'Risking Women's Lives to Make a Political Point': Pro-Life Groups Blast US Mail Abortions
A European organization known as Aid Access has now opened up another front in the abortion battle in the US. The company now offers American women doctor-prescribed abortion pills to induce abortion at home.
CNN reports the organization uses online consultations to determine if women seeking their services are healthy and who are less than nine weeks pregnant. A woman must complete the consultation in order to receive a prescription for the two pills to terminate her unborn baby. The two pills are comprised of misoprostol and mifepristone (Mifeprex). A pharmacy in India fills the prescription and mails the pills to the buyer in the US.
The US Food and Drug Administration is warning women not to buy mifepristone (Mifeprex) over the internet. The FDA says a person who buys this drug "bypasses important safeguards designed to protect your health (and the health of others.) Mifeprex has special safety restrictions on how it is distributed to the public. Also, drugs purchased from foreign Internet sources are not the FDA-approved versions of the drugs, and they are not subject to FDA-regulated manufacturing controls or FDA inspection of manufacturing facilities.
"The agency takes the allegations related to the sale of mifepristone in the US through online distribution channels very seriously and is evaluating the allegations to assess potential violations of US law," the agency said in a statement to The Guardian.
In response to the news that such an abortion business quietly launched in the US to distribute life-ending, chemical abortion drugs by mail, Students for Life of America's Kristan Hawkins said the organization will stand for the women soon to be victimized by this negligent business.
"Handing out deadly drugs through the mail is a disaster waiting to happen," Hawkins said in a statement. "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. Women later in pregnancy or women experiencing an ectopic pregnancy, in particular, are in great risk — two things that must be determined by examination and not by some online questionnaire."
"Even those pushing the drugs admit that they can fail, meaning that women can face infection and other complications if not examined, which is not possible in this online business model," the statement continued. "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. Any effort to quietly distribute these dangerous drugs will be met with vocal opposition because the risks to women and children are so great."
In an email to CNN, Catherine Glenn Foster, the president and CEO of Americans United for Life, called the latest action to sell such drugs by mail "reckless and irresponsible." She pointed out that without an ultrasound, a woman can't know if she has an ectopic pregnancy, "a dangerous and potentially life-threatening condition that no abortion clinic would try to manage."
Foster added that for women who can't have surgical abortions, "engaging in chemical abortion...is like playing Russian roulette with their health, because an unsuccessful chemical abortion may lead to a far riskier surgical one."
Foster told the cable news network that her organization is already looking into ways to stop Aid Access.
"The act of sending unregulated prescription abortion pills through the mail should be the subject of federal regulation," she noted. "For this reason, Americans United for Life is exploring the possibility of Congressional intervention to protect women."
