Abortion pills over the counter could soon become an alarming reality

(Sarah Terzo’s Substack) According to one analysis, 20% of all legal abortions in the first quarter of 2024 were done by telehealth.

The Dangers of Telehealth Abortion

In the first three months of 2024, there were about 19,700 telehealth abortions a month. If this number held for the entire year, that would mean there were 236,400 telehealth abortions in 2024.

The number is probably higher. More and more telehealth providers are springing up throughout the country. And these telehealth providers, protected by shield laws, are even mailing abortion pills into states where abortion is illegal.

In a telehealth abortion, the pregnant person meets with the abortionist either over Zoom or a similar platform, or over the phone. The abortionist could be many miles away. After a brief conversation, the abortionist mails the abortion pill to the pregnant person.

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Even worse is the fact that the woman has no exam or ultrasound. She is just asked to remember the date of her last menstrual cycle. If she’s wrong, she could end up taking the abortion pill further along in her pregnancy than is safe.

Even worse, she could be the victim of an ectopic pregnancy, where the child implants and develops in the Fallopian tube. If undetected, the tube will rupture, causing massive internal bleeding and killing her.

Ectopic pregnancies aren’t rare. In one study in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine of women seeking abortion pills, 1.2% had an ectopic pregnancy.

This would mean that 12,320 women seeking an abortion a year have ectopic pregnancies.

The symptoms of an ectopic pregnancy, bleeding and cramping, mimic those of the abortion pill. This could cause a pregnant person not to seek help until it’s too late.

An ultrasound is the only reliable way to detect an ectopic pregnancy. Without an ultrasound, a pregnant person has no way of knowing if she’s one of those 12,320 women.

Even the inventor of the abortion pill, French scientist Etienne-Emile Baulieu, opposed giving it without providing an ultrasound first. In the pro-abortion book The Abortion Dilemma: Personal Views on a Public Issue (page 117) he said:

If ectopic pregnancy is not detected, the woman goes through a disaster, regardless of whether or not she uses RU-486 [the abortion pill], because it will rupture with heavy internal hemorrhaging…

This is why I insist that a woman should be medically examined if she wants an abortion of any kind, surgical or medical. Ectopic pregnancy presents a great risk.1

Right now, abortion is available through telehealth. But things could get much worse soon.

Abortion Pills Over the Counter

In November of [2024], the Journal of the American Medical Association published an editorial by two doctors encouraging the FDA to allow abortion pills over-the-counter.

This follows another editorial in the British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology encouraging the same thing.

Daniel Grossman, who, along with five other doctors, wrote these editorials, explained his reasoning in The Guardian:

[D]o the drugs used in medication abortion meet the criteria of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for over-the-counter sale? The answer is a qualified yes…

[I]n the same way that women around the globe are getting contraceptives on their own, many are obtaining medication abortion over the counter at pharmacies. The limited data so far suggests women are doing this safely…

Abortion Doctors Share How The Most Common Abortion Procedures Take Place

Women Would Buy The Abortion Pill Over the Counter

If abortion pills become over-the-counter, the demand is there.

Researchers conducting a recent study in the Journal of the American Medical Association polled a large cross-section of women (those assigned female at birth) and asked them if they favored making abortion pills available over the counter with no prescription necessary.

Over half of respondents, 55.2%, said they favored it, with 36% saying they strongly favored it, and 19.2% saying they somewhat favored it.

In addition, 42.5% said they would purchase abortion pills over the counter and use them. 25.7% said they definitely would, and 16.8% said they probably would.

Note that this survey was of all women, including those who were pro-life. This seems to mean that the vast majority of pro-choice women will buy abortion pills from a pharmacy over the counter without ever seeking a doctor….

Read the entire article at Sarah Terzo’s Substack.

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published at Sarah Terzo’s Substack and is reprinted in part with permission. Read more of her work here.