A British mother and her unborn baby are dead after she took supposedly “safe” abortion pills in the spring of 2020.
According to Lancashire Live, a coroner’s report determined that Sarah Dunn, 31, of England, would have lived had it not been for medical professionals’ “gross failures” to recognize symptoms of sepsis as a result of her abortion.
Louise Rae, assistant coroner for Blackpool & Fylde, said a general practitioner, pharmacist and hospital staff all failed to recognize Dunn’s condition and did not give her antibiotics until it was too late.
Dunn died from sepsis and toxic shock in April 2020 at Blackpool Victoria Hospital, according to the report.
Infection is a risk of abortion drugs, and the abortionist did inform Dunn of the risk when she received the drugs in late March 2020, according to an inquest into her death.
A week after taking the drugs to abort her unborn baby, Dunn contacted her doctor complaining about increased bleeding and blood clots, investigators found. At her appointment, a health care assistant spent the most time with her, conducting tests and taking her blood pressure, pulse and temperature, according to the report. When the doctor did see her, the coroner’s report found that he failed to record these results in her medical records or properly examine her.
Dunn was scheduled for another appointment the next morning, but, in the middle of the night, she called emergency services when her pain worsened, the report continues. Despite the warning signs, she was told to keep her doctor’s appointment and was not taken to the hospital; the coroner said if Dunn had gone to the hospital at the time, she would have survived.
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Five hours later, Dunn called emergency services again, and this time an ambulance took her to the hospital where doctors discovered that she was in toxic shock and her organs were failing, the coroner’s report states. She died several hours later.
The coroner blamed the medical workers’ failures as well as a diagnosis tool and a “confirmation bias” about the COVID-19 virus for contributing to the woman’s death.
Here’s more from the report:
On arrival, she was in the early stages of toxic shock and her initial blood results showed an acute kidney infection and that her organs were failing even although her NEWS score – a tool used to monitor clinical deterioration – did not reflect how ill she was. This, Ms Rae, wrote, is a feature of sepsis seen in previously, young, healthy patients. With the sepsis protocols now followed at the hospital, it was instead thought she was suffering with Covid-19 and Sarah did not receive antibiotics until 5pm.
… She said there was a confirmation bias at the hospital due to the Covid-19 pandemic which meant other diagnoses were not considered.
In her report, the coroner told the Department of Health and Social Care that there needs to be greater awareness about infection being a risk of the abortion drugs, and more women could die if nothing is done about it.
“I am concerned that there remains a lack of awareness of sepsis in particular following early medical abortion given how many opportunities there were to think sepsis in this case,” Rae said. “Whilst those giving evidence to me in court are now aware of sepsis and the risks post abortion having reflected on Sarah’s death, I am concerned that there is a lack of awareness of the risk of sepsis following early medical abortions.”
Abortion drugs are dangerous and can be deadly for the mother as well as her unborn baby. In the United States, the FDA has linked mifepristone to at least 26 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.
Pro-lifers have expressed concerns that the United States and United Kingdom could see more maternal abortion deaths due to lack of direct patient contact after both nations recently began allowing abortion drugs to be sold through the mail without a doctor’s visit.
In the UK, government health data showed a massive hospitalization rate due to abortion drugs after the government began allowing mail-order abortion drugs in 2020. According to the data, more than 10,000 women who received the abortion drugs by mail needed hospital treatment, or about one in 17 women.
Other studies have found that abortion drugs are not as safe as abortion activists would like women to believe.
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. Another 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.
A December study in the journal “Health Services Research and Managerial Epidemiology,” also found a “significant” gap in reports on abortion complications from the drug mifepristone.
Mifepristone is an abortion drug used to block the pregnancy hormone progesterone and kill unborn babies up to about 10 weeks of pregnancy. Typically, it is taken with a second drug, misoprostol, to induce labor and expel the baby’s body.
