Religious publication celebrates history of DIY abortions
A progressive secular Jewish magazine published an article this month instructing women on how to perform do-it-yourself abortions.
Jewish Currents magazine published the article titled "How to Give Yourself an Abortion" that includes illustrations first published in its fall 2019 issue. The article uses gender-neutral terms as it suggests that attempting to abortion one's baby at home is a safe and simple procedure.
"For as long as people have gotten pregnant, people have given themselves abortions," the article begins.
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Although the author added a disclaimer saying she wasn't encouraging women to endanger themselves by attempting to perform their own abortion, the article details a variety of methods women have used throughout the centuries in an attempt to kill their unborn child.
"In 2020, however, the safest way to perform a self-managed abortion is with pills — usually some variation of the same ones administered at doctors’ offices," the article insists.
Obstetricians worldwide have warned against buying abortion pills online. And last year, the Food & Drug Administration banned online sales of abortion pills.
In a medical abortion, women are given two drugs: mifepristone or RU-486, and misoprostol. Mifepristone works by blocking the effects of the natural pregnancy hormone progesterone. Misoprostol induces contractions and a miscarriage.
Sue Turner, director of Physicians for Life, told The Christian Post that there are many websites that encourage women to take misoprostol to induce an abortion.
“I shudder to think what happens to her and what she goes through in that process because in about 30 minutes she starts having horrific contractions. And women can die. If the cervix doesn’t open it can cause all kinds of horrible problems for her,” she said.
When mifepristone first came out, the U.S. FDA had a protocol for it to be used through seven weeks, or 49 days from conception. … “But the longer you wait, the less effective it is,” Turner said.
Because many abortion clinics in the U.S. were ignoring the FDA’s protocol and using the drug in chemical/medical abortions up to 60 days, states began passing regulations saying they had to follow the FDA’s protocol.
“They didn’t want to have to follow the FDA protocol, so [then President] Obama made the FDA change it to the later date, the 60 days, to match up with what the abortion providers were doing," she explained. “The drug was less effective and abortionists then had to also perform a surgical abortion, which meant that women were being charged for both chemical and surgical procedures.”
While few women have been arrested for attempting to abort their own child since the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade legalized abortion nationwide, several states have since passed laws that either criminalize the harm done to preborn babies or regulate the disposal of aborted babies as medical waste, Jewish Currents noted.
With the advent of the abortion pill, chemical abortions are becoming more common. The 2019 motion picture "Unplanned," which told the story of Planned Parenthood director turned pro-life advocate Abby Johnson, showed an example of this type of abortion procedure. Johnson ended her second pregnancy from her first marriage by taking the series of abortion-inducing drugs that she bought at the same abortion clinic where she would later work for eight years.
Jewish Currents also advised using deceptive tactics to get abortion-inducing drugs without going to an OB/GYN or abortion clinic, such as by convincing a man to try to buy them from a pharmacist, or by telling a pharmacist that one's grandparent suffers from rheumatoid arthritis and is visiting and left their medication at home, or by deceiving a veterinarian clinic that might have the pills in stock for use on animals.
Many OB/GYNs in the U.S. have used abortion pill reversal treatments to successfully save babies’ lives in cases where mothers have started the process of a chemical abortion but then change their minds midway through.
“A network of Abortion Pill Rescue physicians exists around the country so that women who change their mind after taking Mifeprex (mifepristone) can be put in contact with a physician who will give natural progesterone to reverse the abortion,” said Dr. Donna Harrison, a board-certified OB/GYN, as part of her testimony to the Kentucky House Health and Welfare Committee last March in support of Kentucky’s Chemical Abortion Reporting Act.
Turner told CP that if a pregnant woman who has taken the first of two abortion pills decides she’s made a mistake and wants to keep her baby, she would have a relatively high chance of delivering a healthy baby if she was to undergo the reversal.
“That is why it is critically important that a woman be informed of all of her options, including abortion pill reversal, as part of a full informed consent process prior to starting a chemical abortion,” added Harrison, who has authored peer-reviewed articles on the adverse events reported to the U.S. FDA after use of the abortion drug mifepristone.
“By giving a woman progesterone, the Mifeprex (mifepristone) abortion can be stopped and the chances of the baby surviving increase from 25 percent (the survival rate without natural progesterone) to 68 percent (the average survival rate after giving natural progesterone),” she continued in her testimony, detailing how progesterone is an “antidote” to the abortion-inducing drug.
Turner said that since 2012, over 500 healthy babies have been born because of the reversal process. “As long as they have it early enough it works very well. They just can’t take it after the misoprostol, which is the second pill.”
