The abortion drug mifepristone is now being used for more than half of all abortions in the United States, according to a new report from the Guttmacher Institute.
In 2020, the drug was responsible for 54 percent of all unborn babies’ abortion deaths, up from 39 percent in 2017, the pro-abortion research group found.
Though the report does not mention the exact number of abortions in 2020 due to the abortion drug, it likely is about half a million, based on a rough average of about 1 million abortions a year.
“This new data point powerfully illustrates that medication abortion has gained broad acceptance from both abortion patients and providers,” the Guttmacher researchers wrote. “It also underscores how central this method has become to U.S. abortion provision, thanks to its track record of safe and effective use for more than two decades.”
In reality, the drug is the opposite of safe. Mifepristone, or RU-486, has been used to kill millions of unborn babies since it was approved in 2000 under the Clinton administration. The FDA also has linked the abortion drug to at least 24 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.
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Then, late last year, the Biden administration got rid of even more FDA safety regulations and began allowing abortion businesses to sell the drug through the mail without ever even seeing the woman – putting even more lives at risk.
Michael New, a professor at The Catholic University of America and associate scholar at the Charlotte Lozier Institute, believes the drug is to blame for the overall abortion rate increasing.
“Between 1980 and 2017 there was a fairly consistent decline in the U.S. abortion rate,” New told LifeNews. “However, in both 2018 and 2019, the U.S. abortion rate increased slightly in large part because there was an increase in chemical abortions.”
At the state level, pro-life advocates have been working to reverse the trend and protect both mothers and unborn babies from the dangerous drug.
According to Guttmacher, 32 states have laws that require physicians to administer the abortion drug and six others specifically ban abortion groups from selling the drug through the mail. Additionally, this year, 16 states are considering new legislation to ban or restrict the use abortion drug, the report found.
New said the new report shows just how great a need there is for such legislation.
“Overall, this new Guttmacher analysis shows that pro-lifers should redouble their educational and legislative efforts to stop chemical abortions,” he told LifeNews.
Guttmacher attacked abortion drug restrictions as “ideological” and “medically unwarranted,” claiming mifepristone has a “very low rate of serious complications” and taking it without medical supervision is “safe and effective.”
But a growing body of research shows the drug is dangerous for mothers as well as their unborn babies.
New British NHS health data shows a massive hospitalization rate due to abortion drugs after the government began allowing mail-order abortion drugs in 2020 during the pandemic. According to the data, more than 10,000 women who received the abortion drugs by mail needed hospital treatment in 2020, or about one in 17 women.
A leaked NHS email also shows evidence of several life-threatening incidents, including ruptured ectopic pregnancies and resuscitation for major hemorrhage, according to Right to Life UK.
As a result, this week, the British Department of Health and Social Care announced that it will begin requiring in-person appointments again for the abortion drug.
In the United States, a 2021 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. Researchers, looking at Medicaid code records, found “423,000 confirmed induced abortions and 121,283 subsequent ER visits occurring within 30 days of the procedure.”
Another study, published in December in the journal “Health Services Research and Managerial Epidemiology,” found a “significant” gap in reports on abortion complications from mifepristone.
A 2009 study “Immediate Complications After Medical Compared With Surgical Termination of Pregnancy,” in “Obstetrics and Gynecology” found a complication rate of approximately 20 percent for the abortion drugs compared to 5.6 percent for surgical abortions. Hemorrhages and incomplete abortions were among the most common complications.
Mifepristone is an abortion drug used to abort unborn babies up to about 10 weeks of pregnancy. It works by blocking the hormone progesterone and basically starving the unborn baby to death. Typically, women also are prescribed a second drug, misoprostol, that induces labor and expels their aborted baby’s body.
