Abortion pill complications have been hidden by Big Abortion for nearly twenty years in a scheme that advises women who experience complications to present to emergency departments and lie about having taken the drugs. Live Action News has previously exposed the scheme, however, it has been revealed that the attempt to hide abortion pill-related adverse events from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is not new, and has been going on for nearly two decades.
KEY TAKEAWAYS:
- The FDA has long required prescribers to report abortion pill complications or maternal deaths of which they are aware.
- The abortion industry often instructs women experiencing abortion pill complications to present to the emergency room and lie about their abortion as a way to bypass reporting requirements.
- Newly-discovered information from a former Planned Parenthood employee reveals that the abortion industry has been instructing women to lie about abortion pill complications for decades, leading to highly skewed adverse events data for the abortion pill.
WHAT’S HAPPENING:
Abortion pill prescribers are required to report complications or deaths of which they are aware; however, if they are unaware, then there will be no report. One way to keep complications under wraps is to advise women to bypass the prescriber and present directly to the ER and lie, claiming a natural miscarriage. Live Action News documented how bad actors in the industry instruct women to go to the ER for complications and suggest that ER staff should falsify medical documents to cover up abortion pill complications. This is a coordinated attempt to bury the truth.
Now, information uncovered by Live Action News reveals that this strategy has existed for two decades. This points to the possibility that adverse events data may be highly skewed.
In 2008, Planned Parenthood in Iowa fired its Storm Lake manager, Sue Thayer, after 18 years. A Des Moines Register report states Thayer “says she was fired for objecting to a controversial teleconferencing system that allows Planned Parenthood doctors in Des Moines to dispense abortion pills to patients in rural clinics…” Thayer also revealed how the abortion industry had been coaching women to lie when experiencing abortion pill complications and presenting to an emergency room.
Before her death in 2021, Thayer became a pro-life activist, exposing — among other unethical activities by the abortion giant — what was dubbed a “webcam abortion” scheme, one of the first attempts used by the abortion lobby to remove in-person care for women taking the abortion pill. At this time, prescribers of the abortion pill (mifepristone) were required by the FDA to dispense the drug by a physician in person at a hospital or healthcare facility. But, as Live Action News continues to document, Big Abortion is often unwilling to follow FDA protocols.
In 2010, the pro-life group Operation Rescue described webcam or telemed abortions:
Patients are put in a room where an off-site abortionist appears on a computer monitor and explains the medical abortion procedure to them over an Internet hook-up. After the brief teleconference, the dangerous abortion drug RU486, also known as Mifepristone and Mifeprex, and its counterpart, Misoprostol, are prescribed. The drugs are then administered to the patient by a nurse or “clinician” who may or may not be licensed. The patient presses a button an on computer screen that opens a box containing the abortion drugs. The patient is never physically examined by the medical doctor prescribing the drugs – or any other, for that matter – and never sees the abortionist again.
“Things go wrong with webcam abortions all the time,” Thayer stated. She acknowledged that quite often, after a woman took the abortion pill, “there was nobody in the office” when she started bleeding. The woman would be given a card with a phone number and, according to Thayer, the Planned Parenthood nurse would tell her, “Well, if you’re bleeding this much, you need to go to the emergency room.”
But Planned Parenthood knew just how to manipulate women into hiding abortion pill complications.
Thayer explained, “Staff were instructed to tell patients that if you go to the emergency room and you tell them that you’ve taken these pills, your care may not be as well, as good because the providers there could judge you for having an abortion. And, really, they said at that point it’s no different than having a miscarriage so there’s no point in telling them that you’ve taken the pills to start the procedure.”
But there is a reason to tell the truth — so abortion pill complications can be reported to the FDA. Yet, Planned Parenthood, even 20 years ago, was allegedly instructing women to lie, which would guarantee that abortion pill complications would never be fully understood.
This is how Big Abortion can claim these drugs are “safe.”
THE BACKSTORY:
In 2000, following clinical trials, the U.S. FDA approved mifepristone as an abortion pill for use up to seven weeks of pregnancy in a regimen along with the drug misoprostol. At this point in time, the drug was only allowed to be administered in person, at a hospital or facility, by a physician. In addition, all adverse events (complications and deaths) were to be reported by the drug manufacturer — Danco Laboratories. Prescribers of the abortion pill were to notify Danco if they were made aware of any abortion pill complications or deaths, and then Danco would report those to the FDA.
In 2016, the Obama FDA removed the requirement to report any complications except deaths based on adverse event reports available up to that time. This is where it gets sneaky and dangerous.
The FDA’s 2023 mifepristone label acknowledged that 2.9 to 4.6% of women who take the drug require emergency care, and six percent (6%) who took the abortion pill in a telehealth study required emergency care. The manufacturer’s medication guide notes that up to seven percent (7%) of women will “need a surgical procedure” to complete the abortion. A more recent study, “The Abortion Pill Harms Women,” published by the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC), found that nearly 11% of women (10.93%) experience sepsis, infection, hemorrhaging, or other serious or life-threatening adverse events following a mifepristone abortion.
WHY IT MATTERS:
Big Abortion’s scheme assures that on paper, the abortion pill looks “safe.”
It’s fraud skews both abortion pill complication data and miscarriage data, potentially increasing insurance costs to pregnant women who miscarry.
The fact is that Danco and the FDA understood from the beginning that ERs would be necessary to treat abortion pill clients. Today, the FDA seems to be complicit in the scheme by eliminating specific text (see images below) from the black box warning and the patient counseling section of the abortion pill’s January 2023 label, which previously stated, “Advise the patient to take the Medication Guide with her if she visits an emergency room or a healthcare provider who did not prescribe MIFEPREX, so that the provider knows that she is undergoing a medical abortion (emphasis added).” The new label no longer tells women to inform ER staff that she took the abortion pill.
Image: Abortion pill label changes (2019 to 2023) edits to Black Box Warning and counseling section
2023 abortion pill label no longer tells women to bring medication guide to ER
The pro-abortion American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) wrote in its 2024 Committee Statement on Self Managed Abortion (SMA) that:
Some individuals may enter the health care system during an SMA because of adverse effects or complications. Regardless of their presenting symptoms, patients should be treated as any patient presenting for care for spontaneous pregnancy loss would be treated. Questions and evaluation should be based on the patient’s presenting symptoms in the context of a recent pregnancy but do not need to delve into the circumstances that lead them to seek care…For example, a patient may present with signs and symptoms of an early pregnancy loss, and it is unclear whether the process has been completed. The patient should undergo routine evaluation to make sure that the individual is clinically stable and that the process has completed. There is not a clinical need for the health care professional to probe further to ask whether this is the result of an SMA [emphasis added].
According to this guidance, it seems ACOG is suggesting that ER staff also hide abortion pill complications.
ACOG hiding abortion pill complications at ER
In fact, a recent study, which looked at Medicaid claims data, found high rates of potential miscoding after women obtained the abortion pill but later presented to an emergency department. The authors, some who are connected to pro-life organizations, found that some “ED visits following medical abortion” had been “mistakenly coded as spontaneous abortion.” Authors concluded that from 2004-2015 to 2016-2021, “miscode period prevalence rates following medical abortion increased from 4.7% of total visits to 18.0%; and from 45.5% of abortion-related visits to 83.5%.”
THE BOTTOM LINE:
Abortion pill complication schemes guarantee that prescribers who abandon their patients to overcrowded ERs will likely never know about adverse events — including the reportable deaths — and they will continue claiming that the drug is “safe.”
