prepares to expel the child which she will then flush.”
But Shout Your Abortion never shouts that description – or the stories of women who say that they regret their abortions. Instead, they organize events where actresses talk about their “best” abortion and sponsor artists who create music videos declaring “Thank God for Abortion.”
Shout Your Abortion should show abortion, as it is: the intentional destruction of an innocent human being.
